Earth Eternal

I suck at predictions, but everyone else is doing them. Luckily, I have a Magic 8 Ball. I’m just gonna list some games, and ask the Magic 8 Ball what it thinks of them. Question to the 8 Ball for all of these games: Will this game have a good year in 2011? Age of Conan: “Outlook Not So Good”. AoC released its first expansion, “Ride of the Godslayer”, last summer, and that’s pretty much the last I’ve heard of the game. I don’t think the Magic 8 Ball is correct; I think Funcom is content to support their current player base without feeling the need to go F2P. Their massively hyped launch should have helped them recoup their development costs years ago. ...

Lots of people really do ask me what I DO in EverQuest? Truth be told, most of the time I am either working on my Epic 1.5 (the rogue epic quest is THE WORST of them all), do monster missions for gear and experience, or do the Boomerang! event in Brell’s Rest. It’s a simple arena game; everyone in the party chooses a team – red, blue or gold, like in Star Trek – and each is given boomerangs in their opponent’s two colors. You enter, are transformed into a gnoll of your color, and you run around and fling boomerangs at enemies while dodging boomerangs thrown at you, as well as explosive barrels that drop randomly from the ceiling. You get one point for hitting an enemy; lose one point for being hit twice and lose five points for being blown up by an explosive barrel. After five minutes, the top three get gold tokens (used to buy high level uber weapons), and everyone gets silver tokens appropriate to their point total, used to buy a wide variety of gear and augments. ...

I’ve been playing a bit of Earth Eternal since it went into open-closed beta yesterday. Since I think we’re still unable to actually show the game, here’s a picture of the upcoming stop motion/cgi film, Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox. Now, I don’t KNOW that Sparkplay’s gonna close down to go to the premiere, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Should kids gamble on the Internet? Evil Theurgists wonders why KingsIsle is encouraging kids to blow their parent’s moolah spinning the virtual wheels of Wizard101’s new slot machine – where you spend 15 (and up) Crowns to win the usual prize of 20 gold. You get 15 twirls a day and the rewards are minuscule so… let’s hope this is one feature that doesn’t make it out of testing. ...

Um, title kinda says it all. But to repeat – the new, free, browser-based, anthropomorphic MMO from Sparkplay has just finished up its closed beta and is trundling steadily toward open. But if you were one of the lucky few to get into the closed beta, you can get into the open beta starting…. tomorrow, Thursday. If you like MMOs where furry critters gain thumbs and intelligence and learn to make their way in a world humans have mysteriously left behind, then you’re probably already an Earth Eternal player. ...

Sean E asked me why I wasn’t playing Dungeons and Dragons Online. I hear DDO and I think “hey, another fantasy MMO with wizards and stuff”. Why add a twenty-first to the twenty I already play or have played? And who has that kind of time? I guess it depends on who you play with; in an MMO, it’s more about the company you keep than the merits of the game. ...

Earth Eternal is having a little stress test for their servers before they leap from closed to open beta. If you’re lucky enough to be in the closed beta for this rats, cats and rabbits game, and are logged in at 2PM Pacific Time, 5PM Eastern Time, or whatever time that is where you live, you’re gonna get this samurai-esque helmet to wear into open beta. I don’t know if it will carry over to the live game or not. ...

Sparkplay Community Manager Andrew Sipotz was kind enough to send along this fantastic image of a scene from their forthcoming anthro MMO, Earth Eternal. More about the game when the NDA drops :) Maybe if this one works out, they’ll do an Albedo expansion? Click on the image to see it in high resolution.

Adventuring after a mysterious apocalypse forever changed the landscape, with strange creatures everywhere and a refugee populace just trying to survive in a mutant world overrun with danger…. I didn’t even know I’d gotten into the Earth Eternal closed beta. Tails Tales of my chubby little rat rogue, the kind that Cinderella did NOT want helping make her dress, once I’ve seen more of the game. Back in EverQuest, unexpected adds usually meant a group wipe (unless you were specifically doing an AE group). Crowd control or a puller who knew how to split was really important. Modern MMOs ramp down the difficulty quite a lot, and Spinks wonders if specialized crowd control has any sort of place in World of Warcraft, given the tendency to just gather up a room and kill everything at once? And this is why WoW can’t have nice things, like enchanters and bards :) ...

The distinguished Senior Partners. Sparkplay, developers of the upcoming free-to-play, browser-based, anthropomorphic (not Furry) MMO Earth Eternal, announced that they have profile pages for each of the 22 perfect examples of Beastdom available for you to play. Man is long dead, the meek (you) have inherited the Earth, but what you do with it now is entirely up to you. ...

There’s a slim possibility I may have been dismissive of Sparkplay’s Anthro (not Furry) MMO, Earth Eternal, in the past, but – Okay, I just have to get this off my downy-feathered chest, here. Earth Eternal is a Furry MMO. I understand why they are trying to distance themselves from it. The Furry sub-culture has gotten a reputation for kinkiness, but, seriously, there’s a certain percentage of any sub-culture that’s kinky. Go to any sci-fi convention and it won’t be only the Furries who are getting odd looks. ...