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Earth and Beyond: The Game Goes Dark
Koltrane
Member UncommonPosts: 1,049
From the official website for Earth & Beyond:
2004-09-22 : Earth & Beyond Says Goodbye
Earth & Beyond is no longer in service. After an amazing two years of galactic adventure, Electronic Arts has made the decision to close Earth & Beyond in order to focus resources on future games.
We hope you've enjoyed the game as much as we have and we'll see you again in another great EA game!
Thank you,
The Earth & Beyond Team
As of 1:00pm eastern time September 22, 2004, Earth & Beyond is no longer in service. Condolences to the E&B faithful from the staff of MMORPG.com. We hate to see this one go as well. No word at this time as to what that other, "great EA game!" will be.
Goodbye, Earth & Beyond. It was a good run.
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Old timer.
Comments
As one of the faithful I have to say the game had huge potential and never reached it. The worst part about it ending is that the full story will never be told. It's like reading a really good book and the last chapter is ripped out, or like watching a good movie with the last 1/2 hour cut out.
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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.
I played E&B from right after release, until just after the sunset announcement was first made. So I haven't been playing for a few months now, but it still seems to be like a part of me has died. It was the 1st MMO I ever tried, and it's what hooked me on the genre.
Goodbye E&B, we will miss you.
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City of Heroes
Pinnacle Server
DaBurner (37 Fire/Dev Blaster)
DaBruuzer(30+ Energy/Energy Blaster)
DaBasher(low level Dark Melee/Super Reflexes Scrapper)
BengalCat(30+ Empathy/Radiation Defender)
A Little Dab'll Do Ya!
Agreed.
R.I.P. E&B
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Played: Asheron's Call 1, Dark Age of Camelot, Earth & Beyond, Star Wars Galaxies
Tested: Asheron's Call 1, Asheron's Call 2, Dark Age of Camelot, Eve Online, Lineage 2, Risk Your Life, Saga of Ryzom, World of Warcraft
Uninstalled ASAP: MU Online, Knight Online, Rubies of Eventide, Priston Tales, Star Sonata, DarkSpace
Earth and Beyond was also my first MMORPG. I went all the way from one of the first betas to just after the first sunset announcement. I would have played to the end, but time and other things just wouldn't let me.
Here's to all the great memories from Galileo. *raises glass*
Betaed:Earth & Beyond, Eve, Ryzom, Risk Your Life
Played:ENB, Eve
Best game ever: Earth and Beyond
Goodbye Earth and Beyond.
I tried it and didn't think much of it at all.
EA sux.
--
Best to Worst list of MMOs :
Bought : AO, EVE, PS, Lineage II, Lineage, Neocron, StarPeace, Horizons, DAOC
Tried : WoW, Guild Wars, Ryzom, SWG, AC2, E&B, EQ2, RO, The Sims Online, EQ, Shadowbane
--
Best to Worst list of MMOs :
Bought : AO, EVE, PS, Lineage II, Lineage, Neocron, StarPeace, Horizons, DAOC
Tried : WoW, Guild Wars, EQ2, Ryzom, CoH, SWG, AC2, E&B, RO, The Sims Online, EQ, Shadowbane
I was playing E&B at the start, and I was playing at the finish.
It wasn't a perfect game (what is?), but it was good fun for a long time. And the storyline, well, I haven't seen anything comparable.
I'll miss it, and the community of players. Well... most of the community.
Would anyone trust EA with a new MMORPG now?
Does anyone know about how many subscribers E&B actually had before they officially announced it was shutting down a couple of months ago. Seems to me EA could and should have run E&B at a slight loss, assuming it was only slight. In order to keep there name good among the MMO community, especially if they ever plan to release more in the near future. (Kind of like Turbine running AC2 at a loss inorder not to shake fans and others faith in their upcoming MEO and D&DO.) Then again, I could be wrong. I'm not into business, finance and such. Plus I don't like seeing MMO's die even if there is a small community.
E.A. is run by money-men. Accountants and MBAs...Not psychologists. From their own announcements they aren't planning on makeing any more MMOGs(as they admit that TSO and Battletech3025 and E&B and a couple others were failures) and thus what would good will from the MMORPG community get them?
To those types of people...If you aren't makeing them money, you don't matter. They don't care. Similarly E&B will never be released as shareware or sold at a loss because...well...why should they? If they can't make money on it, why should they do anything?
That's what you get when you deal with EA and to a lesser extent SOE. They are huge corperations who care nothing for the little guy...That's the way it always has been and that's the way it always will be.
