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Earth and Beyond: Premium Services Suspended
Koltrane
Member UncommonPosts: 1,049
With less than two months to go, Electronic Arts has suspended all Earth & Beyond premium services and has stopped allowing players to purchase name changes and/or shard transfers. This is the beginning of the end for Earth & Beyond.
Service termination is scheduled for September 22, 2004.
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There are 10 types of people in this world...those who understand binary, and those who don't.
MMORPG.com Staff
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Old timer.
Comments
Ea sux, i'll never buy another EA MMORPG game, Ultima is probley next.
Someday, someone will make another great SCI-FI MMO like earth and beyond...but good ole EA would buy them out. We really missed out on alot of great games that got bought out from EA.
EA SUX !
Sharkdaddy
Sharkdaddy
Earth & Beyond was sort of dead from the start.
Everyone I met in the game last year was either waiting to be disapointed by Star Wars Galaxies or Eve and used it only to fil the gap until they were released.
MirconEXX
MirconEXX
I'll go even further, I'll never buy another EA game at all, be it online or offline, regardless of genre.
The way they pulled the plug on EnB was a blow in the face of every customer who had invested huge amounts of time and money into their characters.
They could at least have tried to tie up the game's main storylines and folded the game cleanly afterwards.
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The only game I have really enjoyed is Earth and Beyond. A tale in the Desert was a close second (lack of players caused me to quit). Tried Rubies of Evertide, Linage, Dark age of Camelot, and Anarchy Online. Liked none of them.
EA really doesn't appear to care about its playerbase and I think they will get away with it without too much damage. Some people will never play another EA game again (with good reason), but most will probably come back some day or just won't touch EA-online anymore. Anyways, their core focus is no longer PC gaming, but only consoles. This is another step in that direction. Whether that is a good move only time will tell, but the fact is that they have been disappointing a lot of hardcore and loyal players over the last couple of years and that might have a long term impact on the relationship EA has with its gaming public.
PS: I am one of those people that will never buy another EA game again
--Currently Playing--
Earth and Beyond
--Waiting On--
STO(Long Ways away)
By shutting down the servers, they are basically making it impossible for you to play a game you paid for. I can see a class action lawsuit easily getting players their purchase price of the game back.
EA has a right to the monthly fees you paid, but they have no right to the price you paid for a game, if they are basically telling you you can't play it anymore.
That is like your Madden NFL 2K4 game not working after Madden NFL 2K5 comes out.
An enterprising lawyer could make huge bucks on class action lawsuits against these companies who are discontinuing MMORPGs. The company should have to provide a way for us to continue playing, if anything, they should release a small version of the server software that allows up to 64 people to play together, or something.
omg this is crazy i just realized the game is going to be suspended the day after my bday. wonder if this is a bad sign. anyway its still sad to see a space simulator go
While I haven't seen E&B's user agreement, I imagine it covers this situation. That may not stop someone from suing EA. Hell, folks have sued those running Lineage and UO for less! However, I think the legal verbage every player has to agree to to even enter the universe is enough to protect EA. On top of that they gave six months notice, so it's not like they just slammed the doors shut.
Regardless, I hate to see this title wind down, as do a lot of the game's fans. Hopefully the "sunset" as they're calling it will provide closure on the story line. Someone said that EA is moving away from PC games and toward consoles. There is probably a lot of truth in that, but EA still sells The Sims and has made jillions from that PC title, so I think turning their backs on PC gamers is not wise, but it's just MHO.
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There are 10 types of people in this world...those who understand binary, and those who don't.
MMORPG.com Staff
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Old timer.
I wouldn't want to see the lawsuit. But I would really like to see these game companies releasing small servers or something, so people could continue to play games they like.
And as for EA going to console, that is very possible. There is a version of The SIMS on the XBox...
As long as they make sure to pull the stock and prevent the sale of the game in a reasonable advance date before shutting it down, there will be no recourse legally.
The few that happen to pick it up after that time will most likely get a refund for thier purchase.
You cannot sue if they offer a refund of your purchase or give enough avanced warning.
Your purchase price included the physical materials inbox as well as the first 30 days -play time.
If indeed you had the game for 6 months, I doubt that a legal issue would occur.
EA is just focussing on projects that make sense from a business/financial perspective. I understand that and work with those kind of models and analysis every day. The problem is that you should always keep that in perspective. Yes, you might make a lot of money on a console title or by merchandising on a existing brand (NFL/NHL/James Bond, etc.), but you have to make sure you can support that with a long term bond with your gaming audience. That should be their goal and not trying and selling more upgrade titles (NFL/NHL, etc.). In the long run that franchise will get old and they will need alternatives. Then they wake up and realize they need something new & creative and they find they have missed that bus, because they closed down games like E&B/MCO, etc. due to not meeting commercial targets.
Don't think they will do anything to close the story lines, as far as I know, the dev team has already been disbanded and set to work on other title. I think only the server troops are still there, but no further content will be added to the game.
While it is a given that every game company is in it for the money, it seems that the giants don't appear to care about their customers (EA, Sony, Mythic). I have been in many forums for these games, and the defeated feeling of these players regarding the game they love is quite sad. One hard-bitten ex-soldier admitted that he couldn't take the lack of consideration for the players anymore and quit his game of choice (EQ). He also admitted that he cried like a little girl who had just lost her puppy when he uninstalled EQ from his computer.
When will companies like EA wise up? Treat your customers LIKE customers and, if your product is any good, you will earn all the money you ever hoped you would. Then games like EnB won't have to fold "for financial considerations."
Raya at Warcry
I am very dissappointed that E&B is closing. I had been with the game since very early beta testing started. This was the second title that I had been priviliged to be in on the Beta test that EA held. The first was Battletech 3025. That game never came out of beta testing because EA was too concerned with an attempt to stick to board game rules than making the game fun to play. It appears that EA is developing a track record of ruining MMORPG titles that they own.
I hope EA is able to stay in buisness with their boring sports game titles, as they are alienating the mmorpg gamers to an extent that most of us will not buy their titles any longer.
Too bad we can not talk them into putting the game out as open source so some of the dedicated players could create shards of the game on pervate servers.