Earth Eternal

[thegayhare]

Hey folks

well recently I stumbled across an MMO called Earth Eternal

It's a little basic but it's still in beta testing.  It's also free, and quite a bit of fun.
The story takes place after human extinction.  The story is fantasy, sword and sorcery but with out the trappings of elves and dwarves, but there are 22 differnt races6 of the races are of a magical sort, clockwork men, demons, yeti,  but the other sixteen are furries.  Deer, mouse, bunny, cats foxes, owls, lizards, and lors more.

It lets you modify fur color and the like pretty extesivly but you are only allowed 3 difernt body types.  Muscular, normal and chubby, and three eye types.

your equipment is also pretty extensive with a selection of pants, vests gloves collors, belts.  Another cool bit is if you find a piece of armor you like the look of but it's stats are low, you can take it to a armor refurbisher and transfer armor from a new set to the one you like the looks of. 

It's only got 4 differnt classes to choose from

Knights,  Basic offensive types,  Knights can fight with weapon and sheild or a two handed weapon, like a great axe or mace.  Knights also get ranged attcks in the form of bows.  Interestingly enough it lets you equip a ranged weapon and a close quarters weapon at the same time, you can switch between them easily in combat

Rogues, your basic sneaky thief, though I haven't played one yet I do know that roagues are the only class that can duel wield weapons.  Daggers, katar and the like.  They also can equip thrown weapons shuricak and pioson darts.

Mages, again not sure what exactly goes into this one one, offensive magics, basic wizardly stuff.  Restricted to light armors, and staff weapons

Druids are healers who specialise in ranged combat.  Skilled with the bow and rrow as well as the forces f nature.  It's one I've gotta try some time

the story seems to involve an intersting mix of mythology's incorporating the Titans of greek myth with fairie folk.  The over arching story seems to involve an invasion from anouther nation, mixed with dangerous mystics trying to call up some evil power.

The other nation seems to be eygition, they are called Anubians.  Jackal me, though they also have massive gorilla slaves.

There are lots of mosnters wandering around too giant crabs, animated plants, elementals, quackatrice, and the like. 

So far It's alot of fun.  and I hope you folks might try it out, maybe you'll like it

http://www.eartheternal.com/

[Janus Whitefurr]

My lil clockwork knight has been wandering around since you showed me this link the day before you posted it. Not sure if it's something I'd stick with, but it's free and it's pretty cute. Though at least for me, I've also found it to be -really- laggy in points.

[hapless]

Yeah, it's beta. It has serious memory leaks, and while patch 0.8.1 fixed a lot of them, 0.8.2 made things worse. Generally, with XP and 1GB of RAM you have to restart the client every hour or so to keep things going.
The stndalone client that gets installed in start menu is better, because while the browser plugin is simply a "dock" for it, you don't have 200+ MB of RAM wasted by Firefox.
Also, don't get the wrong impression... four classes, that's right, but you can pick up many of other classes' skills as you progress.
I never played any other MMO, so I can't really compare. But I like this one. It needs a ton of polishing before release, but has potential. The world's quite large  too, tho most probably you'll stay on the newbie islands up to level 8-10, and then up to 18-20 in Anglorum.

Have fun.

[Shadrok]

After your FA post on this I had to give the game a try. And so far (only one play so far) It's not half bad. only got stuck once (thank goodness for the unstuck option).

[Reese Tora]

Well, I jumped in and tried it out...

so far so good.

The combat system isn't too hard, keyboard layout is pretty standard... I find myself using controls that otehr games have and getting the desired results...

hot keys for equipment and inventory are where one might expect, but... where's the hot key for abilities? The other things on that menu bar at the bottom?

two things that actually bothered me, though... the lag, at some points, which causes the camera to whip around if you're moving even the tiniest bit when it hits... I'll often find myself facing opposite of where I indented if a lag spike hits while I'm turning with mouse look... and the lack of an obvious auto run feature (possibly just all out lack of one!) If I'm running accross the island or to my quest objective, I don't want to have to hold down 'W' or R+L mouse buttons the whole way there.

There's definently a LOT of optimization still needed in the code, but that's why this is beta.

[hapless]

You have quickbars; first one is integrated in the panel, others can be enabled from the menu activated by first button on the left (red diamond).
Each one has 8 "slots" (well, the main one always has basic attacks in #1 and #2), to which you simply drag/drop icons from the abilities panel (or inventory, once you have items that can be activated). You can also drag/drop icons between different quickbars. The main one is mapped to numeric keys (1-8), first additional one is control + 1-8, second alt+, and so on up to eighth with ctrl+alt+shift.
Also, hit Z. It makes you run forward until you hit Z, a directional key, or mouse button.
Err... make it "...or get a loading screen."

