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Earth n Beyond Grounded


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Yep, like Allegiance, Motorcity Online etc this too has now been grounded.

Next up, Eve Online (since S&S has already dropped it and left CCP to handle it I think)

OK, so now we only have Jumpgate (flegling), Darkspace (dying or dead) and Eve Online (struggling) for the MMOG space sims. I guess I've got my work on BCO cut out for me. But then again, its not a pure space sim, so I'm not particularly concerned.

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At first I hated EVE. I played in beta and right after beta and hated it. I just recently started playing it again, and have found that CCP have really done a great job of bringing things together. I hope they keep it going.

As for EnB...lets start the party....I hated that game...period.

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From what one can glean from the EVE online website, CCP states that they purchased the IP back from S&S and are now providing the client as a web download.

Unfortunately EVE is destined for failure like so many other MMOGs out there Due to ignoring the common player, instead focusing on changes for the good of the larger guilds (Corporations).

Promised content has not been forthcoming in a timely fashion, and the content that has been added, was only in the form of changes designed to slow player advancement in the game to a snails pace.

IMHO this was done only to keep their money vacuum planted squarely on player's wallets.

Player discontent and outright boredom will cause them to bleed to death.

CCP spent alot of time and effort on the graphics.

Don't get me wrong, they're absolutely gorgeous, award winning graphics.

But Graphics do not a good game make.

(See the SC's previous soapbox dissertations on that subject)

My stint with E&B consisted of downloading the behemoth of a client(6 hours on DSL) Loading it, playing it for all of 10 minutes and dumping it off the drive.

Frankly I'm surprised Earth and Beyond even launched, given EA's track record for dumping garbage games on the public.

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I played Eve solidly for a while.. Had 5 or 6 different ships including a big freight ship and a cruiser, but in the end two things put me off..

1, I got too scared of having my expensive ships (for my budget) destroyed by the burgeoning population of pirates (and the ship insurance was a rip off!) and..

2, everything started to become too guild orientated for my taste. I didn't want to have to log on and mine asteriods for 5 hours, or haul cargo.. I wanted to do my own thing, but guilds were starting to declare various systems as their own.. if it wasn't npc pirates or player pirates blocking the jumpgates it was some snooty git from a guild telling you to clear off.

But there are aspects of it I miss and although I cancelled my account (at the same time I also cancelled UO, EQ and ACII) I do still miss it occasionally. I'm saddened to hear they're in trouble. It almost makes me feel like installing it again. I wonder if my ships would still be there?

The problem I have generally with MMOG's is that the really hard core players know the game, it's item stats and the locations inside out and tend to become rather elitist. You either become like them, but have no life coz you're playing 10 hours a day, or look like a twat coz you didn't realise the 150mm railgun is less effective against the plutonium poopydooper armour at ranges over 10km when the wind blows from the east and the sun shines from west.

Also, the constant chat that's nearly always out of character makes it hard to roleplay and forget you're not playing a computer game. Sometimes I just prefer to be left alone in a nice, non linear, environment such as UC, but there are very few non linear single player games.

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Planetside is flurishing in player population and I should know, I play that game constantly everyday and most of the time I can't even find a cont to drop in because the pop limits (for my empire) have been filled

PS has a very large player base, the only problems there having are unbalanced weapons and several other problems with the recent expansion pack

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EnB? Hell beta tested that game, was a lot of fun then. It was one game I enjoyed, played for a whole year after it was released.. but up to the maximum level then slowly stopped playing, the guild i was in died after awhile so I just decided to cancel my account

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I do know games like DAoC are flurishing and so is FF XI Online

EQ2 is suppost to be released late 2004 (late? Hell it isn't even in testing yet!)

Then again, these are from my own views and observations of these games.

[ 03-17-2004, 07:36 PM: Message edited by: Kalshion ]

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I Had E&B for a couple of months, but got bored with it. The lack of PvP really turned me off. I remember thinking to myself, why not just have Police or something, so if you get blown up, the cops come and kill the bad guy, but no, instead they installed "Stadiums" for PvP. That was stupid.

Had SWG for a while, but I cancelled that, Maybe rejoin after Space Expansion comes in.

