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Fun for the first Few hours.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: January 20, 2003
Author: Amazon User

At First, when you get into the game, You'd think you have found the MMORPG of your dreams. The graphics are amazing, so is the gameplay at first. You start by doing missions and stuff with a VERY GOOD tutorial. But as soon as the tutotrial ends, and u do ur first few missions, you end up alone, not knowing what to do next. It's hard to find someone to team up with, most people just do things alone in there, which also forces you to do everything solo (MMORPG's should be TeamBased Fun). The community there is basically retard, i don't really know why, but everyone there is childish..., or they will just ignore you and continue their conversation..., the GM's Don't do ANYTHING about people who brake the rules. After about 10hours, you'll be sick and bored of this game, warping here and there gets repetitive and boring, there isn't much to do in this game, really not worth paying [for]every month, You'll only be wasting your money. If Westwood planned out things in a better way, this game could've been one of the best MMORPG's ever made... and the game's community made it even worse. E&B is going down, more people are probably leaving it than joining. Maybe this game will be better in a year, but currently, i suggest you stay away. Get Dark Age of Camelot instead, or wait for Star Wars Galaxies.

Earth and Beyond: An out of this world experience

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: September 22, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I have played the beta test for this game, and it is simply dazzling. This is undeniably the best MMORPG I have every played, and one of the best PC games I have ever played. The game itself has a plethora of different, non-linear campaigns, from being a warrior, trader, explorer and others. The game world (or should I say, UNIVERSE!) is the most detailed I have ever seen in a game. This game is worth a serious look-see for the hardcore mulitplayer gamer or even the casual PC user. In other words: BUY IT!

Great for a week or so, but gets old fast

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: March 11, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Being one of the beta testers for the game, I had already known pretty much what to expect when I bought it. It was bland, the missions were redundant, and it took way too much time to travel from one end of a sector to the other. However, I bought it thinking that Westwood was going to add new content every month.

And so they did, but the content came only in little trickles and it hardly ever changed the game. Missions remained static, plot lines only slowly emerged over a matter of months, and actual help from the game masters was nonexistent. For the first month, this is a great game, if just for the novelty of playing a space trading game with real people. But it's not worth paying a monthly subscription for.

A sheep in Wolf's clothing...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: November 03, 2003
Author: Amazon User

When I tried the demo I was overawed with the promise of the game. After all what's not to like?! Massive space systems and sectors beautifully depicted and ranging from the sublime to the most disturbing. The promise of engaging space "Monsters or Beasts" (aka MOBS) in battle, after acquiring sufficient combat skill level. The promise of discovering and using greater weapons and ammunition that will make exploration and confrontation a total blast (pardon the pun)! The promise of teaming up to do battle as a group and kicking some NPC... [butt]. That's the promise, now let me tell you what you actually get.

I played the demo nonstop for hours and subscribed. EA got that part right at least! Unfortunately for EA, the majority of us aren't fools. In order to get us to subscribe there has to be constant challenges for the player and last but not least it has to be fun!

You can't succeed at this on a steady diet of the same old thing. You lose interest. It takes hours to achieve an increase in skill level and you achieve it by doing the same thing over and over and over and over... you get the picture. Plus, this concept of Guilds sounded appealing at first, when in reality it takes the form of little more than cliques and when you join you do nothing together as group. In essence I was asked to join and nothing "groupwise" has happened since. I had the impression that guild members would pitch in and form "fronts" against common enemies (hyuk, hyuk, hyuk!).

A few guilds have been around for awhile and every once and again you'll see a group formation with just a few people actually doing battle (what is that?!). The chat room makes me wonder if anyone is actually playing the game?! So the tedium takes it toll. EA just doesn't deliver on the new and unexpected as often as they should. This game is just okay but really could be better if they took the various factions and teamed them up against each other in more political and dangerous ways. Where's their plot creativity team at? Stuck at skill level one is my guess?

At first it all seems great... but then nothing ever happens

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: March 10, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game leaves me somewhat undecided. There is this beautiful online world (galaxy), with lots of places to visit. There also is a story that evolves over time. A quite interesting story at that.

And then there is the gameplay.

Unfortunately, not much ever happens in this game. 90% of the time, one sits in front of the computer and waits to arrive at a place where very litle happens.

To EA's defense: They are trying to constantly introduce new content, and there are better missions than in most online games. But the problem simply is that space is large and empty, and you will experience that in full at this game. Another side-effect of this is that you will not meet too many other players, which is a bit of a bummer considering that this is one of the better parts of playing online.

Nevertheless, I like this game better than it sounds here. Or perhaps I'd just like to like it better. But for some reason, I come back every so often and try again.

Tip: Read a magazine or book while you play.

