So I've noticed several other threads in this forum complaining about Richard Garriot's trip into space and I know I've complained about it more than once, so I'm guessing we all know about it by now. The bum wants to go into space.

Well anyway, on to my story: I have this email account that I only use for things I shouldn't be doing. A great example is if I have to register at a website I don't like for some reason and they demand to know my email address. Instead of giving them a real email address I actually use I give them this "other" address I have that I almost never check. Its a hotmail account, so if I don't check it atleast once a month hotmail likes to shut it down. Thats a pain in the butt, so I decided I would check it today and make sure it was still online.

Well I had three new emails. Two of them were telling me that people I've never heard of had added a BS facebook account I created as a joke to their friends list. The third email said: QandA from Richardinspace.com‏ and I wondered who the hell Richard was and why I should give a crap about a "QandA" on his website. Well, suprise suprise, it was Richard Garriot's website and amazingly enough he actually responded to a question I had asked him WAY the hell back in May of this year shortly before I quit his crappy game. I didn't remember what I had asked him but considering the kinds of questions I usually have for MMO developers I knew it had to be a pretty good one so I rushed over to his website to see what his reply was (I hoped it would be something like Dan Rubenfield's famous "you can eat a d!@#" rant).

Well anyway, here was my question that was "Anwsered" by our buddy richard: *link*

Q: Why are you playing around in space when you should be adding content to Tabula Rasa that you promised before release and still hasn't made it into the game!?

His "reply"...

A: Yes, absolutely! As a matter of fact, Tabula Rasa gets a new content drop every 3-4 weeks and has been since its launch in October so hopefully keep your eye out on www.playtr.com and you can find out the details.

Oh well that makes so much sense and... wait, WHAT!?

Richard, it took you six months to reply to my question and you apparently didn't even take time to read it clearly enough to figure out that it wasn't a "yes" or "no" question!?

No wonder Tabula Rasa is so awful. Not only does Richard's space trip leave him with no time to fix his game, it also apparently doesn't leave him any time to read the questions on his own website properly. Gotta wonder why he bothers to anwser them in that case but I guess once you have put out a half-assed MMO you might as well do a half-assed job of everything else you do.

I hightly encourage all of you to ask Richard some questions. Just wait about six months for a reply.

Originally posted by Raltar

So I've noticed several other threads in this forum complaining about Richard Garriot's trip into space and I know I've complained about it more than once, so I'm guessing we all know about it by now. The bum wants to go into space.

Well anyway, on to my story: I have this email account that I only use for things I shouldn't be doing. A great example is if I have to register at a website I don't like for some reason and they demand to know my email address. Instead of giving them a real email address I actually use I give them this "other" address I have that I almost never check. Its a hotmail account, so if I don't check it atleast once a month hotmail likes to shut it down. Thats a pain in the butt, so I decided I would check it today and make sure it was still online.

Well I had three new emails. Two of them were telling me that people I've never heard of had added a BS facebook account I created as a joke to their friends list. The third email said: QandA from Richardinspace.com‏ and I wondered who the hell Richard was and why I should give a crap about a "QandA" on his website. Well, suprise suprise, it was Richard Garriot's website and amazingly enough he actually responded to a question I had asked him WAY the hell back in May of this year shortly before I quit his crappy game. I didn't remember what I had asked him but considering the kinds of questions I usually have for MMO developers I knew it had to be a pretty good one so I rushed over to his website to see what his reply was (I hoped it would be something like Dan Rubenfield's famous "you can eat a d!@#" rant).

Well anyway, here was my question that was "Anwsered" by our buddy richard: *link*

Q: Why are you playing around in space when you should be adding content to Tabula Rasa that you promised before release and still hasn't made it into the game!?

His "reply"...

A: Yes, absolutely! As a matter of fact, Tabula Rasa gets a new content drop every 3-4 weeks and has been since its launch in October so hopefully keep your eye out on www.playtr.com and you can find out the details.

Oh well that makes so much sense and... wait, WHAT!?

Richard, it took you six months to reply to my question and you apparently didn't even take time to read it clearly enough to figure out that it wasn't a "yes" or "no" question!?

No wonder Tabula Rasa is so awful. Not only does Richard's space trip leave him with no time to fix his game, it also apparently doesn't leave him any time to read the questions on his own website properly. Gotta wonder why he bothers to anwser them in that case but I guess once you have put out a half-assed MMO you might as well do a half-assed job of everything else you do.

I hightly encourage all of you to ask Richard some questions. Just wait about six months for a reply.

I am constantly amazed by what they and RG call content. To me content does not mean balance fixes you missed in beta. Content is not fixing useless and broken skills, it is not optimizing armor and the female characters.

To me content means new stuff and TR has been so light on that as to have created a new meaning for monthly content. Yes TR gets updates but it does not get content. Mostly it gets fixes they missed in beta. That is what people are paying for. Now they are adding new weapons and a couple of new instances which are content, but they are not keeping up with the average players needs for new content in a game that is very small and shallow.

In light of TR being shut down, I think this thread deserves a bump so everyone can see the "anwser" I got from our buddy Richard in reguards to Tabula Rasa.

Originally posted by Raltar

In light of TR being shut down, I think this thread deserves a bump so everyone can see the "anwser" I got from our buddy Richard in reguards to Tabula Rasa.

At least we know his reading skills are top notch.

