I submitted the news article on Virgin Worlds the day Earthrise was announced, and have been following the few updates and interviews at WarCry and GamingShotgun and I must say, I’m interested! I joined the Earthrise forums and MMORPG.com recently added the title to their list of games as well and its forum is starting off nicely.
Key Features:
- A unique post-apocalyptic setting where the cloned remnants of mankind battle to survive and rebuild. Yet while humanity may have evolved, human nature remains as treacherous as ever…
- Highly customizable characters with over 100 different skills, abilities, and tactics. No artificial “class” restrictions get in the way of making the character you want.
- Fast-paced action combat featuring dynamic targeting, customizable power armor, huge mechanized exoskeletons, and hundreds of high-tech weapons.
- Sophisticated Player versus Player (PvP) mechanics that let you fight for the established order, join the revolutionary underground, or carve your own bloody path as an independent criminal.
- Territorial conquest and defense that matters. In your domain, you create your own rules – or let anarchy reign.
- Character progression that keeps you advancing in your career even when you’re not logged in.
- An advanced market-based economy with in-game supply and demand based on player activities.
- Deep crafting mechanics that let you design and manufacture unique items from customizable blueprints and raw resources.
Sandbox elements galore, skills-based advancement, and meaningful PvP… sounds like Masthead could be shooting for the Holy Grail of MMO design! Might this actually get the attention of the bitter and grizzled Pre-CU/NGE Star Wars Galaxies vets, even?
One concern I had immediately was the whole “post-apocalyptic” setting because all-too-often we get the Fallout “everything is dark and broken” vibe along with whole “low-tech anarchists living in the desert” Mad Max vibe, such as Fallen Earth. Masthead says not to expect only the devastation, there will be plenty of other areas to explore. I think of Guild Wars: Prophecies — when you finish the “pre-Searing” area and enter the beginning of actual game in the “post-Searing” time line, the entirety of Ascalon has been devastated. Zone after zone of desert lands, broken buildings. It just just get depressing after awhile and I was so happy to finally discover the Northern Shiverpeaks regions just for a change of scenery. While certain aspects of Fallen Earth are appealing to me, I’m not sure I could take an entire game being set in the post-apocalyptic desert of Arizona. I need variety, and I suspect I’m not alone in that. I had a similar feeling when living in Colorado where so much of the terrain was brown, I yearned to travel to other states just to see more color and green grass again. “Brown fever” I think they called it?
A few people jumped all over the whole EVE-esque mention of offline character advancement, fearing that anyone who gets in from the start will forever remain at the top and new players can never catch up, or that in order to continue advancement they will be forced to continue the subscription. I’ve never played EVE so I don’t know if this is a legitimate complaint but that sounds ridiculous to me. Masthead answers with “The offline progression is different than the one in EVE online. All combat and crafting skills will advance online. While offline, the players will have the opportunity to gather income and advance in a more social aspect of the game.” Which makes sense to me and is more in-tune with pen-and-paper RPG’s where players would tell me, the GM, at the end of the session that their character would like to train in whatever secondary skill. Next week or whenever we played again, *poof* that’s all done, let’s get on with the actual adventure. Only during the adventure would they be able to advance in their combat and other active abilities.
Masthead says the actual combat will be played out similar to a third- or first-person shooter (depending which camera setting you choose, I hope?) but, much like Tabula Rasa, will still rely on RPG “die rolls” under the hood to determine the damage and outcome of the battle so, while it sounds like the action will be somewhat faster-paced the twitch gamers will not rule the roost. That’s a good thing — I’ll freely admit my recent return to the FPS genre has really made it obvious that I’m not as good as I once was. Talk about depressing…
Earthrise has, for now, earned its place at the top of my personal Watch List, right up there with Guild Wars 2 and perhaps one or two others. However, after my heart-wrenching, soul-crushing experience with Tabula Rasa during mid-beta I will try to avoid getting too hyped-up and will certainly stay off the fanboy wagon until I get some hands-on in beta myself.
Tags: MMO Gaming
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