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Richard Garriott Quits NCSoft
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Nov 12, 2008 09:54 AM
from the will-now-british-elsewhere dept.
from the will-now-british-elsewhere dept.
unc0nn3ct3d writes "In a shocking update on the seemingly endless troubles plaguing NCSoft, Richard Garriott — the king of online games, creator of The Ultima Series (and consequentially Ultima Online), as well as the recently troubled Tabula Rasa — has announced that he would be stepping down from his position at NCSoft. Apparently motivated by his recent trip into space, perhaps he has found a higher purpose while orbiting so high above the earth."
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<em>Tabula Rasa</em> To Shut Down 244 comments
NCSoft announced today that it will be closing down Tabula Rasa on February 28th. The sci-fi shooter-flavored MMO struggled for quite some time, despite recent attempts to draw in new players by announcements of new features, price reductions, and using Richard Garriott's trip into space as a promotion. We discussed Garriott's departure from NCSoft a couple weeks ago. This is NCSoft's second failed MMO, and apparently layoffs are in the works. They seem to be making an effort to make the game's last few months as fun as they can for their remaining players, though. "Before we end the service, we'll make Tabula Rasa servers free to play starting on January 10, 2009. We can assure you that through the next couple of months we'll be doing some really fun things in Tabula Rasa, and we plan to make staying on a little longer worth your while."
[+]
Worlds.com Sues NCSoft Over MMO-Patent 261 comments
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[+]
Richard Garriott To Sue Former Employer NCSoft 107 comments
Om writes "Richard Garriott, lead designer of the now-defunct NCSoft game Tabula Rasa, is suing former employer NCSoft to the tune of $24,000,000. GamePolitics has details on the legal filings, but contrary to official postings from 'General British' himself, it appears this split wasn't exactly amicable."
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Question (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If you were gaming in the 80s you are either -
A) trolling hard
B)living in an ignorant state of denial
C)lying
about the "washed up has-been" crap.
Centuries ago, Internet time (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Beat me to it. "Who, what, when?" was going to be my title. An article about a guy who was remotely involved in this game-generation's Daikatana becoming un-involved? Yaaawn.
I'll save further comment for when kdawson dupes this article on Friday.
Re:Centuries ago, Internet time (Score:5, Informative)
"Whoa, Paul McCartney used to be in a band?"
Parent
Re:It is doomed (Score:4, Funny)
Instead I played WoW with crappy pseudo-FPS controls. About the only innovative feature was the cloning, and even the appeal of that was diminished by the near-Korean levels of grinding the game required.
Parent
Maternity Leave (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Maternity Leave (Score:5, Funny)
He can cure that with a little Mandrake Root and Nightshade.
Parent
Re:Maternity Leave (Score:5, Funny)
And, uh, In Vas Flam!
Is that the spell? Damnit, all this time I've been casting In Vas Flan, which has entirely different, albeit delicious, results.
Parent
Re:Maternity Leave or alien invasion!? (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe aliens have already replaced him with a replica?
Maybe the Armadillo's are behind it!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armadillo_Aerospace [wikipedia.org]
Then again, maybe we have both had too much coffee today.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Then again, maybe we have both had too much coffee today. :)
DDDDDDdoooonnn'nn'ttt bbeee sssiilllllllyyyy! Nnnnnoo sssssuuccchh tttthhhinngggg!!!!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Last October, an astronaut moved into my neighborhood... Simultaneously, all the leaves started dying.
-Upright Citizens Brigade
Does this surprise anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)
The games industry has sucked the life out of any 'franchise' inherited from when the PC game market was healthy.
Tabula Rasa has zero name recognition.
The number of people who know who Garriott is, is not enough to sustain usage on an MMO.
The cost of the game was exorbitant when you have zero name recognition.
MMOs have a shelf life and expire after a (very few) years.
Therefore, why would someone do a project like this, as a pure business case? I love Richard Garriott and what he represents, but I blame NCsoft for greenlighting and funding this MMO, rather than Garriott for creating it.
Re:Does this surprise anyone? (Score:4, Informative)
TR is, IMHO, the best MMO available today. It's also pretty cheap compared to WoW.
