It looks like there's some bad blood between Tabula Rasa creator Richard Garriott and his now former employer NCsoft. GamePolitics is reporting that Garriott has filed a lawsuit against NCsoft alleging "breach of contract, fraud and negligent misrepresentation." According to their story, Garriott claims that he was fired from NCsoft in late 2008. However he also claims that later he was told that his firing was turned into a into a "voluntary" dismissal internally by NCsoft.

Garriott claims in his lawsuit that changing his firing into a resignation kept him from cashing in millions of dollars in NCsoft, which he says would have been made available to him if he was fired. His lawsuit says having his departure read as voluntary allowed NCsoft to cancel those stock options "within ninety days of his departure." Garriott is seeking "more than $27,000,000 in actual damages".

Garriott joined NCsoft in 2001 after departing Origin Systems, the game development company he founded and where he created the Ultima RPG series and the MMO Ultima Online. He worked on Tabula Rasa for six years before its release in 2007. However the MMO was not a commercial success and NCsoft shut down Tabula Rasa last February. So far NCsoft has not responded to Garriott's lawsuit.