Earth and Beyond Review: Past and Present

by Ray Benjamin aka Rben

Introduction
This is a review of Earth and Beyond, a space flight MMORPG that is celebrating its first year since launch. I first played Earth and Beyond not long after it was released. I stopped playing a few months later so I could devote some time to the beta of another game. I'll be looking at the game from the perspective of both the new player and that of someone considering returning.

Review Hardware
When I first played Earth and Beyond, I played on a dual Intel© Celeron© 800MHz system that had 392M of RAM and a nVidia GeForce3© video card with 64M of video memory.

For this review, I am running a Pentium© 4 3.0GHz machine with an 800MHz front-side bus and 1G of RAM and a nVidia FX 5900 Ultra with 256M video memory.

What's the Game About?
Earth and Beyond is a space-flight MMORPG. Though you do spend some of your time outside your ship in space stations, most of your time is spent flying around in your custom designed ship. The human race has split into three separate "races", the Terrans, the Progen and the Jenquai. Each race has its home territory and special strengths.

Game Play Elements
The Terrans are all about trade and commerce. They have two professions, Trader and Enforcer. The Terran trader is the only class that can make basic components from raw materials. They are also good at missile weapons, which have the distinct advantage that you can fire them at opponents without facing them.

The Progen are a warrior race that is trying to find perfection via genetic engineering. They have a warrior culture similar to that found in many science fiction universes. They are the equivalent of Star Trek: TNG's Klingons in many ways. They have split their society into castes, the reclaimers that salvage the genetic material of fallen warriors, the Sabine, that do the genetic research, and the versitiles that fight, prospect and explore.

The Jenquai are the most mysterious of the three. They embrace more of their mental abilities, allowing them to hide their ships from other creatures minds. The Jenquai also have the ability to open worm holes that jump ships directly from where they are to another system.

The three races have been competing with each other and have come to blows before over gate technology which allows instantaneous travel between far flung portions of a single star system or even other star systems.

This game provides the usual play elements: combat, crafting, exploring, and resource gathering. There are plenty of mobs of varying strengths for you to fight and consensual PvP.

As you progress in the game, as I've said earlier, you get larger ship hulls that can contain more weapons and greater quantities of cargo. Here, too, each of the professions has a different focus. Terran Traders have the largest cargo holds, and Progen Warriors can carry the biggest guns. The equipment you can buy and install also increases in cost and ability as you progress, making your ship more powerful, stealthier, and faster.

Play Notes
One of the first things I did was to create a new character so I could see how the new character experience has changed.

There are six character professions: Terran Trader, Progen Sentinel, Jenquai Defender, Jenquai Explorer, Terran Enforcer, Progen Warrior. Each profession has different combinations of abilities and some special abilities not shared by the others. Since you can create several different characters, each of which plays on a different server, you can try out the different professions without having to delete characters.

The graphics for the game are beautiful, but not quite up to the standard you see in more recent games. They certainly don't have the effect that the graphics in E.V.E. have, to name one example.

The new player experience has improved since I last played. The player tutorial works better than in the past and I was able to move through it very quickly so that I could get on with playing the game.

Another thing I noticed that had changed from earlier is that the background messages that were always present on the various star bases now include "news updates" that help keep you up-to-date with the on-going storyline.

One of the things that hasn't been changed a lot, is the chat system. I really like the way that the designers set up a multi-channel chat system that is fairly easy to use. Many newer MMORPGs could learn from this example. You can select from a number of channels such as New Player, Sentinel, Progen, Market and others, so that you are conversing with people that share your profession, your race, or some other basic game interest. It's easy to get advice on how to pick which skill to upgrade with this chat system.

This time around, I decided to play as a Progen Sentinel, a profession I'd only just started playing around with when I left the game several months ago. I found that I was once again enjoying myself as I worked through the early levels of the game, collecting the genetic memories of lost warriors and fighting the scavengers, Manes, that try to consume them. This game doesn't cause me to rush back to my computer with every free minute I have so that I can keep playing, as some games have, but it does provide me with a very nice relaxing experience.

It's easy to get into groups with other players. Whenever you find yourself mining or hunting in an area with other players, you can expect to be invited into a group. There are significant advantages to grouping with other players, especially if you group with players from other professions. Each profession provides its own advantages to the combination.

Bugs...Ok, Not Really
The first problem I encountered was in character creation, both of the Jenquai characters had body parts missing, which was more amusing than an actual problem. The problem continued to appear when I first landed at new bases, but pulling up inventory information or character information brought my body back.

The day after I had encountered this "bug", I installed the new Microsoft© Flight Simulator 2004© A Century of Flight. When I tried the helicopter, I found that it also had parts missing, specifically the entire cockpit. Armed with this new information, and a hint from Flight Simulator, I downloaded the latest nVidia drivers, which eliminated problems in both games.

Performance
When I first played the game on my older machine, Cerebus, there was considerable lag while flying through systems. That caused problems, occasionally, when working with others on missions and hunting.

As you might expect, all those problems are absent with my new computer. The graphics are smooth and I haven't experienced any perceptible lag so far.

What I Like
One of the things I like most about this game is that you can gain some levels and skills fairly rapidly giving you a nice feeling of accomplishment. You have to perform specific missions to get new skills and upgrades to your ship's hull. These missions alone are almost sufficient to get you into the middle levels of the game.

You aren't locked into the predesignated missions except to the extent that you need to do them before you can get certain upgrades to your ship. It's also possible to strike off on your own and seek out new areas of the galaxy and different creatures to fight.

The chat system is also quite good. I found it easy to find people that would help me out with advice on what skills to acquire and what kind of hardware to buy.

Although it's not an integral part of the game, the web site for Earth and Beyond is another aspect that I like. It's well organized and contains a lot of information useful to new players, sections on fan fiction, news, and the usual forums. There's even a recap of the news items from the in-game storyline news center, Net-7.

What I Don't Like
To begin with, many of the people on our staff at Warcry had difficulty downloading the program so they could play for the free trial period. I was able to download the game using the Web Installer option, but couldn't get the single file install to download completely.

Combat seems somewhat disconnected. The end result depends more on how you are equipped and careful selection of the right battles than on skills. There are some tactics, though, that can give you a significant advantage. Ask about them on the chat channels, though and you might wind up with an hour long debate that rages with religious fervor.

There isn't quite as much free form content as you might find in some other games, though I might have missed a lot, since I didn't have as much time as I'd like to play before I needed to get this review finished. Even so, that was also the most common lament among the players I chatted with while I was playing. While most really enjoyed the game, they all wished there were more missions.

As might be expected, kill stealing and camping are still problems in an older game like this. That can be very frustrating at times, but there are lots of areas in which to hunt, which ameliorates the problem a bit.

Overall Impression
I'll probably keep this account and keep playing when I want a break from some of the other games I play. This is an game that is enjoyable, but it doesn't have the complexity and depth that some of the newer offerings have.

I've chatted with a number of people that have played and are still playing Earth and Beyond. Many of them still enjoy the game, but more because of the friendships they have established than because of the content. All of the players I spoke with expressed disappointment that Earth and Beyond hasn't added content more quickly.

Earth and Beyond is an enjoyable gaming experience, but it doesn't have the long term appeal of many of the other on-line games that are either more mature, offering more content, or newer with flashier graphics and new types of content.