I have played both pretty heavily, and my all time fave is TR.
I've been a fan of Garriott since the beginning (Akalabeth) and he has rarely disappointed (well, ultima underworld kinda sucked). TR doesn't seem to have much of his penchant for dramatic story telling (unlike Ultima, Wing Commander, and UO), so his departure may not change much.
I hope he goes off to do something fun.
If TR ends after this, it will be a shame. It's my favorite MMO, and probably the last one I'll play for the foreseeable future (since most of the rest are just... meh)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
It's kind of funny that I loved Ultima Underworld, so much so that I regularly quote it as my favorite game, and have replayed it often, last week even (up to Level 6).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ultima Underworld (which was a truly pioneering game) wasn't really done by Garriott, but by Warren Spector who later worked on Wing Commander, Thief, Deus Ex, etc.
Re:Does this surprise anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not a hardcore MMO player.. but I've played WOW, Anarchy Online, Guild Wars and TR (picked it up at a firesale at Target). TR SUCKS. I played 3 days out of the free initial month before I canceled billing.
The interface was backwards and counter intuitive, the mechanics of the game didn't make much sense nor did the story. Not to mention the performance was pretty horrible (MBPro, 256mb video, etc).
I read a bunch of reviews explaining the game and I know that point was that it was intended to reinvent what an MMO game is - and maybe it did so. But in doing that, it had next to ZERO mass appeal. The things that it changed to 'be different' didn't make sense why they were changed - and what was put in place instead felt tacked on, confusing and backwards.
Honestly, I can't think of a single thing I experienced during my limited run with it that was superior, or even on par with other MMOs. YMMV.
Parent
Re:Does this surprise anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Guild Wars is even cheaper (pay for the software, no recurring fees). I've been playing it for about 3-ish years off and on and still enjoy it.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
What, you mention Ultima Underworld, but not Ultima 9?
I realize that the steaming pile that became Ultima 9 was largely driven by EA and deadlines rather than by Garriot, but Garriot had very little input on Underworld. He was far more creatively involved in Ultima 9, and couldn't manage to save that shipwreck from EA.
Then there's Ultima Online. Ok, being one of the earlier modern MMOs, I can forgive some of the quirks, but it was also ill-planned. I remember some of the marketing for the game was that y
Re: (Score:2)
Uhhhh (Score:2)
MMOs have a shelf life? Really? Since when? Thus far, I'm not aware of ANY MMOs failing. Hellgate London probably will, but it'll be the first. Ultima Online, Everquest and the like are STILL online. Not just online, under active development. A new UO expansion was released in 2007, and there's another slated for 2009.
Thus far, it seems MMOs just keep going and going. They peak and then player count drops off, but it doesn't fall to zero it levels off and you just keep running. Even MMOs that were fucking d
Re:Uhhhh (Score:4, Informative)
If your numbers of players are declining, your product is in a death spiral, even if it takes 10 years to drop to something equating to nil. If you are not doing well financially now, having fewer players - meaning less cash coming in - means you can afford to develop less and have even less chance of turning things around. And there are several MMOs that have closed down.
http://www.mmogchart.com/charts/ [mmogchart.com] - have fun checking it out.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
No, they don't. MMOs have died, but because they were screwed up, not of old age. Many of the oldest MMOs are still around. With no real data points, it's difficult to say what the life-span of a well-run MMO might be, but my guess would be somewhere around 20 years.
Re: (Score:2)
"MMOs have a shelf life and expire after a (very few) years."
*Bill Lumbergh's voice* I'm uh.. going to have to sort of... disagree with you on that one.
Actually it seems like these games have an amazing shelf life. EQ1 is still around, as is UO. Heck games that should die like SW Galaxies and Enter the Matrix that just never seemed to catch on are still gasping for breath. The game I play, FFXI, I've been hearing for years people saying "the game will be dead in 6 months" and is still going, even if it'
Overview Effect (Score:5, Interesting)
This actually is a phenomenon known as the overview effect [dailygalaxy.com]. Space travelers often report a transcendental sense of connectedness.
