Earth & Beyond
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| Earth & Beyond | |
| Developer: | Westwood Studios |
| Publisher: | Electronic Arts |
| Release date: | September 24, 2002 |
| Genre: | MMORPG |
| Game modes: | Multiplayer |
| ESRB rating: | Teen |
| ELSPA rating: | 11+ |
| Platform: | Windows |
| Media: | CD |
| System requirements: | Pentium III CPU, 128MB RAM, Internet access, graphics card |
| Input: | Keyboard, mouse |
Earth & Beyond is a science fiction massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) game developed by Westwood Studios and published by Electronic Arts. The game was released on September 24, 2002 in the United States. EA shutdown E&B on September 22, 2004, ending the paid subscription service that allowed players to play.
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Game universe
It is not known what year it is set in exactly, but that it is some time around the 2175 AD. It features three races: the Progen, Jenquai and Terran. The Progen are a genetically altered and advanced race. The Jenquai are philosophers that seek eternal life. The Terrans are the original humans. Each of the three races is decended from the human race on Earth, in essence they are all human. The game's storyline takes place in the Milky Way Galaxy. The Progen, Terran and Jenquai are all uneasy of each other, but still manage to live together in peace. The Terrans are known for their extremely large corporations, such as InfinitiCorp and GetCo. InfinitiCorp is the manufacturer of the intersystem and intersector warp gates. The warp gates were originally created by the mysterious V'rix, an ancient race that was travelling through the stars before any of the three races.
The Warp Gates
Originally, a Progen freighter was travelling on a trade run near Pluto, when his reactor exploded and sent him flying into a nearby asteroid field. As a result of this, a nearby asteroid exploded and revealed the gate of Akeron.
When you flew into the gate, you would be almost instantly transported to the Aragoth system (this does not happen in the game anymore because of lag). The finding of this gate led to many things, both good and bad.
- The loss of several explorer vessels investigating the new Aragoth system,
- The start of the Gate war
- Infiniticorp gains the ability to make other gates
- Lag while playing the game (everyone uses Akeron's gate to get to Aragoth)
- Other insignificant things
Home planets of the three races
The home planets of all three races is really Earth, but when long range space travel first became available, each race went to a separate planet. The Terrans stayed on Earth, the Jenquai moved to Jupiter and the Progen went to Mars.
The language of the V'rix
In the Aragoth system, suddenly after the Progen opened up another recently discovered ancient gate, ancient artifacts about the V'rix appeared. Two large Maelstroms appered in Jenquai and Progen sectors. Alien life forms started appearing all over the galaxy, small bat-like creatures poured out of the Maelstroms. The Aliens would fly around sectors in random patterns, when a comm signal was opened to an alien craft, it would simply reply in a language like this: (Note: this is not the actual text message they would reply with)
H2LL4,3'M1N1L32N
It was first believed to be a mathematical form of communication, until the language was decoded.
Decoding the language
H2LL4,3'M1N1L32N
- There are English punctuation marks
- There are Roman-style characters
- Numbers are used in seemingly random places
To decode the language, you will need to use a chart like this one, that lists the vowels.
|A1| E2| I3| O4| U5|
There are five vowels in the English language, if you replaced them with numbers, in the sentence Hello, I'm an alien you would get
H2LL4,3'M1N1L32N.
Note:
- The Aliens do not use spaces.
Cancellation
Rumors of the game's cancellation became prevalent in early 2004. EA confirmed the suspicions in March 2004 by announcing that Earth & Beyond was to be discontinued the following September, stating that it would refocus on other projects. E&B never became very popular, reporting close to 40,000 subscribers early and later showing continually lesser numbers. Not surprisingly after the March statement, the figures saw their most dramatic decline.
External links
Community
Today Earth & Beyond's community still keeps in contact through the forums of www.ebportal.com.