NCsoft has decided to make doomed MMO Tabula Rasa free-to-play right now, up until servers shut down on 28th February 2009.

Newcomers who fancy a Christmas jaunt can request a serial code from the support site to create an account with, then download the client from Tabula Rasa credits FTP.

You'll be asked for a credit card number, but there are no charges as this is an identification process. Former players can also reactivate at the click of a button.

Characters will disappear in February, obviously, but the first batch of "really fun" content for the closure period - "Earth, PvP Wargames, Epic Caves of Donn and more" - has already gone live.

Tabula Rasa crdeits, the brainchild of spaceman and Ultima creator Richard Garriott, launched just over a year ago, on 2nd November 2007.

The developer openly explained that the sci-fi MMO simply "hasn't performed as expected", and therefore "never achieved the player population we hoped for".