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."

Why I'm hesitant to play any MMOG

[ziggles]

It's not because of the monthly fee. It's things like this. I can still go back and play Quake 1, as long as I can get it to run on my computer I can play it. And I do get the urge to do so once in a while. But with MMOGs they're only playable for as long as the company can make money supporting them. I can't depend on the game being around forever, so I don't want to get interested in the game at all.

Re:too bad

[jafuser]

I enjoyed E&B as well. It had probably the best and most creative background story of any of the MMORPGs. I have not been an active participant in several months, but I still kept an account there so I could check in and see how the story was progressing.

E&B had a lot of missed potential; when EA acquired Westwood, it's obvious now that they had no intention to invest in it, but instead to let it fizzle out and then shut it down.

Between this and what they did to Maxis, I am avoiding EA from now on and encourage all that I can to do the same.

I don't fault E&B's devs. They did all they could with the meager resources EA gave them. I wish them the best, and I wish EA the worst.

Re:Sigh? This is good.

[Zonk]

Definately, Sarusa.

I forsee the crowd thinning out quite a bit more.

There are over a half a dozen new MMOGs coming out this year alone. While the field has grown quite a bit since Everquest's first birthday (happy b-day EQ!), I'm still not sure it can support *that* many games.

Me, I'm just waiting for WoW [worldofwarcraft.com].

First Person Impressions

[CosmicDreams]

Did anyone play this game? What was your impression of it. Which parts of its potential was realized, which parts weren't?

Should be interesting in Sept...

[BTWR]

It should be interesting to be logged on during those last days in September. On September 1st at 11:59PM (or whatever the exact down-date is) maybe all the remaining players will have one last battle-royale, or maybe just a virtual champagne toast, fight together for something fun, and then watch as they all "die" simultanously...

Re:Why I'm hesitant to play any MMOG

[realdpk]

Sure would be nice of the game companies to release the binaries/code to let people run their own servers. Even if they couldn't do it at the same scale as a farm of machines, people would still dig it.

UO will probably always exist because of the UO emulators.

Good

[Operating Thetan]

This game was poorly designed and implemented. It made no attempt to break the levelling/mob farming treadmill, had no PvP, despite constant claims that it would be introduced, and suffered from a constant lack of content and innovation..

It's EA. They tried to introduce their big budget, highly advertised yet devoid of substance game model into the MMORPG market and it failed. Maybe this will make them stop and think about the importance of quality design the next time they move to absorb an independent studio

only 2 years?

[ssand]

I suppose that the 6 month notice is partly to the ability to purchase 6 months of game time. It seems like many EA games go down this road to failiure (I know a number of games done by EA that I could not stand). Compared to some MMOG currently in, 2 years really isn't that long. Just take a look at The Realm Online [realmserver.com]. It has been around since '96, or '97.

Re:First Person Impressions

[llefler]

I downloaded the demo and played it. It has been a while, but from what I remember the graphics and gameplay were decent. I played daily over a long holiday weekend. The reasons I chose not to subscribe were several tedious aspects (warping and docking particularly) and it felt like there wasn't enough depth to the game. I also felt that character creation and the ability to leave your ship at stations hinted at capabilities that weren't there. Personally I would love to see a combination of E&B (or EVE) and Asheron's Call. Tired of this world, no problem, get on your ship and go to another one.

Forget about a MMORPG based on D&D, give me one based on Traveller.

Re:No Loss

[Pxtl]

So EVE was that good? I ask because it just hit the $5 bin at the local EB, so I was considering trying it for the bundled months (provided it has such things).

Plus, as a coder, I'm interested in seeing how a Stackless-Python based MMO would pan out.

Re:No Loss

[Maserati]

EVE works very well. Last time I logged in, the GUI worked very well, the trading and info subsystems were very responsive. It's come a very long way since the release, the frontend seems to have been rewritten almost from scratch.

It's very heavy on PvP, which isn't really my thing, and a casual player MUST have some affiliations or get left out. I'm not super keen on either, so I dropped. Getting shot down by some asshat who thought I was intruding in his territory was the last straw for me, so I cancelled.