Earth & Beyond

"Interesting beginning but lacking after that"

In most MMORPG, the further you advance in the game, the more capabilities you have and the more you can do. Earth and Beyond (E&B) starts out the same way.

As any of the selected race/class, you have 3 ways to improve your characters: exploring, combat, and trading. You can attain level 50 in each of these routes for a combined level of 150.

What sets the game apart from others is that you can actually choose which one of these to focus on at the beginning. If you enjoy exploration, simply fly your ship to places you have never been. If you enjoy making cash, simply visit trading outpost and discover trade routes that makes you profit. If you enjoy combat, there are aliens and pirates for your targeting pleasure through out the galaxies. When you get tired of one, you can switch to another route and play that for a while, a day, a week, and so on. In theory, you can enjoy 3 games in one.

However, reality is far from the ideal. It is agreed among the E&B community that exploration level (EL) is the hardest to increase. Mainly because the universe is finite and once you've explored every system and every navigation point, EL experience can be gained by missions. At that point, you will need to perform a tremendous amount of missions to simply gain an additional EL. As you have suspected, the experience required for the next EL increases progressively, making it more and more difficult to advance. Unfortunately, experience reward for mission granted to level appropriate player does not grow as quickly. Turning the exploration game into a frustrating exercise of patience. Players can also gain exploration experience by giving guided tours to new players earning exploration experience (since grouped players share experience, as they earn xp, you take a cut). But that is by no means a steady way to advance.

Trading is another way to gain experience. On most space stations are trading outposts where you can purchase goods and sell them (at a profit) on other space stations. This works extremely well at the beginning because you also gain exploration experience as you find your way to the space stations that you have never been to, two birds with one stone. After a few trade runs, players would inevitably ask what are the most profitable routes. Sadly, there are only a few and everyone does exactly the same runs. The longest route among them takes 30-35 minutes real time to perform. I found myself turning around to watch TV every time my warp drive and auto pilot kicks in since there is nothing else for me to do until my ship enters another system. Players would actually estimate 4-5 of these runs a night in their 2-3 hours play time.

Imagine this sequence of actions:

- run to vendor
- click buy 30 times to fill your cargo hold
- run to the hanger
- leave station
- target jump gate
- warp (fly) to jump gate
... watch TV ...
- click jump gate to jump to the next system
- target jump gate
- warp (fly) to jump gate
... watch TV ...
- click jump gate to jump to the next system
- target jump gate
- warp (fly) to jump gate
... watch TV ...
- click jump gate to jump to the next system
...
...
- target station
- warp (fly) to station
... watch TV ...
- click dock
- run to vendor
- click sell 30 times

then repeat 4-5 times. Bed time, log off.

After you have discovered the profitable trade routes and have done the runs a few times. It will become a chore. But that's not the end. Trade Level (TL) is based on trade experience. Trade experience is based on profit and TL. The more profit you earn, the more experience you get. However, the higher your TL, the less experience you get. Given a static route with more or less fixed profit potential, your trade experience per trip will go down steadily as your TL increase. In the end, turning the trade game into another frustrating exercise of patience.

Combat is the third way to gain experience. As expected, you fight progressively more difficult enemies as your Combat Level (CL) increases. After some levels, you'll find it more advantages to group with other players who can contribute to the fight with more fire power and capabilities (repairing, shielding, energy regenerating, etc.). This part is actually very enjoyable. The universe is indeed populated with enemies for every player CL. Unfortunately, at higher CL, the number of spots decreases and you'll find players competing for the enemies in the same locations very often.

After 20 levels or so of exploration, trading, and combat, you would have reached the point where you realize there is not much else to E&B. Sure there are many other things like player building their own weapons, shields, components and the exploration and combat one has to go through to obtain the parts to build them. But the essence of the game is more than clear.

E&B has a good beginning but it fails to deliver in long term playability. For $10 ($20 with $10 rebates), my first month is free. I left the game after two weeks as a terran trader of level 60 (20 levels on each of the routes).

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 02/28/03, Updated 02/28/03