PS: If you ever want to unsubscribe to this game, be prepared for a long process. You can not unsubscribe online. Instead, you have to call a phone number (toll free within the US). Not only that, but you will have to explain yourself as well. Unfortunately, this seems to be the standard for EA online games. I understand that one wants to make it easy to subscribe, and not so easy to unsubscribe. But this goes a bit too far in my opinion!

Game Interface makes it tedious

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: April 14, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Let me say I loved the concept of the this game. Its something that is totally based in sci fi. There are plenty of hack-n-slash games out there. This one extends the online gaming genre by a great deal. The game is beautiful as the space docks are very futuristic, and the humaniods are very well developed. They have excellent music, and a great audio track to simulate being on a space dock.
You get your choice of being an explorer, trader, and a fighter. So finally you don't have to fight your way through a game. The skills are well thought out, and the actual theory behind the game play is wonderful. I found all of the zoning to be tedious in the game play. In the trading aspect you would have to zone between the loading of the goods to the ship, the ship to the nearest gate so you could warp our, again from the ship to the cargo area. This was to be done every single time.
All in all a great concept, I wish they made the game play a little faster. Looking to game online ? I would consider Dark Ages of Camelot, as the game play is much improved if you aren't stuck on the sci fi genre.

An Engrossing, Unique Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 9
Date: August 08, 2002
Author: Amazon User

When I first heard about Earth & Beyond, I wondered: how can a flight sim be turned into a true MMORPG? (Massively-MultiplayerOnline Roleplaying Game) Figuring that it would never succeed, I marked this game off my list of things to buy, and sought more well-thought out games. Several weeks later I got the chance to participate in the beta for the game, and my opinion was changed.

To begin with, Earth & Beyond is not a true flight sim. Certainly you pilot your ship throughout the galaxy, exploring, trading, and engaging in combat. However, you do not control the game with a joystick. Instead, all commands are given through a keyboard and mouse. Also, you do not pilot from the cockpit, which adds more to the seperation between roleplaying game and flight sim. When you first create your character, you not only craft your ship, but you create an avatar to represent your character when you're not onboard your craft. Of the three available races and six classes (The developers are promising nine at launch), a great variety of play experiences can be achieved. The warrior, for example, is excellent at combat, while the trader fulfills more of a support role. Unfortunately, the lack of a multitude of classes does subtract from the appeal of the game. In short, Earth & Beyond looks to be an addictive game, which shouldn't lose its luster too quickly, assuming the devs continue to improve upon it.

It's awesome

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 9
Date: August 24, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Incredibly addictive. Lots of new content. If you're bored in E&B, you don't know what you're doing. You want to fight? Go fight. You want to make money? Go trade. You want to explore? Go explore. I'm loving the variety of stuff to do.

Get in the beta test and you'll see. A few months ago there wasn't much content. These days, the game is pretty much done and its better than any MMORPG on the market, and it gets better with every patch.

Enjoy!

Great game ...until it went live...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 9
Date: October 02, 2002
Author: Amazon User

The first patch they nerfed (reduced greatly in power) a ton of classes not to mention making the defenders and traders weak shades of thier former selves. And, this was the FIRST patch. I shudder to think of what is comming down the road.

The only thing they seem to be doing is making all the classes weak so they can stay on the god aweful leveling treadmill.

In Beta, the game was fun, laid back, and would have made a good single player game. Now they are slowing turning a decent game into the same chore Everquest and Dark Ages of Camelot are.

Do not purchase this game. Do not support companies that change your characters defining traits after you have invested weeks into building them only to have the current change midstream....or even dry up completely.

Excellent Game even in Beta

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: September 24, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I have played the beta test version of E&B for over two months. The graphics are first-rate, and the artwork beautifully rendered. Combat is exciting and very visually appealing. The universe is fairly large, so it will take awhile to explore it all, with many hidden planets to discover.

I have played 4 of the 6 classes available in beta, and they all have their distinct strengths and weaknesses, which provides considerable variety. Although you can only select from 3 hull and wing types for each character ship, you can customize color combinations quite extensively, and you can also choose what kinds of weapons/special equipment to add to your ship as you level.

For example, you could outfit your ship with only various missle types (e.g. explosive,chemical, plasma), or equip any combo of missle/beam weapons/projectile weapons of various subtypes (e.g. plasma, energy, EMP, etc.) Furthermore, you can often use equipemnt/weapons manufactured by other races. The result is a ship that is unique to you.

The storyline is intriguing....a codex is found by one of the races which opens ancient stargates, allowing unknown alien ships to enter the known galaxy. Where the developers take this is anyone's guess at this point.

The beta had no PvP. I hope that they include a sector of the galaxy for PvP sometime soon. It would be really cool to see how the various races/ships stack up against others. And unlike DAOC--which had fairly good realm PvP--there is enough flexibility in ship customization to avoid cookie-cutter characters.

All in all, the beta was very stable, although transit times through sector gates and disembarking from space stations was sometimes very slow. Large scale combat can also be laggy. Hopefully the gold version will fix these issues.

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