Opinions flare from ex-NCsoft employees about TR's closing
by Shawn Schuster 
Jan 16th 2009 at 6:00PM
Filed under: Sci-fi, Business models, MMO industry, Opinion, Tabula Rasa
As Tabula Rasa approaches its end days, the anger, sadness and I-told-you-so sentiments are rising up more than ever. This week marks an interesting occasion where two former NCsoft employees each wrote detailed stories on their own perspectives regarding the sci-fi MMO's downward spiral.First we have this post by Adam Martin, former CTO of NCsoft Europe, where he explains his views on why the game failed. Granted, he admits he wasn't actually on the TR team, but he was privy to the internal mailing lists and information about the game from Alpha to launch. As a response, we have a post from Scott Jennings, who sums it all up fairly well with this statement: "The biggest failing, though, was that it was in development about twice as long and spent twice as much as it had any right to. And that's what promotes it, in this snarky outside blogger's view, from understandable failure to extinction-level company-slaying train wreck."
Update: Although Adam Martin's post states that he was the European CTO at the time, we get word from NCsoft that he was never the CTO for NCsoft Europe. He was the Lead Programmer.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jack said on 10:02PM 1-16-2009
no long development only can make games better this game was release like many others without almost noting of end game full bugs and crafting system was a joke... I was in a big guild full boring high level players that where waiting waiting and waiting for 2 months and later give up on this mmo.... Later when it was already near dead they come with new content but it was already late most of the people I was in the guild with move on to bigger and better things like Warhammer online and a lot also return to World of Warcraft.
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NeuroMan42 said on 10:29PM 1-16-2009
NCSoft is in it just for the cash. They have shown time and again that if a game does not come out of the gates rolling in the money like WOW they throw it out and start again. I have lost all respect for NCSoft and for Mister Garriot and his flunkies.
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cliff said on 10:58PM 1-16-2009
BTW, I know I'm picking nits, but you're a journalist of sorts, so I must.
It should be "flare," not flair. Flare would be used to describe something bursting into flame, flair is used to describe something done with a lot of style and panache.
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Rob said on 12:18AM 1-17-2009
Shawn, it's "flare" not "flair".
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Graill said on 2:47AM 1-17-2009
The article is to funny. It boils down to employees to afraid to address the situations and letting the status quo remain. Emails between themselves or friends serves no purpose and does nothing to punish those that need to be, such as the idiots in charge.
Short term problem, long term problem, your the ones with no paycheck.
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Psychotic Storm said on 4:21AM 1-17-2009
that essentially is the case, once you are in the company and getting paid, it becomes quite "diplomatic", we have a saying in my country that goes somewhat like this "those who do not dance, can tell many songs" I don't know if it has been conveyed well, but when inside and when the pay check is essential one might not be that bold.
on the actual articles, they give a good insight on what NCSoft is, essentially an average corporation, on the 2008 CEO summit the main discussion was that the upper echelons of almost every corporation are clueless on the status of the company, the situation their employees are in or the sate of their products, the main fault was placed on the mid level managers who present a "great" picture afraid of giving the grim truth.
in my opinion, since TR hit the right road so late, they should, scrap the previous attempts as a "cancelled game" on the game expenses and focus on the game that hit the right road, to me TR story looks like 3 games been developed one of them managing to reach shipment and that was the game that had the shortest time in development, I firmly believe a year or two would make the game a great success.
still I don't get why cancel it.
HexDSL said on 10:43AM 1-17-2009
sounds like sour grapes to me.
maybe the problem with TR was that is want in development long enough, at the start it was like playing a beta.
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Takk said on 11:00AM 1-17-2009
I played TR from very early closed beta to 2mo post-release. When I first started playing the game was very, very fun and quick. Closer to release a series of patches came that wrecked the game. The game became less responsive, spawn rates and NPC AI were broken. A horrid crafting system was introduced. And much of the armor looked like it was designed and knitted by Martha Stewart. My guild started saying "Martha Provides!" whenever one of us would wear one of these silly pieces. I'd rather have a simple MMO that works and is fun than a game with too much poorly-designed crap thrown in at the last minute. Another thing that frustrates me is to see things that work early get broken later. This is happening in Warhammer alot. And I'm getting impatient with it.
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Houston said on 7:21PM 1-17-2009
World of Starcraft, that is all.
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Psychotic Storm said on 5:57AM 1-18-2009
It will be intresting, yet I am hoping on something more than that from Blizzards mysterious new MMO.
I personally would love a starcraft IP based MMO with realistic graphics and not the cartoony WoW graphics and a combat system that suits a sci fi game.
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Johnny_Velocity said on 7:04PM 2-12-2009
True to form, NCSoft will throw its resources into upcoming games - Aeion and GW2 - and put COH and all other NCWest games into maintenance mode and watch them slowly sink.
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