EA's Earth and Beyond MMOG To Shut Down

Zonk writes "The announcement came down yesterday that Electronic Arts' space-based massively multiplayer online game Earth and Beyond is to close this September. There is a detailed official FAQ page regarding the transition to 'Sunset', including dates, content additions, and information about billing. Commentary can be found via Terra Nova and over on Waterthread. Sigh... another one bites the dust."

Re:Free copies to other MMOs

[Anonymous Coward]

Ultima Online and The Sims Online were offered for free recently, with 14 days subscriptions, on the cover of PC Gamer.

not surprised

[WormholeFiend]

I tried the demo, and I didnt find the game very compelling as a MMOG, as there was little incentive to interact with other players.

It actually made me wonder why they didnt just make this into a single-player game.

Bad Decisions on top of Bad Decisions

[Zonk]

They make it abundantly clear that the game will be running until September, but how is it a game if they're not going to be adding content for the next 6 months?

This makes no sense to me. Why not kill it now and save money on the server costs? Everyone is going to leave way before September anyway. With no future for the game, actions have no meaning and the (already stale) content will have no appeal.

Of course, they likely have a clause in the EULA that states that they have to give sufficient warning of the game closure.

Regrettably all Around.

If you dig/dug Earth and Beyond, I know some folks who like Eve Online [google.com].

I also have some commentary on this sort of thing in my editorial [mmorpgdot.com] today on MMORPGDot [mmorpgdot.com], as well as at my own site [randomdialogue.net].

Sigh? This is good.

[Sarusa]

I don't think a sigh is really warranted. The game wasn't that compelling, and the market is oversaturated with MMORPGs with little sign of letup. A couple more need to bite the dust. Or, if you don't agree with that, maybe you'll agree that a lot more are /going/ to bite the dust.

I played it a few months

[WapoStyle]

This was the first online game I had played. I really enjoyed the game a lot but it would have been a much better single player game than online RPG. There was an awful lot of down time. If you were the explorer type and wanted to fly around the galaxy before you got a few engine upgrades you were in for some fairly long waits. Engage you warp engines and just wait for 3-5 minutes. Click the jump gate. Rinse and repeat for however many systems you had to go through. At least you could read mission objectives and mess with your stats while you were in warp.

I'm pretty surprised it lasted as long as it did as a pay-to-play service. If EA were to release something similar as a single player game I would surely pick it up.