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quote:

I play that game constantly everyday and most of the time I can't even find a cont to drop in because the pop limits (for my empire) have been filled

Doesn't help that devs screwed up with the BWGs that makes people stuck in sanctuary, but still, considering an estimate of 150 players per empire per continent, probably more (devs won't say the real numbers), witht enough to poplock 2 continents, halfway on a third and some people at other places .. that's at least 500 players per empire .. 1500 online during the evening at least on the emerald server ...

Planetside isn't dying. Far from it.

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Epsilon, I'm not sure how many servers there are...but if you all are only pulling 1500 a server you are in a deep crap. EVE is whooping Planetside if thats the case. We just broke the 7,500 SIMULTAENOUS players mark there. The expect to have 10,000 simulataneous players before EVE is 1 year old.

And SC, I was talking to some of the folks at EVE and as it turns out S&S didn't drop EVE. CCP bought the rights back from them. Evidently CCP wanted to do it. :shrugs:

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quote:

Originally posted by Bandus:

Epsilon, I'm not sure how many servers there are...but if you all are only pulling 1500 a server you are in a deep crap. EVE is whooping Planetside if thats the case. We just broke the 7,500 SIMULTAENOUS players mark there. The expect to have 10,000 simulataneous players before EVE is 1 year old.

And SC, I was talking to some of the folks at EVE and as it turns out S&S didn't drop EVE. CCP bought the rights back from them. Evidently CCP wanted to do it. :shrugs:

there are 3 servers. planetside is, overall, less popular than eve or everquest, because planetside is a FPS. On one side you see alot of whiners than want more levels (people that played EQ) on the other side people think playing bf42 with 63 other people on a laggy server with a map a few hundred meters across and weapons that are all the same .. is better.

And my nunbers are only estimates. Long ago the devs removed all ways of knowing how many people are on the servers. It's a measure to prevent people from going to the crowded servers and leaving the smaller servers empty. Currently you can only use /who tr/nc/vs to see up to 25 people of that empire on the continent, and continents on the map indicate up to 100 slots free.

Furthermore, stats websites like this one mention that the numbers don't take in account the people that are not in an outfit (and that website on calculates people who logged on since the last week).. which is very difficult to say what's the % .. 30, 40 50%?

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I too played EVE for about.... about a year?

Rubbed shoulders w/ Jade Constantine, fought in the Fountain alliance wars. Had an Armageddeon too..

Once I lost it, inflation had gotten so high, the premium insurance payoff couldn't cover HALF my loss, and its only getting worse.

I haven't played it a over a month now, and glad. Too many megalomaniacs in that game.. Funny how people loose their morals in MMORPGs...

ProX

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quote:


Originally posted by Bandus:

And SC, I was talking to some of the folks at EVE and as it turns out S&S didn't drop EVE. CCP bought the rights back from them. Evidently CCP wanted to do it. :shrugs:


Rubbish. I know the whole story. It was losing money and thats why S&S dropped it. Along with the fact that they also wanted to get out of the game publishing business.

You think that when a pub has the rights to a property, you can just wake up one morning and say "hey, we know you're making money and all, but can we buy it back?". As greedy as publishers are; yeah right.

S&S signed the game thinking they had bought into a persistent cash cow. Let me tell you something, even at 10K players subscribed, thats *nothing* to a big publisher. But as long as a dev can keep paying the bandwidth costs for those still playing, they'll keep it going. Thats the ONLY reason why WWOL, Jumpgate, Eve and Darkspace are still around.

Planetside is run by Sony. A large corp. They're going to pull the plug soon and anyone who wants to take bets on this, is welcome to make one and I'm there.

quote:


Originally posted by Epsilon 5:

And my nunbers are only estimates. Long ago the devs removed all ways of knowing how many people are on the servers.


Gee, I wonder why.

quote:


It's a measure to prevent people from going to the crowded servers and leaving the smaller servers empty.

Rubbish

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Jumpgate incentive for Earth & Beyond refugees

Any former player of Earth & Beyond may simply send in their old copy of the game to NetDevil, and in return, they will gain access to a free, 30-day trial of Jumpgate

A while ago and I bought Jumpgate (I think I mentioned this in another topic) for $3 from gamestop and have never signed up for online play. Don't know why, call it an expensive impulse buy just to have the limited edition numbered box.

