TR Dev Corner: Starr Long addresses TR issues

Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa - Image 1 Starr Long, lead producer of Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa, has taken some time to address some of the issues – most notably the state of the Austin dev team and the game’s financial impact – currently revolving around the game. Check out snippets from Long’s Dev Corner post in the full article.

General British - Image 1NCSoft is disappointed in Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa. The recently-formed NCSoft Austin studio is facing a wave of downsizing.

Yep, a lot of negative talk has been swirling around Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa recently. To give fans a better view of the situation, game producer Starr Long addressed these issues in a recent Dev Corner post.

Long admitted that the game didn’t really become as successful as they had hoped, but clarified that the game launched in “an insanely competitive time frame, with several well-known intellectual properties launching follow up products at the same time.”

The “massive layoffs” apparently don’t have anything to do with the game’s not-so-great showing. The team is merely transitioning from a pre-launch crunch-mode development team to a live service team, said Long:

This is standard in our industry—you ramp up to launch a game and then ramp down once it’s live. This is what we are doing over the next several weeks, and it only affects the Tabula Rasa team. Once all is said and done, we will still have a substantial live team for industry standards.

Long also assured fans that NCSoft is still committed to the growth of Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa. More new features are reportedly being planned, including Command Opportunity, where players will get the ability to summon entire squads of upgradeable NPCs to fight for them, and Flashpoints, which are missions that start dynamically in a region for a number of players whenever certain criteria are met.

And what about Lord, er, General British? He’s still involved and dedicated to the game, said Long, staying in daily contact with the Tabula Rasa team even while training for his scheduled space flight.

Via PlayNC

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