hmm NCSoft got sued and lost

It was a lot more than that. IIRC, Garriot got news of his "voluntary serperation from the company" while he was still in quarantine from his space trip, which he partially used to promote Tabula Rasa and Operation Immortality. Because he suposedly "voluntarily" left the company, his stock in NCSoft was sold off, which alone was worth a lot of money. Kotaku explains it better in more detail here.

If all of that was true (and a Texas jury seemed to think that the story had enough merit to rule in his favor), then he was probably owed a bit of money.

um. what happened to the game was it crashed and burned due to a management staff whose best description is outlawed in 4 different galaxies and would warrant an immediate death sentence.

http://zerias.blogspot.com/2009/05/c...evelopers.html
http://zerias.blogspot.com/2009/02/c...-concerns.html
http://zerias.blogspot.com/2009/02/l...eally-big.html
http://zerias.blogspot.com/2008/11/g...es-ncsoft.html
http://zerias.blogspot.com/2008/08/t...ll-bugged.html
http://zerias.blogspot.com/2008/08/t...mortality.html

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...47&postcount=3
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...1&postcount=44
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...38&postcount=2
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...0&postcount=21
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...9&postcount=38
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...89&postcount=2
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...2&postcount=22
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...8&postcount=18
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...2&postcount=51

Why yes, I do talk about Tabula Rasa a lot. It's why the PvP in this game is a lower priority than a bondage themed mastermind summoning set with cat-girls.

I'll go over it again:

As Tabula Rasa entered late beta it was built similar to CoH with a focus on a play experience balanced against players working with each other to over-come the inherent inefficiencies of their classes. It was a game built to focus on large scale Player versus Mass Environment challenges.

As Tabula Rasa exited beta and into retail launch, Richard Garriott proceeded to leave Destination Games and head to Russia to begin his space flight training.

The people Richard Garriott left in charge of Destination Games were not familiar with the Lore of Tabula Rasa. They were not familiar with the design of Tabalu Rasa.

A vocal minority of the game began to demand a focus on PvP play for the game.

The developers in charge capitulated.

The. playerbase. Left.


The reality was this: there wasn't a player-base large enough to make the game profitable in a PvP-centered environment. NCSoft's net income was down 42%.. almost entirely because of Tabula Rasa. Lineage and City of Heroes saved NCSoft's collective rump. By the time Richard Garriott got back from space and was in quarantine, the damage was already done and the writing was already on the wall. The decision had already been made to sever ties to Tabula Rasa as quickly as possible.

Richard Garriott's unceremonious removal from NCSoft was merely a loose-end to tying up the abject failure of the game and inability of Destination Games to accurately judge their player-base and potential market.

The fall-out from Tabula Rasa is still affecting NCSoft's business practices to this day. NCSoft would much rather fund and develop games that are built from the ground up for PvP play, such as AION, then pay to have an existing PvE focused game commit to a PvP focused system.

So do I ._.


Wish we can bring her back.

lol linking to your own blog and using that as evidence

The blog includes this post, by the way, which explains very forcefully why side-switching "will never happen" in this game (lol?). It features such gems as this:

@macskull, @Not Mac | XBL: macskull | Steam: macskull | Skype: macskull
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."