The inspiration for space battles such as these came from Star Wars and Star Trek.

If the average development cycle of a game is equivalent to the average human lifetime, then Earth and Beyond Online is an old man. Even though the massively multiplayer online role-playing game was announced only six months ago, it's been in development at Westwood Studios for much, much longer. "I've been sitting on the idea for over seven years, and I first brought it up to [producer Eric Wang] in 1996," says Brett Sperry, Westwood cofounder and chief creative officer, "but I wasn't galvanized into action until I started playing Ultima Online and EverQuest." According to Sperry, the designers of those two games had to learn about the technological and gameplay pitfalls of the massively multiplayer genre the hard way, but it's been nearly five years since the Ultima Online beta first pioneered the world of online gaming, and the challenges of designing these types of games are well known within the development community. But while games like Ultima Online and EverQuest certainly influenced Sperry's image of Earth and Beyond Online, it was the final frontier that ultimately shaped it. Wing Commander's accessibility and the depth of Master of Orion were some of the intangible elements that inspired Sperry's early plans for Earth and Beyond Online, as were the "grand moments of discovery" in Star Wars and the exhaustive Star Trek battle between Kirk and Khan, wherein the two captains used every last bit of their resources to get at each other. Even Electronic Arts' 1986 release of Starflight supplied a little bit of Earth and Beyond Online's inspiration.

Terran and Progen ships clash in a border conflict.

The road for Sperry and the designers at Westwood has certainly been a long one, but the good news is that Earth and Beyond Online is almost ready for prime time. As you read this, the game is only a few days away from entering its first public stress test, which means that the final release isn't far off the horizon. Recently, we were invited to Westwood's Las Vegas offices to take a look at some of the aspects of Earth and Beyond Online that our first preview wasn't able to cover, like character creation, planetary zones, and space stations.

As we've revealed before, the game takes place in Earth's not-too-distant future where three space-faring factions--the Jenquai, Terran, and Progen--are on the brink of a civil war. Unlike other online RPGs, Earth and Beyond Online has only a single race, the humans, although the three factions do represent three distinct character classes. The Jenquai are inherently adept at exploring, the Terran at trading, and the Progen at combat. As any one of these three classes, your character will be able to choose another subclass of these same three archetypes. So your character can be a Jenquai explorer with a specialty in trading or a Terran trader with a focus on combat. Of course, you can also choose to become the ultimate warrior and choose a Progen fighter with a specialty in combat, or you can become the ultimate space spelunker by selecting an exploring skill set for your Jenquai character. Since each of these nine classes comes with a set of unique skills that aren't available to the other character classes, you can be sure that no two players will have the same abilities in Earth and Beyond Online. Let's take a closer look at the process involved in creating one of these characters.