Earth and Beyond Online Updated Preview

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.

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.

Character Creation

If Earth and Beyond Online's class and skill structure is designed to ensure that no two players behave the same way, then the game's character-creation system is designed to ensure that no players look the same either. Like in a few of the recent online role-playing games, such as Anarchy Online and Phantasy Star Online, creating a character in Earth and Beyond Online is a simple and sometimes fun endeavor. When you first start up the game, you'll be greeted by a female assistant who will walk you through all the necessary steps to create and customize your character and spaceship. Naturally, you'll be asked to first name your character, choose one of the three classes, and then select either a male or female character model. From there, you can choose from a variety of facial models, hairstyles, hair colors, eye colors, skin tones, uniforms, and uniform colors. You'll then be able to actually customize your character's height and weight via a set of slider bars, and these changes actually affect the physical appearance of that model. From there, you can add a variety of accessories to your uniform, like a sidearm attached to your thigh, for example. You can even choose to equip your character with a variety of headgear like futuristic-looking helmets and sunglasses.

Your persona in Earth and Beyond Online consists of more than just your character model, though. In fact, you'll spend more of your time exploring and fighting in the vast reaches of space than you will within the confines of a space station, so it's your spaceship, not your character, that most other players will interact with in the game. So as you'd expect, you'll be able to customize your ship to the same extent as your character. There are a total of nine entry-level ships in Earth and Beyond Online, one for each of the subclasses in the game. Your ship will automatically be assigned to you depending on the type of faction and subclass that you chose for your character, but you'll be able to change the paint scheme and add and remove decals to differentiate it from other ships.

The game's three main classes each have their own strengths and weaknesses that will be important when deciding on your character and, ultimately, his or her ship. The Terran traders, for example, have the fastest ships in the game, and they have the largest cargo holds of the three classes. Additionally, they can equip the other classes' weapons and systems onto their own ships without having to acquire a specific skill to do so. Terrans are also the only faction that can actually manufacture equipment--Progen and Jenquai have to find, trade, or buy all their weapons and systems. Terran ship reactors are of poor quality, however, which limits the distance that they can warp, and their ships can carry only a moderate number of weapons at once. The Progen ships boast the strongest hulls and shields, and they can carry the highest number of weapons of the three classes as well. However, with poor scanners, slow engines, and a very small number of slots for systems, the Progen ships are designed for little else beyond combat. The Jenquai ships on the other hand are quite fast and stealthy, but like the Terran, they have a small number of slots available for weapons, and of all the classes, they have the weakest armor and shields.

As you reach certain milestones throughout the game, you'll be able to upgrade your ship a total of six times. With each upgrade, your ship will receive a face-lift and improved functionality like additional hard points for weapons and systems, as well as larger cargo holds, until eventually your spaceship truly becomes the physical manifestation of your character and a testament to the battles you've waged and the quests you've completed.

More Than Space

A lot of players will find it hard to fight the urge to take their newly created ship and explore the near-infinite areas of space that you'll find in Earth and Beyond Online. Certainly, with a total of around 60 zones (without warping, a single zone takes hours to traverse), there's a lot to explore. But there's more to the game than just space. You can dock on a number of space stations and even enter the atmosphere of around 15 planets, including ones from our own solar system. Westwood showed off this ability to us for the first time. Interestingly enough, planets are considered zones in themselves, and they'll also take a considerable amount of time to completely explore. Some planets will have multiple zones as well, so Earth, hypothetically, could have a London zone and a New York zone. Each of these planetary zones will have a distinct environment, ranging from a barren lunar surface to a lush jungle area. Some planets will even have hostile computer-controlled life-forms that will defend their territory from any invaders, like you, for example.

Space stations are arguably the most important part of Earth and Beyond Online, since it's here that you'll be able to interact with other players in a noncombative fashion. You'll find many of these floating bases scattered throughout the game, and each comes in a different size and shape. When you dock in a station, you're prompted with an entirely new interface that has options to trade with other players, repair your ship, access vendors, and manufacture items. It's also here where you'll find the lounges where you can walk around and rub elbows with other players and get a variety of quests from many of the nonplayer characters.

It's pretty evident that Westwood is trying to capture as wide an audience as possible with Earth and Beyond Online. Consider the steps involved in creating a character, for example. Making a persona shouldn't take you more than a few seconds, but it's easy to see how some players might get engrossed in this process in an attempt to match their character exactly to their imagination's specifications. That seems to be the overriding theme of Earth and Beyond Online: Play for five minutes at a time or play for five hours at a time. Certainly, more and more developers are trying to make their massively multiplayer online role-playing games appeal to the masses, and the designers at Westwood seem to be successfully manipulating the fine line between keeping both die-hard players and the more casual types happy. Although we've talked about it in earlier previews, it's important to note that Earth and Beyond Online really strives to have three distinct ways of playing the game, and while most players will naturally gravitate toward the Progen faction, the trading and exploring elements of the game have enough advantages to be appealing alternatives for those looking for more than simple combat.

You can expect this game to lift off sometime in the early months of 2002, but in the meantime, be sure to take a look at the brand-new screenshots, which were taken from the latest build of the game. Check back tomorrow for more on Earth and Beyond Online, as we'll be bringing you more details of the distinctions between the three factions in an interview with Brett Sperry himself.