Several weeks ago, we reported that Richard Garriott announced on the Tabula Rasa web site his separation with NCSoft, the company that he had partnered with to develop and publish the game.

More sad news..

Tabula Rasa will shut down on February 28, 2009.

Before it does, however, the game will become free starting on January 10th.

The game's website reads: "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."

NCSoft is going to lay off an undisclosed amount of their employees, too. Their spokesman, David Swofford said, "We're going to be scaling down the TR team in preparation for the end of live service. We currently don't know how many people will be affected by that."

As a gesture of gratitude to their legion of loyal fans, NCSoft will reward them with free time on their other MMOs: City of Heroes; Lineage II; and the forthcoming Aion. Those with active paid accounts starting 12:00 PM CST today will be contacted by NCSoft with redemption information.

Source