Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa was an MMORPG developed by Destination Games and published by NCsoft, designed in part by some of the creators of Ultima Online including Richard Garriott. The game was a role-playing video game that blended certain shooter aspects into the combat system. It was officially released to retail on November 2, 2007, with customers that pre-ordered the game allowed access to the live servers from October 30, 2007. The development team released updates, called "Deployments," nearly every month following launch. The game required a monthly subscription. Tabula Rasa was about humanity's last stand against a group of aliens called the Bane. The story took place in the near future on two planets, Arieki and Foreas, which were in a state of constant conflict between the AFS (Allied Free Sentients) and the Bane. The term tabula rasa means "clean slate" in Latin, which refers to a fresh start, or starting over. According to the developers, the game included the ability for players to influence the outcome of a war between the player characters and the NPCs.