Why Tabula Rasa didn't exactly succeed

Nail - Head - Done

Quite correct in your view. TR was quite fun when I first played, as visually it was different, and felt cool with the whole semi - realtime shoot em up...
Then when I had to get 10 of this, meet this guy...blah, blah...the WoW feeling sank in, and disappointment ensued..

This, and the fact of no racial selections (slightly changed now...meh), boring crafting...like all RPG's (except for EQ2 seems like fun craft), and then the nerfbat attack...
Well..it had been put aside for other games already doing it better...

For example of that see : LORTO (been there done that gameplay with a pretty shell)

I would contend that Tabula Rasa does have something that actually works in its favor and works well, and that very much IS the Starship troopers feeling of being swarmed by waves after waves after waves of enemy (some of them ar even bugs).

In fact, this very feature present in their Control Points game play is what makes the game so engrossing, especially to newbs who first start playing.

It is, of course underutilized. No real reward other than XP and token drops to purchase crafting patterns/materials, and recently purchasavle "respec stones". The idea is that participating in assaults (which is nigh impossible solo at level) and control point defence (also nigh impossible solo, although slightly easier because of the way you can use cover to mitigate damage to yourself while still being able to attack) will drop assault or defence tokens from killed mobs that are used for different types of purchasavle respecs. Good reward imo,but still needs further development to make control points much more important to the overall map. You would never think that a simple pve encounter could be this epic or have the same sense of epic feeling as some of the keep defence/assaults had in games like, say, DAOC.

What was especially interesting to me was the way some control points worked on release where controlling a point allowed you access to the dropship (which allows you teleport access to the next maps or previosu maps in another zone) and local teleport points. Local teleport points are important because of the way the world was designed to be a constant an perpetual battlefield. Having the option to run to teleport to a closer point to your destination was pretty important. Without it, you have to wade through waves and waves of mobs that dropship down onto predefined and randomized locations that coould very well ruin your day. Without zonal dropship access, you have to wade through waves of mobs to even get to the next zone. And suddenly they did away with the importance of that for "player convenience". But originally, participation in these assaults and defence was all inclusive and a "near" necessity activity.

The other great thing that TR did well was the implementation of "ungrouped" group play. Which allowed the inclusion of players not in your group and of varying/differing levels to equally participate and/or help each other on the fly in the same area for similar objectives...all without ever having to group. But its importance and relevence is tied very much with the Control Points design, although it works well but to a lesser extent in other areas of the gameplay.

The game in actuality is very immersive and they've done a fantastic job of making individuals feel like the hero of the war effort. But this immersion is also a weak point because of the frenetic and constant pace of the combat (very few areas where you can go afk without threat of death outside of major bases). Meaning, after a hard day at work and you login for some gametime, it's hard to relax when you're getting bombed, nuked, bitten, stabbed and shot at constantly. Double edged sword really.

There are issues with the game, as in any, but its biggest failing really is its ability to communicate to people to entice them into being interested without sounding off list after list of features. In all honesty, it is a great sci-fi and gameplay concept (wether it matches their intended concept is, at this point, irrelevent) but without a good way to communicate itself to people outside of the people who are already predisposed to play, it will continue to flounder.

This is a shame. For lack of proper advertising and communication, many of the great ideas, implementation and level of accessibility that this game brings will slowly fade into obscurity. This in turn will continue to turn developers away from trying new ideas and concepts. Real shame.

Could Taula Rasa be a "Great" game? I wouldn't say great, but this is exactly the type of concept game that would open up the genre to something new if it could actually get people to play/be interested. Akin to the way Ultima Online (arguably) really helped open up concept and implementation of the modern MMO.