Lum describes the Tabula Rasa effect on NCsoft Austin
Lum the Mad has been brave enough to post his inside (or down the hall) take on Tabula Rasa's development and the overall dark cloud that settled on NCsoft Austin. It's worth a read if you're interested in the game industry in any way.
One part sticks out for me:
There’s nothing that you can point to and say “here was the big mistake”. There were a lot of tiny mistakes, and they built up.
Of course, everyone will have their theories, but Lum is closer to the source and his last bit sums it up:
It just. took. too. much. money.
I typed a few opinions of my own, but it's pointless really because everything I can think of gets summed up right there. Sure, there are big mistakes and there are little ones, but they're all too obvious to bother ranting about.
Jan 21, 2009 5:26pm
Yes thats one excellent and true thing to say.
It started by preorder customers in beta, a no-no if you ask me.
And then launching one unfinished game.
(Some points in passing: Most importantly
they should have changed the interface, removed the silly alt button to do anything and which locked your char while having it opened. And finally, payed some attention to the fact that a properly working chat client is absolute neccesary for social interaction - only when you learned to know people will you go on to voice after all.)
Then at launch without enough servers to handle all us happy players who rushed in.
The result was lagfest.
....and when the whiners gotten started, there was no end to it.
Dont get me wrong & that said: It was a wonderful experience and I never reached top level, I still would have liked to continue playing TR. :´(