[Reese Tora]

You have quickbars; first one is integrated in the panel, others can be enabled from the menu activated by first button on the left (red diamond).
Each one has 8 "slots" (well, the main one always has basic attacks in #1 and #2), to which you simply drag/drop icons from the abilities panel (or inventory, once you have items that can be activated). You can also drag/drop icons between different quickbars. The main one is mapped to numeric keys (1-8), first additional one is control + 1-8, second alt+, and so on up to eighth with ctrl+alt+shift.
Also, hit Z. It makes you run forward until you hit Z, a directional key, or mouse button.
Err... make it "...or get a loading screen."

um... yeah, I know about that stuff...  I am talking about a hot key to open the abilities menu/screen/window that has all the purchasable abilities that you can drag to the hot bar, a hot key for the quest window, etc...

thanks for the auto run key

[thegayhare]

I just managed to get to one of the main cities outside the new player zone and ran into the thanksgiving special event

I must admit while I thought the Turkatrices were a bit silly (I also picked up a free Harvest themed mace... in the form of a giant turkey leg)  But I must admit it's a rather disturbing sight to step out the main doors of Camalot to see a 20 foot tall turkey king bearing down on me.

"x" switches from weapons stances
"c" bings up the equipment screen
"b" brings up abilities
"m" is map
"f" is the freind list
"j" is quests
"k" is the credit shop
"i" is inventory

[Janus Whitefurr]

So if we're going to wander by each other in the games, I suppose we should start friending each other and namedropping, eh? Behold Janus Lamington, the level eight clockwork knight!



Isn't he fabulous~ :b

[Reese Tora]

oh, hai, my character's name is Reese Tora (oooh, surprise!) a 9th level Feline rogue and I added you, Janus, to my contacts list.

[thegayhare]

Me I'm Slovos Rathburn 16th level bounder knight

Pictured don't mind the second pic... just wanted to show off my turkey leg mace

[techmaster-glitch]

I'm thinking of checking this out, but I'm a little worried about about the registration process. What's up with the name and email? For "name" it says that it's used for forums and such, but not in-game. And for the sign-in bar, it says "email" and "password", not "name" and "password". Please tell me that your email isn't your actual name in the game.

[Reese Tora]

I'm thinking of checking this out, but I'm a little worried about about the registration process. What's up with the name and email? For "name" it says that it's used for forums and such, but not in-game. And for the sign-in bar, it says "email" and "password", not "name" and "password". Please tell me that your email isn't your actual name in the game.

email is only used for login, in game name is by character... and there's an option to change your email address in the account settings page, which means, technically, probably, you can change your log in name if you so desire (and have another valid email address)

[TheJimTimMan]

I'm a little wary of this title on the possibility of it being a Korean-model grindfest (most of the microstransaction-based games these days seem to be). Any comments on this front?

[Reese Tora]

well... I'm level 12 already from just doing the quests, haven't gotten to any dead zones yet for leveling, haven't gone out to kill just for XP (OTOH, did a few bounty quests multiple times for the bounty tokens... used to buy equipment armor... you can find equivalently good stuff in drops, though) As such, almost every kill I've done so far is quest related or in self defense while traveling, and my level is about right for the quests that are offered where I am now.

so far bounty quests are all 'kill 10 of x' for one token, each region increases the cost of equipment by 1 token so far... now in the third region, the equipment costs 3 tokens, but the only equipment to buy with tokens are weapons, so you only need to buy 1 instead of, say, 4 or 5)

That said, I recall that, in Maple story, getting to level 10-15 wasn't too difficult, so it will really depend on how the next 10-20 levels go...  And it amy turn out that aquiring the best equipment will be grindy, but that's to be expected in any system with a random drop mechanic and rare drop superior equipment

aside, I have found one other thing that bothers me, there's no equipment rating system... I'm finding drops that are superior to equipment that requires levels 3 less than what you can buy in the shops, but there's no way to tell without going in to the description and analyzing the stats, and I'm finding drops taht are inferior to store buyable equipment oft he same equip level, too.

So far as this goes, I think there's either hidden quality levels that most games have visible (ie: grey, white, green, blue, purple as in WoW and WAR) OR the developers have a lot to go so far as itemization balance goes...

[TheJimTimMan]

Cheers Reese, that was strangely refreshing to read. This one's going on the to-play list methinks.

