by: Tony "RadarX" Jones

Anticipation builds as NCsoft's science fiction theme MMO game Tabula Rasa nears completion. Earlier this week, Producer Starr Long announced a delayed launch date meaning players won't be repelling the impending Bane invasion until to November 2nd.  While beta participants reactions were mostly approving, a few questions remain unanswered from this news. 

Why the delay?  What possible difference could two weeks make? Starr Long had the following to say in his announcement:

"This short but critical amount of time will give us time to address several issues including stability and balance as well as allowing our players to test the continent of Ligo (L38+) and our major changes to crafting for a few weeks rather than a few days. Our entire development staff feels this extra time is needed as does our beta community. We feel confident that this extra time will make a difference on launch day. "

src="/image/view/12478/preview"
width="200" border="0">

Will I Still Look Cool in Two Weeks?

Stability and balance issues don't exactly give you that warm and fuzzy you'd find at the end of a Disney movie, but no game is entirely ready at launch and these things are expected.  The date shift isn't enough to imply there are major issues, but a delay in general means something isn't quite right.  Only two weeks, and at the 11th hour before retail was gearing up?  What was big enough to slow the launch, but not big enough to take longer than 2 weeks?  We may never know.

What does this delay mean to NCsoft?  It's no secret NCsoft has a lot riding on this game.  After six years and a rumored 100 million dollars, too much time and effort has been spent bringing it to market to even think about a major delay.  According to a South Korea Times article "After hitting the roof in 2005, NCsoft's stock price has moved sideways while the rest of the software industry has grown continually."   

Everything beyond these stock prices, which are affected by an endless number of factors, could be nothing more than hype (although I did confirm the Lineage 3 statements with one other source). One thing is apparent though, Tabula Rasa along with a Korean MMO game called Aion are NCsoft's big chance to turn things around and improve consumer confidence.   As I write this however, a press release just announced they've acquired Carbine Studios, so as Brent from Virginworlds recently pointed out to me, they must be doing something right.

The most relevant issue in the delay is, what does this mean to you as a player and how will it affect the MMOG market? Well, to be honest there really isn't much on the release schedule for 2007. Gods and Heroes was recently delayed and we haven't heard anything about Pirates of the Burning Seas or Pirates of the Caribbean, so the only thing even attempting to share shelf space is Fury which is a PvP oriented game. This puts Tabula Rasa in a fairly uncontested position unless you consider the EverQuest 2 expansion which is so different it's hard to think of them in the same game genre.

Overall, a two week delay might have some folks (like Korean investors) questioning the readiness of Tabula Rasa but considering where things stand in the current market will it really hurt anything if it's a few weeks late? People have been waiting 6 years, is two weeks really going to be any worse? It was apparently important enough to stop at the last minute, so hopefully this time will allow some additional polish and make it one of the most interesting MMO games released this year.