Sad day after sad day for Tabula Rasa fans these past months. If it's any solace, today was the last bad news they'll be receiving. Yes, Tabula Rasa is officially calling it quits. As evidenced from the recent layoffs, as well as Richard Garriott's abandonment, everyone saw this coming from a mile away.

Servers will be closing at the end of next February, but if you're still interested in giving the Sci Fi adventure a try the service will be free to play after January 10.

Here's the official release:

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To the Tabula Rasa Community,

Last November we launched what we hoped would be a ground breaking sci-fi MMO. In many ways, we think we've achieved that goal. Tabula Rasa has some unique features that make it fun and very different from every other MMO out there. Unfortunately, the fact is that the game hasn't performed as expected. The development team has worked hard to improve the game since launch, but the game never achieved the player population we hoped for.

So it is with regret that we must announce that Tabula Rasa will end live service on February 28, 2009.

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. For more details about what we are doing for Tabula Rasa players, please click here.

Stay tuned for more information. We thank you for your loyal support of the game and encourage you to take us up on the benefits we're offering Tabula Rasa players.

The Tabula Rasa Team

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One has to ask, did Garriott leave with the knowledge that his game was shutting down? Or was he leaving aware it would be the straw to break the game's back? What I'm trying to say is that either way Garriott comes out looking like a prick. Whatever happened to a captain and his sinking ship? Hope your future business prospects are worth more than the respect of your remaining gamer faithful Rich. Maybe it's best you're leaving the industry.

Source: http://www.rgtr.com/news/latest_news/message_from_the_tabula_rasa_t.html