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quote:

Once I lost it, inflation had gotten so high, the premium insurance payoff couldn't cover HALF my loss, and its only getting worse.

I disagree personally. The economy has REALLY stabalized from when I played right after beta.

I have two accounts on EVE and at the first sign of trouble I'll get a third just to help out. I truly enjoy the game.

quote:

Too many megalomaniacs in that game.. Funny how people loose their morals in MMORPGs...

I will absolutely agree with you on that one. There are people in EVE that do nothing but play 24/7 just so they can gank everyone else. But what games doesn't have those kinds of people? You just have to develop strategies to counter them or avoid them. EVE is so big avoiding them is not that hard to do.

quote:

Jumpgate incentive for Earth & Beyond refugees. Any former player of Earth & Beyond may simply send in their old copy of the game to NetDevil, and in return, they will gain access to a free, 30-day trial of Jumpgate


Now that is a smart offer. If EVE doesn't do something like this I'll be disappointed because that is a damn fine way to attract new players.

quote:

Rubbish. I know the whole story. It was losing money and thats why S&S dropped it. Along with the fact that they also wanted to get out of the game publishing business.

Not to say that I'm doubting you SC, but where did you hear/read that it was losing money? I'd be interested to read that article myself.

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EVE Online, man I left that game for several reasons

One, the 'guild' I was in was run by someone who wasn't a member of the MAIN guild (IE, main guild as in the one I'm in for BF1942, and several other games) so this person only wanted one thing... greed

Its sad how some games turn great players into greedy SOB's. I finally had to pull the plug cause it just wasn't fun, logging in and getting a PM saying "Hey! Go out there and mine some Common Ore! We need it to build some weapons", and the later message, "Hey! I told you to mine some ore, if you don't I'll kick you out of the corporation and the guild", funny thing is.. this person isn't the LEADER of the guild, just the corp but the guild leader doesn't like me because of my high performance level in Jumpgate and intelligence when it comes to the battlefield, Gee I wonder why (looks at his JG player brissling with medals, then looks at his guild profile which is also brissling with medals. Then looks at the GL's profiles on both and hardly see's ANY medals)

If I ever return to eve, it'll be as a pirate, cause I have NO wish to be in a corporation. And this would be one game where being a raider or pirate would be worth it

[rp]

"Hey! This is OUR sector, you can't come in here"

"Oh? Let's see..... I don't see any of you're names here, or any banners saying it belongs to you. So how about you just buzz off bee and leave me be"

"You... you *#$&( You will die for traspassing"

*loads up all his plasma and laser cannons and points them at the small little fighter

"Oh crap"

*2 minutes later*

"Damn you! I'll get you!"

"Oh shut up newb, next time don't attack me while in a fighter", flys off into the sector to mine some uranium ore

[/rp]

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I know

Nothings easy. Perhaps I was in the wrong guild, the thing is I was the one who placed him in command cause he performed so well BEFORE he was given command, after myself and another gave him command, things went down hill FAST

It wasn't long before our guild leader got sick and tired of the corpoation, and promply kicked them out of the guild (IE they no longer represent us)

The guild NOW has a pirate corp, but I won't say anything else

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http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/earthbeyond/news_6091609.html

[uPDATE] Electronic Arts provided some additional background on the decision. An EA spokesperson, who chose to remain anonymous, told GameSpot that the title currently has between 20,000 and 25,000 active accounts. When asked to comment on what lessons might come from the Earth & Beyond legacy, the spokesperson said, "Our most enduring lesson comes from Ultima Online, which has been going strong for eight years now. Ultima taught us that there is an audience for persistent world games. However, we may have overestimated the size of the audience for persistent-state worlds. Games based on medieval fantasy have done very well; other genres have not."

The spokesperson added that monthly billing for the title will end on August 1, 2004.

EA added that there are no plans to sell or license the Earth & Beyond intellectual property.

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Guest Fox__Trot

Subspace is a -fre- MMOG space based game it USED to be pay until someone stole the server code and started hosting there own servers... now its free

it's been around since 96 or 95 easily and sniper (the codename used for subspace) has been around since 94

not bad for an mmog space game

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besides planetside cant die that'd be evil and if it was up next why are the devs still so very active? Wouldnt make sense if youre planning to phase it out...

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