Tabula Rasa offline in Feb. '09

Despite plenty of hype -- including a plug during a $30 million visit to the International Space Station by the game's chief designer, Richard Garriott -- sci-fi-based massively multiplayer online (MMO) game, Tabula Rasa, will be shutting down Feb. 28.

After going online at the end of October, the NCsoft game was faced with less-than-spectacular reviews, largely due to technical issues, and went on to sell just 61,000 units in the United States.

On Nov. 11, Garriott announced in an open letter to gamers he was leaving NCsoft to pursue "other interests."

Finally, last week, the Tabula Rasa development team published the cancellation announcement on the game's news site (rgtr.com): "It is with regret that we must announce that Tabula Rasa will end live service on February 28, 2009.

"Last November we launched what we hoped would be a ground-breaking sci-fi MMO – in many ways, we think we've achieved that goal," the post reads. "Tabula Rasa has some unique features that make it fun and very different from every other MMO out there. Unfortunately, the fact is that the game hasn't performed as expected. The development team has worked hard to improve the game since launch, but the game never achieved the player population we hoped for."

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