View Full Version : Earth and Beyond...RSVP
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http://www.earthandbeyond.ea.com/home/market_about.jsp
Check it out........you can trade cheese!! and ............and..............fight ur enemies with cheese bacteria!!!
ALL TRUE!! ;)
:D :D :D
[ 25 October 2002: Message edited by: IggyMF ]
Oh.. My.. God..
My dreams have come true! An online rpg revolving around.. cheese! (is it fattening cheese?)
THere are all kinds! Fat, sliced, cubed, red, white, soft, hard, smelly, blue, cheddar, wensly...blah, large, small.........you could say a cheese for all tastes! :eek:
wow, are you serious? or are you being paid to advertise? ;)
well maybe a bit of elaboration on my part.......but i'm sure I've seen cheese in there somewhere :D
lol, whats it about, in 100 words.. go!
You asked for it Splaty^
Drawing inspiration from games like Elite and Privateer, Earth and Beyond will put the player in a massive galaxy with nearly limitless possibilities in terms of approach. Whether you decide to become a wily smuggler, a daring fighter jock or just an inquisitive interstellar explorer, Earth and Beyond will offer avenues a plenty for your gaming enjoyment.
You can choose your character from any of the three races. The race that you pick will determine your primary skill set and occupation within the game. The goal of the Terrans is "not territorial or martial conquest" but "profit and the expansion of markets." The Terrans' need to expand their resource base is prompted by their increasingly large population.
The Progen are descended from the first settlers sent to Mars. They are a race of clones, bred to the peak of human perfection and instilled with a love of war. These "proud and noble" humans are wholly devoted to authority and a highly regimented society. Although they may seem irrationally aggressive, they truly believe that the only hope for humanity's survival is through the stewardship of the Progen. The possibility that other, more ambitious races will one day come into contact with humans can only be averted by a policy of military preparedness.
The Jenquai are the least numerous of all the humans. They are the descendants of the very first interstellar explorers. Having lived primarily in zero gravity environments, they are not as strong as the other humans, but have developed remarkable agility and reaction times. Their hearing and vision are also above normal. The Jenquai espouse the pursuit of knowledge as their religion and see God's presence manifest throughout the universe.
Once you've picked a race, you will need to pick a class. The class names aren't finalized yet, but they merely mirror the traits of the three human races -- Trader, Warrior or Explorer. In this way you can either reinforce or offset the natural abilities or limitations of your particular race. If, for instance, you wanted to be the supreme warrior, you would pick a Progen Warrior. If you wanted to be a first-rate trader, you would be a Terran Trader. The racial selection makes up your primary occupation while your class selection makes up a smaller part of your skill set. A Progen Trader will still be a much stronger warrior than a Jenquai Warrior, for instance. The ratio isn't clearly defined but a 2:1 split seems about right.
Each of the nine player archetypes has a unique ship type. Warrior ships will put the emphasis on weaponry, Traders will have larger cargo holds and Explorers will have better systems and sensors. Although you can purchase new components for your craft, your ship will improve automatically as your player moves up in rank. All of the ships will have very distinct appearances at each level so, with a little practice, you should be able to identify player class and experience level just by looking at their ship.
As a means of balancing the character classes, Earth and Beyond will prohibit certain classes from mounting certain weapons on their ships. It certainly doesn't reward the player who chooses the Progen Warrior if a Terran Explorer can use the highest level of weaponry in the game. Beyond that limitation, weapons will be tied to specific advancement levels. In other words, a brand new player won't be able to mount high level components on their ship. This will eliminate the EverQuest syndrome where low level characters come into possession of extremely powerful components. The team doesn't want to prevent players from helping each other out by trading items, but they want to keep the game fair.
Your character will have three separate experience pools -- one for each of the main professions. You gain exploration points by traveling to new areas. The advancements you get out of exploration are typically sensor based. You can also learn to cloak your ship, thereby slipping into dangerous areas without being forced to fight your way out (you hope). Combat experience is largely a factor of blowing things up. You will be rewarded with, for instance, a better critical hit percentage. Traders will find rewards not only in selling or buying items but also in manufacturing them. A Trader will eventually be rewarded with more favorable prices in both buying and selling transactions
The player will use the various starbases around the galaxy as the axes (not the thing you chop with, the thing you spin on) of their experiences. These range from gaudy floating casinos to dismal mining platforms. Once you get close enough to a starbase you'll begin to appreciate the scale in this game. It really reinforces your sense of insignificance to dock with one of these massive stations. Once inside, you can see the ships of all the other players who are at that particular base. The Commodities Exchange offers a place to sell items you've looted from other ships and to purchase new components for your own ship.
