It was officially released to retail on November 2, 2007, with customers that pre-ordered the game allowed access to the live servers from October 30, 2007.
The story takes place in the near future on two planets, Arieki and Foreas, which were in a state of constant conflict between the AFS (Allied Free Sentients) and the Bane.
They freely shared their knowledge of how to convert between matter and energy with just the mind, called Logos, to other less advanced races.
The combat mixed in some aspects from shooters to add some real time action[clarification needed] elements to the game.
It still was not an outright shooter and featured sticky targeting and dice rolling based on character stats underneath.
Some may be specific to control points that the player will need to reclaim from the Bane to gain access again.
One example is destroying a dam to stop Bane forces that will also demolish a local village.
The entire goal is to give you pause and allow you to think about the choices that they make in order to accomplish a mission.
Some examples range from lightning bolt attacks, sprinting, reinforcements, and poison type powers.
Players that are fighting to defend or capture a CP (control point) got Prestige points which they could trade in for item-upgrades, experience boosters, a reset of either their attributes or their learned abilities or the purchase of superior or rare equipment at grey market vendors.
Prestige could also be earned by defeating bosses, looting rare items, getting the max XP multiplier and by completing special missions.
Later in the game, Control points became more and more important to the players, as they were necessary to be either in Bane or AFS hands to accept or complete certain missions and they become the centerpoint of most of the later maps.
[17] Some staff working on other NCsoft projects were transferred to the Tabula Rasa development team, including City of Heroes' Community Coordinator April "CuppaJo" Burba.
[24] The non-disclosure agreement for the beta test was lifted on September 5, 2007 and the test ended on October 26, 2007 with a themed event in which players were invited to attempt to kill the character General British, played by game creator Richard Garriott.
Both contain the client and an account key with 30 days of included playtime, however the Collector's edition shipped with a number of bonus items including: Tabula Rasa was officially released to retail on November 2, 2007, with customers that pre-ordered the game allowed access to the live servers from October 30, 2007.
[26] On Nov 11th 2008, an open letter to the players of Tabula Rasa stated that Richard Garriott had left NCsoft to pursue other ventures.
On 21 November 2008, weeks after Richard's announcement, Tabula Rasa's development team also released an open letter indicating that the game would end public service on 28 February 2009, citing a lower than expected in-game population as the major factor for the decision.
[2] On February 27, 2009, a message posted on the official website requested that players participate in a final assault, culminating with mutual destruction of AFS and Bane forces.
Additionally, the news of the termination was issued while Garriott was confined to quarantine from the space flight, which was originally intended to be a publicity move to further promote the game and increase revenue.
In July 2010, an Austin District Court awarded Garriott US$28 million in his lawsuit against NCsoft, finding that the company did not appropriately handle his departure in 2008.
Negatives were the obscure and often counterproductive crafting system, a lack of a central trading hub at the initial release and bugs involving general gameplay and reports of memory leaks.
[39][42] Eurogamer gave the game 8 out of 10, praising the daring-to-be-different approach to combat and to the class/cloning system, allowing players the opportunity for experimenting easily with which career path they choose.