[thegayhare]

so far bounty quests are all 'kill 10 of x' for one token, each region increases the cost of equipment by 1 token so far... now in the third region, the equipment costs 3 tokens, but the only equipment to buy with tokens are weapons, so you only need to buy 1 instead of, say, 4 or 5)

Speaking of tokens
Bounty tokens , while it's annoying that they don't stake arn't the only tokens you'll come across in the game.

When you do find dunguons There are a good number of them Under henge and whilhems crypt  out side of these places is a chest,  these contain powerfull tiems you can purchase with dungeon tokens gathers in killing the creatures inside.  You can enter to kill but there are also mission that will take you inside.  not every creature carries a token but you will find a good number.  unlike the bounty tokens these ones do stack, but also unlike the boards these tokens are dungeon specific so if you've aload of tokens from under henge you won't be able to spend them at anouther dunguon

Also ther are reward and boss tokens.  Boss tokens are gained by killing a boss and a chest will apear after it's defeated.   Reward tokens are granted for compleating an arc of quests.  While some people will give you an item as part of a reward some others offer you a token so you can pick from several differnt rewards.

With all of these your choices can be armor and weapons and are always valuable

I have discovered one odd bug... aleast I think it's a bug.

Your cash is shared across all your chars.  So if you build up a fortune with one char and start a new one you still have full acess to all your funds

[ShadesFox]

Interesting. I'm not sure if that is a bug as much as admitting that money sharing is a fact of life in any reasonably social mmo. I'm gonig to make a new character soon.

[hapless]

From what I know it's not a bug, but a design decision.

[Shadrok]

Since we're sharing who we are in game, here's mine.



Though he's now a Lv. 12.

[Valynth]

Alright, I have the game a tried it.  For the most part, it's just a basic MMO in yer browser, though I've only gotten to the "public" area.

Of course the game loses a few starting points in my mind for setting off red flags like saying "it plays in you browser" and then demanding that I install it's crap.  For most MMO's this wouldn't be a problem since they pretty much need some base files installed in you machine, but when you're claiming "play directly from your browser" you give the impression that ALL you need is your browser and not the various plug-ins that will demand to be installed on your computer.

The next red flag to start waving like a French flag on July 14, happens to be the plug-in bundle.  Now, I'm not yet a computer expert, but I'm pretty sure that anything in a BETA testing is going to have massive holes pretty much everywhere, especially on stuff installed on you system, so (and this is mostly my internet paranoia speaking) having installed a few security holes with the plug-ins is not too far out of the question, especially amoung the "free games" flying about lately.

Another annoyance I have with current set-up is the races, which is a misnomer here.  From what I could tell from the character generation, the only difference between the races is the model "skin," and "backstory" which pretty much boils down to a question of "what furry skin do you want?" or "what WoW character skin do you want?(cause we want a wider fan base than just furries so why not rip from the best?  Oh, and lets throw in DnD's warforged to throw people off  of our cunning plan)."

So in other words, it's a fairly typical MMO.  Not something I'm going to play again, because I already removed the plugin-bundle that came with it.

[Tapewolf]

I have to agree - there is a world of different between "Play it in your browser" and "Play it in your browser but only if that browser is running in Windows on x86."  For that matter, lynx is a browser that runs in windows, but this sure as hell ain't going to run in it since it's text-mode and doesn't support plugins.
If they advertise in the UK you could probably whack them for trading standards from their lack of MacOS support alone.

I think I read that there was a standalone client, in which case it might be possible to make it work under X.  I might try it, since deceptive system requirements aside, it does look kind of interesting.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

If you can get it to work in X, let me know. I'd be interested in playing, but since I'd have to use the windows machine, which currently has a failing PSU... and only 768Mb RAM... and a 64M nvidia GPU...

[hapless]

The "plugin" simply launches the Spark.exe standalone client and "docks" its window itside. Is it false marketing? Maybe... tho I wouldn't be surprised if that (being browser-enabled) was somehow forced on the dev team. OSX support is planned for after the beta.
Some people managed to get Spark to work in Wine, but as it made weird assumptions about some things, it requires modifed versions of few of the Wine DLL replacements. There are few Wine-related topic on the official forum, relatively easy to find.
And yes, the race selection is purely cosmetic. It's stated clearly in the FAQ, I believe. Also worth noting, quite a ton of people on the official forum seem to like that it doesn't influence  the gameplay.

[Tapewolf]

The "plugin" simply launches the Spark.exe standalone client and "docks" its window itside. Is it false marketing? Maybe... tho I wouldn't be surprised if that (being browser-enabled) was somehow forced on the dev team.