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

Originally posted by Raltar

In light of TR being shut down, I think this thread deserves a bump so everyone can see the "anwser" I got from our buddy Richard in reguards to Tabula Rasa.

 

At least we know his reading skills are top notch.

lol yeah. he's definitely someone I'd want making games, he probably wrote all his ideas for TR down, then when he read through it while in development, all he saw was "way to make money for space trip" and forgot about endgame content and balance :P

I'm one of the "whackjobs" who should "eat dick"  (because I liked SWG's pre-CU version?) according to the world's most pathetic developer (Dan Rubenfield), and I also happened to be one of the people who left SWG shortly after the CU launched. Ironically, the link the OP provided is the first glimpse I've EVER had of Dan's blog entry... and all I can say is... wow, that guy really is a dumbass. Talk about adding insult to injury. You know, I'm really glad I quit SWG now, and I'll never look back again.

Moving on to RG.... *dies of laughter* Wow, the guy can't read, can he? It almost seemed like a canned response, kind of like the GM responses I used to get from my SOE tickets in-game (thinking back to SWG again). Oh well; at least I can clearly see why TR plummeted to its doom like it did. It's sad... I really want a sci-fi MMO to play.

NCSOFT should sue RG .. and make it a public spectacle. I would be cheering the lawsuit on from the side lines :)

I am making sure I won't buy a RG game for the rest of my life.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

NCSOFT should sue RG .. and make it a public spectacle. I would be cheering the lawsuit on from the side lines :)

I am making sure I won't buy a RG game for the rest of my life.

What would they sue him for? They sue him and watch how few game makers ever make MMOs after that. They paid him to create an MMO and he did, the fact it failed is not all his fault. The money may have been poorly spent but the ideas behind TR were good. The execution and implementation sucked.

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

What would they sue him for? They sue him and watch how few game makers ever make MMOs after that. They paid him to create an MMO and he did, the fact it failed is not all his fault. The money may have been poorly spent but the ideas behind TR were good. The execution and implementation sucked.

What would they sue him for? Breach of contract would be my guess. It might be hard to prove that though, so I probably would not sue him. Rather I would have simply fired his ass and blamed the failure of the game on him. Sadly that ship has already sailed.

The reason the exceution and implementation for this game sucked was because they had no direction. The reason they had no direction was because their lead developer was off jerking off in outer space instead of giving them direction. Garriot was the lead developer. From where I stand it surely looks to me like the failure of this game is all his fault. If him getting his come uppins causes other developers to be more careful in the future... GREAT! Its about time someone in this industry had an example made of them so that the industry as a whole will start thinking twice about making a bad game in the future.

Originally posted by Raltar

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

What would they sue him for? They sue him and watch how few game makers ever make MMOs after that. They paid him to create an MMO and he did, the fact it failed is not all his fault. The money may have been poorly spent but the ideas behind TR were good. The execution and implementation sucked.

 

What would they sue him for? Breach of contract would be my guess. It might be hard to prove that though, so I probably would not sue him. Rather I would have simply fired his ass and blamed the failure of the game on him. Sadly that ship has already sailed.

The reason the exceution and implementation for this game sucked was because they had no direction. The reason they had no direction was because their lead developer was off jerking off in outer space instead of giving them direction. Garriot was the lead developer. From where I stand it surely looks to me like the failure of this game is all his fault. If him getting his come uppins causes other developers to be more careful in the future... GREAT! Its about time someone in this industry had an example made of them so that the industry as a whole will start thinking twice about making a bad game in the future.

You are basing it on all being his fault and none of us has the information on whether he made the decisions in the end or if NCSoft stopped them from doing things. Suing a lead developer would cause others not to be more careful but to avoid making the games and taking a risk of being sued in the future.

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

You are basing it on all being his fault and none of us has the information on whether he made the decisions in the end or if NCSoft stopped them from doing things.

No...

I'm basing it on him not even being on the same planet as his game!

The guy was off messing around in space when he should have been working on Tabula Rasa PERSONALLY. He clearly wasn't doing that. So it isn't a question of if NCsoft "stopped" him from doing things, unless you are suggesting they somehow brainwashed him into thinking it would somehow help the game if he ran off to Russia to train for a space trip instead of actually being present during the development and release of the game.

And you saw his attitude and interest in the game in the way he responded to my question about it. The guy clearly was more interested in himself and his space trip than he ever was in Tabula Rasa. Even if NCsoft had a hand in messing the game up somehow (which doesn't make sense as they were the ones who lost money on this deal) RG still stood by and allowed it to happen. He sold the game to NCSoft so he could get the money to fund his space trip. Honestly I wouldn't be suprised if he never really intended to go anywhere with this game but just invented the concept of it so that he could sell that concept along with his name to anyone who would pay for his space trip. NCsoft walked right into his trap.

I think the failure of TR cannot be tacked to a single person. I'm quite convinced that RG had his share, and it was a quite large one, but one man alone cannot make or break a game, no matter what or who he may be.

TR was released about one year too early. I am not too sure whether that's RGs fault. In my experience, it's the publisher who presses for games to be released to see some ROI. It usually isn't the head dev who wants his game out the door half finished.

The lack of content is a direct result of this. If you have to dedicate a sizable portion of dev time to bugfixes and keeping the game that already exists somehow afloat, they cannot put a lot of time into new content. No matter what they had done, people would have complained. If they