Re:Overview Effect (Score:5, Funny)
More likely he realized that outer space is the only place with enough room for his ego.
Parent
This is another name for... (Score:2)
The Total Perspective Vortex
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_Gold_(spaceship)#Total_Perspective_Vortex [wikipedia.org]
Think of what it does. From the book:
"When you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little mark, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says, "You are here."
Which is like putting someone in a space ship, have them look back at the earth, and understand how small earth is, and how small each
Re: (Score:2)
Why bother with a space ship? All children, whilst being taught about religion, should be supplied with a copy of Celestia [shatters.net], and made to slow zoom out until they're able to see the Milky Way and Andromeda, to get some sense of perspective.
Re:Overview Effect (Score:4, Funny)
And when he dies, on his deathbed, he will achieve total consciousness, so he's got that going for him.
Parent
Contrary results (Score:2)
Interesting that this is in almost total opposition to the Total Perspective Vortex [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
This actually is a phenomenon known as the overview effect [dailygalaxy.com]. Space travelers often report a transcendental sense of connectedness.
For those of us in the cheap seats, LSD can do this too.
Damnit Richard! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I heard him. I also received some of his SSTV pics. Unfortunately I was at work, so I couldn't call him myself. There was one local-ish guy calling him on the downlink frequency, which really isn't going to work.
Pics (and audio) from space here: http://www.gjcp.net/space/ [gjcp.net]
Re: (Score:2)
I think it was a bit silly wasting time sending dull (IMO) SSTV images back when Richard could have been QSOing with thousands of amateurs worldwide. He was up there for 10? days, and probably had lots of time spare (as he wasn't part of the crew). The image equipment can be left there, switched on at any time.
Receiving an image is a one-way communication, a
Re: (Score:2)
Feel free to mirror it. I'm not sure if Richard Garriot is going to claim copyright on it ;-)
What's particularly annoying is that across in Edinburgh there is a VHF AM group who all sit on 145.8 and nicely stomp any ISS transmissions! That said, I was amazed how loud NA1SS was - those pics and the audio were received with an old Trio TR-7730 (which is actually a damn good rig) and a homebrew J-pole at all of 12' elevation in my back garden. A couple of the pics show deep nulls, caused by tall trees. One
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, I'd be pretty miffed about the use of 145.8+ for non satellite work. Are they even allowed [rsgb-spect...rum.org.uk] to do that? There are 2 whole MHz of 2m bandwidth for them to use, and satellites can't exactly be changed easily.
I too, was amazed at how strong the signal is from the ISS. It was maxing out my meter, and that was with a 6/2/70 mobile antenna in the carpark at work. Sounded like at the beginning and end of the recording that you were slightly off frequency - do you start 3kHz up,
Plaguing NCSoft?? (Score:4, Interesting)
What sort of troubles that aren't related to Tabula Rasa?
Is Guild Wars 2 at risk?!
Will he (Score:2)
go and live in a monastery?
EA (Score:2)
Garriott should buy back the rights to Ultima single player games and develop remakes of the Ultima series.
Space Ace (Score:3, Funny)
"General" British? Did I miss something? (Score:3, Interesting)
Did he... (Score:2, Funny)
*poof* (Score:3, Funny)
King of online games? I think not. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Or John Carmack [armadilloaerospace.com]...
-l
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
That name - Lord British - makes me cringe every time I hear it. General British is slightly better, but not much.
As a rule of thumb, consider that pretty much every person who could be considered British does not think of themselves as such - we're English, Scots, Welsh, Northern Irish, Cornish, Manx, and so on. Only someone not from here would call themselves something like that.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Despite being raised in the US and sounding American, Richard Garriot was born in Cambridge, England. He also did not give himself that name, it was given to him by others who thought he had British mannerisms.
Re: (Score:2)
Playing TR beta, I never really got the feeling he was involved beyond them using his name left and right.
Re: (Score:2)
I was wondering the same thing... How long would it take for them to fire him for not showing up... It may be a while before they figure out how to get that big head of his out the door of the Soyuz.