Get used to it or start your own company.
In short, no....whether it's one they actually designed themselves or one that they bought and starved to death ala E&B.
E&B was not the first MMORPG I tried, but it was my favorite. I'm not drawn to games that are heavy in PvP content....just me, I know there are many people who are. E&B appealed to me because there was virtually no PvP in it. Bad enough you've got to worry about that kind of thing in RL, I don't want to have to deal with it in a game where I go to relax and enjoy myself.
The community was wonderful. Very supportive, helpful and entertaining....a lot of very sharp wits there! And, if there happened to be someone who was a PITA, they could be dealt with easily with the old ignore list...unlike RL. While the long warps could get boring, I found it entertaining to pass the time reading and contributing to the chat that always seemed to be going on. Quite relaxing actually.
I think, as others have noted, that this game had a lot of unrealized potential. The blame can be laid squarely on EA who starve the game for marketing. Had they generated the hype for it that they have for such inane games as Sims, we wouldn't be looking for a new game now. I shall miss E&B very much.
We can all thank EA for this. Any of their future MMOs games will be met with a little more suspicion from the community this time around.
Hope this makes you realize. STOP FEEDING THE EA MACHINE THEY HAVE NO MORAL STANDARD TO THEIR COMMUNITIES.
Buy into small private companies. Do not feed a company like EA. You will get burnt over and over again. And im not talking about just E&B (I didnt play E&B btw). Just in general. Sony is just as bad, but not AS bad.
As of 1:00pm eastern time September 22, 2004, Earth & Beyond is no longer in service. Thank you, and fuc you very much EA for the killin you keep doing !
R.I.P E&B
Symphony Of Destruction (Orion Server)
Thanks for the kind words Reed, we all feel the pain now. I fell in love with E&B from the first time I logged in back in March '02 to help the beta. Even then the game was simply amazing.
Somewhere along the lines (I'd say late June or July of '02) the game started to feel the EA corporate pressure to release early and without all the required content (I truly believe that EA never really intended to support the game...look at how few advertisements there were). WW was doing a kickass job too, but all of us testers could see what was going on even back then.
Well, the rest is history, per se. Minimal marketing from release forward, hacking the staff and cutting the budget quietly killed the game without so much as a media peep.
Looking back on things, I'd say EA really got the wires crossed here in making a point to integrate WW into their ranks. It's my opinion that it was EA's decision to can the game before it was even released in favor of their 'premiere' SIMs line. I've seen a lot of small companies torn apart by Big Business (GE) to know what's going on and believe me, the typing had the same font.
To cut it short, this could have been the game to beat, had EA only of given it the push off it needed. It remains to me as simply the best I have ever seen, of any genre, and that is without realizing it's limits.
Pity that Corporate decides what is fun.
Again, thanks for the great farewell Reed.
Regards,
Proconsul Muther, Progen Warrior of UFO guild, Andramada forever.
E&B was never my cup of tea. I can understand why EA closed the game. It wasn't very profitible and EA felt they could use the development team to actually work on a profitible game. Still, if this is truely the case, why the hell is The Sims Online still active. The game should have been shut down months ago as it sucks a helluva lot worse then E&B did.
Hopefully another company will bring out a decent space MMORPG game. I heard Eve Online was pretty good and many E&B fanboys have headed over to that game. Hopefully they will find enjoyment there. I'll still stick WoW, CoH, FFXI and EQ2. I don't see any of these games ending up like E&B anytime soon or in the near future.
Xander
Xander
I quite understand how E&B may not have been someones cup of tea...diversity makes the world interesting, after all. Not a thing wrong with that.
I think this is kind of a "chicken and egg" kind of argument: Was the game cancelled because it wasn't profitable, or was it not profitable due to poor marketing and resourse support, i.e., a self-fulfilling failure? It's really an unanswerable question. I know from my own observations that there were never many copies available in stores in my area - usually only a shelf tag! Didn't see much in the way of ads in various gaming mags, etc., mostly word of mouth from what I recall. That's how I first heard of it at any rate. Be that as it may, it is now history and will be fondly remembered by those who enjoyed it. I will be looking forward to new space-based MMORPG's in the future. I'll no doubt try the EVE free trial, just to see what it's like, though I don't really care for games that have non-elective PvP...not bashing it, just not what I look for in games.
Good Bye Earth and Beyond
Good Bye Pegasus
2 1/2 years u captured my life , i will miss ya ...............
Even if I only played during beta I will always remember that it was the first MMO I played and the first beta I ever got into. E&B was a great game.
RIP