They have 76? Ok then there's an overlap at the middle-sized gamedev companies. :p Thanks for the info ^_^

IMO the factors were: 1) Many people were expecting the "Richard Garriott" style of gameplay - no virtues on Tabula Rasa, just kill all the aliens! 2) It was RG's "test" game, he wants to try a new game genre. 3) They merged with NCsoft Korea, or rather, they were absorbed. Their concentration on the game got less and less because of NCsoft, their parent company. 4) And as you've said, RPG and/or FPS? 5) They relied heavily on Alpha Tester input, if you are not aware, the TR on the market right now was not the original TR design at all. Personally, I prefer the original - Sci-Fi Fantasy / Science Fantasy genre. The TR we have now is purely Sci-Fi. I bought the Collector's Edition of TR, but I stopped after a couple of 2-digit levels (I can't remember anymore). I highly preferred the original TR. It's "Richard Garriott". This new TR isn't "RG" at all.

License to a FLOSS license? It will not happen. You are forgetting one important factor here: They are doing business. With business comes a huge investment and a huge income. You do not want your competitors to know your trade secrets, how you do things, etc. etc. Especially the new and/or aspiring players. If there companies who will open source their game codes, these will be the small companies. Mid to Big companies are not likely to do so. They do not need another competitor :p

Yep, you are missing it ;) Proprietary Code. These are the codes that were developed by NCsoft and which other companies want to get their hands on and study (and vice versa). To the end-users, it appears that "to achieve something" can be easily programmed from scratch. That isn't the case once you get down to the dirty work. There are bits and pieces and ways that one company did "some feature" and the other company did it differently for that SAME "some feature". In fact, it may appear the SAME "some feature" but deep down they are different. These are the proprietary codes these companies are protecting. Secondly, if they want to sell their code, they have to create a group to go through EACH LINE of their code and check which are "theirs" and which are "easy" and "common" to reproduce from scratch. Now money and time is involve in that process. Provided they did just that, they will strip all proprietary codes, leaving only a bare skeleton of the game. Then whoever bought that skeleton, GOOD LUCK. Even if you offer to buy the all the codes of Tabula Rasa, even say offer them Planet Earth and Planet Mars (Granted you own these two planets), I highly doubt they will sell the codes ;) Maybe they will, but they will strip out codes that they think are their "trade secrets". That's the keyword: Protecting trade secrets. Especially from potential new competitors who will do anything to reverse engineer any MMO so they will learn how to develop a better one. Simplest explanation: There may be 1,000 ways to achieve the #1,000,000 but there is a better way to achieve it. That formula is proprietary. (Now from hereon, think big exponentially, :p )