arth & Beyond is set 300 years in the future. Humans, after first colonizing the solar system, have discovered gate technology and are busy expanding into the neighboring star systems. The move to space has divided humanity into three races. The Terrans are descendants of the people who stayed on Earth. The Progen are Martians. The Jenquai settled in Jupiter's moons. Each race specializes in one of the three professions that exist in the game. The Terrans are particularly good traders, the Jenquai are the best explorers, and the Progen are the finest warriors. That said, there
are Terran warriors and Terran explorers just as there are Jenquai warriors and Jenquai traders. Creating a character begins by picking from among the nine possible combinations of race and profession.
Players have two avatars in the game. One is their character and one is their ship. The appearance of each is highly customizable. Characters stand in for the player in stations and on planets while the ships stand in for the player in orbit and in open space. In game terms, ships are differentiated by the strength of their hulls, shields and weapons, the speed of their engines, and the size of their cargo holds. The characters are differentiated by which skills they know and how good they are with them. Ships are improved by earning money and spending it for new equipment. Characters are improved by earning experience points and spending them on improving skills. Experience is earned on three different tracks (trading, exploring and fighting), but a skill point earned from fighting can be used to improve a trading skill and so on.
Starting players are at first guided by a computer non-player character (NPC) through character creation and then a brief tutorial. When that is finished, the starting NPC hands them off to NPCs with actual roles in the game world. These NPCs give the characters starting skills and equipment and send them on missions to help polish their skills and get used to the game world.
An online world that looks as good as it runs
Earth & Beyond is the best massively multiplayer online role-playing game with a science fiction background constructed so far. Admittedly, that is not a very high bar, but take away all those qualifiers and it is still a very good game. Its best quality is that right from the beginning, players are given a chance to earn experience by practicing their profession. Players who decide to play warriors will find themselves doing a lot of combat early on, but players who decide to play traders or explorers won't. Instead, the NPCs will send traders on missions to trade and explorers on missions to explore. Or the players can ignore the missions and simply set about earning money and experience on their own.
The second best quality of E&B is how well it runs, followed in short order by how well it looks. Lag in E&B, when played over a cable modem, is non-existent. The only delays are when docking (changing between the spaceship view and the character view) and when gating (changing from one star system to another). The controls are non-standard, but easy to adapt, too. Combat is easy to learn, yet contains enough complexities to keep it interesting. The chatting is easy and the other players are helpful. Plus, the graphics are crisp and sharp and contain all the colors of the palate.
The point of an MMORPG, of course, is to have other people to play with and against. E&B doesn't require players to interact, but it does a great job of encouraging it with groups and guilds. Groups are the simplest, because they contain no longer-term commitment, but agreeing to join a group gives a players both a bonus on experience earned while in the group and special bonus abilities. Guilds are more formal, requiring a long-term commitment and yielding more lasting rewards.
It is impossible to overstate how happy I was when, upon entering the Earth & Beyond world for the first time, I was issued my own spaceship and immediately put to work earning money in the profession I had signed on for. I was happy because I have started too many MMORPGs by being issued a sharp stick and told to go kill squirrels until I had enough pelts and enough experience to be trusted to ply my chosen profession.
— Eric
Back to the top.
