Introduction

Developer: Westwood Studios
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Earth & Beyond Online official home page: http://www.earthandbeyond.com/

MMORPG? PSW?

Ultima Online and Everquest introduced an alphabet soup of new acronyms for gamers to learn. MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role playing games) in PSWs (persistent state worlds) were going to be the wave of the future. Indeed, we’ve seen a number of other MMORPGs become popular in the last several years – Asheron’s Call, Lineage, and Dark Age of Camelot have all taken in their fair share of subscribers. More and more massively multiplayer games are coming out, and with good reason – the subscriber based model creates a continuous revenue stream, while arguably shortening development time and allowing content to be broken up in an episodic fashion.

Cruising along a planet surface

Beam me out Scotty!

Although the current massively multiplayer games have their distinct differences, one thing that each of these games has had in common so far is their setting – a fantasy realm ruled by monsters, swords, and sorcery. Westwood’s Earth & Beyond Online stands apart from the rest right away with its sci-fi setting – a huge galaxy of planets, moons, stars, asteroid belts, and more for the player to explore. NPC monsters, pirates, and other characters exist for players to fight and to trade with. Vast expanses of space remain unexplored, waiting for players to unlock their secrets. Think of a massively multiplayer Privateer, and you won’t be too far off from beginning to understand what Earth & Beyond Online has to offer. But leaving the description at that would shortchange a lot of features and other aspects that EBO brings to the table.

Three ways to level

Another aspect that sets EBO apart from the Everquests and the DaoCs is that there is more than one way to gain levels in EBO aside from fighting. There are three – Exploration, Trade, and Combat. Exploration involves a number of things aside from opening up and mapping uncharted territory. It also involves prospecting asteroids, exploring new planets and discovering new items and resources to be introduced to the “world.” Trade is fairly self-explanatory – players can gain experience picking up resources and commodities from one part of the galaxy and taking them to another part of the galaxy where they’re needed, to gain a profit. You can gain experience simply by getting a good deal on your materials. Combat experience is obvious, as well. Players may come across hostile space monsters and/or pirates in their travels. Killing them gives you money and experience.

Weapons show prominently on your ship

Blue and Gold asskicker

Accessibility

Accessibility is a big issue for players who don’t and cannot treat their massively multiplayer games as a fulltime job. Sometimes in other games, it doesn’t seem as fun when you’re constantly falling behind people who spend 8, 12, or 16 hours a day leveling up their character while you can only afford to put in a couple hours. Earth & Beyond Online promises to offer a better sense of accomplishment for all players. Unlike Everquest, which takes thousands of hours to reach the highest levels, EBO allows players to get to the top levels in a matter of a few hundred hours of gameplay.

Last week, Westwood invited us out to their offices to get a hands-on look at Earth and Beyond Online. There we learned about the three races, acquainted ourselves with the three ship classes, got a taste of the gameplay, and sat down for some Q&A with the development team.