The Lounge is really the focus of the star base. There is a players only lounge and a lounge populated by NPCs. By conversing with the NPCs (in a traditional branching format) you will be given information and offered various missions, from scientific exploration to bounty hunting to goods transport. A dynamic mission generator is available on each star base for those of you who can't stand to interact even with digital people. The mission generator will tailor the missions to your abilities, so you won't get a high level combat mission if you're a low level merchant. The development team "definitely want to allow a group of players to undertake a single mission" but the mechanics of that have not yet been worked out.
Once you leave the star base you can travel to approximately 100 separate areas of the galaxy. Each area is linked to several others via permanent star gates. Westwood is completely in control of the star gates, however, and may restrict access from time to time for the sake of the story or for level specific events. IN any case, you'll be able to use these gates to travel from star to star. And although they call it space, there'll be plenty of stuff for you to encounter. Nebula give you that cool Wrath of Khan effect. Flying into the interior of nebula offers all sorts of opportunities for surprising encounters from abandoned pirate camps, not so abandoned pirate camps, ship graveyards and, my personal favorite, giant space monsters.
Ranging from tiny to Liz Taylor big, these space monsters tend to follow an oceanic theme in terms of appearance. Sporting all types of feelers, flippers and flanges the interstellar fiends are not necessarily evil. Still, when you've got a space fish the size of a large moon bearing down on you, it's best not to take chances. The team is toying with the idea of incorporating a Jonah in the Whale effect with some of the largest monsters but this may not pan out. Other stellar phenomena include asteroid fields, black holes and comets. But after hearing about the space monsters, I'm sure that asteroids seem like kind of a let down.
On the subject of big things, each planet in the game is a full 3D object with cloud cover and accurate day and night cycles.
If something bad should happen to you, you'll discover that Earth and Beyond handles character death a little differently than most games. First of all, you don't ever really die -- your ship just becomes incapacitated. You'll have to pay to get it repaired. If you don't happen to have enough to repair your ship, the game will automatically repair your ship to its lowest functioning state. And rather than losing character levels just because you died, Earth and Beyond will dump an experience debt on you that you'll have to pay off before you begin advancing again. This just seems fairer to me. On the subject of player death, I should mention that there will be specific areas of the game (about 20% in terms of ratio) designated as player killer zones. In the rest of the game you won't even be able to target the other players.
On the technical side, Earth and Beyond should support about 10,000 players (with maybe 3,000 players logged on at any given time).
null10,000 players :D :D
Thanks to ICGN PC from which I blagged this!! :eek:
[ 25 October 2002: Message edited by: IggyMF ]
Aiiiiiiii!
I is a Terran Trader with a Baldee Heed, Silver Goatee, cool threads, dogs bolix ship in Gunmetal Grey with red trim and some kick ass Oakleys! And I have a good E&B character too ;)
Go on splaty^ man, it is AWESOME!!!!!! You know u wanna!!!!
Drex
I wanna.. I wanna.. but i can't afford a single thing for the time being, let alone more monthly fees, how much is it? can you download it for free and pay the monthly fee? or do you have to buy it AND pay monthly??
Awwwwwwwwwww, we need another dood for our 'Guild' ;)
The game is £35, only found it on Amazon. Monthly fee $12.99 for one month, $11.99pm for 3 month block or $10.99pm for 6 month block. I got 3 months (plus the 30 days u get 4 free :D ) and it works out about £24.50.
You have to go through a big process of setting up an EA account when starting the game and have to register it XP stylee with an activation key on the CD so don't think u will get away with d/l it :( .
Seriously tho', look at the ship/character generator on the site (40meg d/l) and that will give u a feel fro the char's and ships u can have then maybe see if u can stretch that pocket money out a bit further........ ;)
Go on......GO OOOOOOOOOOON.
Drex ;)
lol, i'm in debt to my parents for buying this sound system.. which doesnt even work properly! :eek: I shall try and get the game though, but if i do, then im quitting as soon as ff11 comes out...
Jonathan Oakes
25-10-2002, 18:22
Had for months and it is crap.
Harsh! I am impressed with it. If you liked Frontier (probably while u were still in nappies Jon ;) ) then you should like this.
Drex
If you don't like it you could always donate it to a needy soul like myself? :D
Jonathan Oakes
14-12-2002, 10:13
Months on, and I just reply now. I would donate my copy but, I was a beta tester and to play it you will have to download a GB worth of updates, which may be imposible on ADSL as BT have again screwed their customers.
The reason I don't like this game is Westwood have made ti take ages to level up and go from A - B. It makes sense. You have to pay a monthly subsciption so why not screw everybody by making them take longer and pay more.
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