Quite likely.  I wouldn't object nearly as much if they had said so upfront, though.  Fact is, you have to dig really, really hard to find out whether it will even work on your system.  Case in point - this will not work on ChromeOS or Android or the iPhone, all of which have quite capable browsers (and ChromeOS is a browser on a stick, basically).

OSX support is planned for after the beta.
Some people managed to get Spark to work in Wine, but as it made weird assumptions about some things, it requires modifed versions of few of the Wine DLL replacements. There are few Wine-related topic on the official forum, relatively easy to find.

Interesting.  I may have to look into that, but frankly I'm scared of it being a time-sink like Oblivion 

[Reese Tora]

Another annoyance I have with current set-up is the races, which is a misnomer here.  From what I could tell from the character generation, the only difference between the races is the model "skin," and "backstory" which pretty much boils down to a question of "what furry skin do you want?" or "what WoW character skin do you want?(cause we want a wider fan base than just furries so why not rip from the best?  Oh, and lets throw in DnD's warforged to throw people off  of our cunning plan)."

Oh, that's hardly fair, the closest you could say is they ripped off Tauren or Worgen from WoW.  Worgen are too new (and I don't know what they look like) and the bull people don't really look that much like Tauren... IMO dead to rights on the Warforged, though.  It would be unfair to call the animal based races ripoffs, and most of the six remaining races (cyclops, daemon, sylvan, yeti) are drawn from folklore and myth.

Oooh, got another nitpick about the UI... the toggles for the ranged and melee auto attacks are permanently fixed to the 1 and 2 hotkey slots, I can't rearrange them or move them.  It's a PITA, because I don't need to toggle melee in most cases, and I prefer my ranged attack to be mapped to the 1 key so I don't accidentally hit it when I don't need it.  I keep hitting the range toggle when I mean to be hitting the key next to it for making the build up melee attack. (also, I am getting learning curve issues with activating abilities frmo the hot bar... rapidly tapping the hotkey for an ability seems to cause it to not fire)

Just for comparison about the browser game stuff, I'm pretty sure that RuneScape (the other 3D browser MMO I'm aware of) also requires the installation of at least one plug in, though it's been a while since I played that.  OTOH, it was pretty much all java driven, and this game explicitly was programmed in Visual C++ (you can see that when you install it.)

[Azlan]

Got bored with it real quick... probably because I over played it during closed beta. 

[Tyranastrasz]

Runescape does indeed require a plugin download. Java is a plugin. You will be hard-pressed to find a browser-based game that does not require a plugin to be downloaded, in fact. The only one I think might not require any sort of plugin is Urban Dead, but since there's no graphics, it's a fairly simple system as far as games go. The only differences between the Sparkplayer plugin and Flash or Java are that Sparkplayer is only used for EE (for now, anyway) and the download time is about 1/4 that of Flash or Java.

Also, the reason races are cosmetic is because the developers of the game wanted to let you pick a race without having to worry about "is this racial skill good for my class, or is this one better?" They wanted to let you customize your look however you want, not be limited by skills. This is shown also by the Armor Refashioners found throughout the game.

And yes, the only race you could say that they ripped off from WoW with any degree of certainty at all is the Tauren. Even still, the Tauren are vastly different graphically than the Taurians. The reason the name is similar is quite simple, too. "Taur" means bull. It stands to reason that bulls would have "taur" in their name. Not to mention, WoW didn't invent the concept of man/bull combo's. That particular honor goes to the Greeks. Any other races are far too different from WoW's incarnation of them to even plausibly be called ripoffs. Fangren? The idea of Worgen as a playable race wasn't released until long after Fangren were made in EE, and the nonplayable version isn't anywhere near what the Fangren are at all. And then there's the fact that WoW didn't invent werewolves, either. Grumpkins? Your standard goblins, basically. Yet another thing WoW didn't create. And did you really say that DnD came up with the idea of robots?

I could say WoW was unoriginal for using elves, humans, dwarves, etc.

You know what the funniest part is? I would be right, too.

[Myr]

Heh, well, that aside, it isn't too bad of a game. The Druid class is slightly bugged-you can not seem to heal yourself with your own skills, standing still or not. You can, however, heal anyone else under the sun. So it's not bad, just means you have to be careful.

As is-can't get a screenshot to work on this clunker since I don't have MSpaint or anything like that-you can look for a Foxen Druid that's around lv9. Heheh, Rammineir Ashburr is his name.

[Tapewolf]

The only differences between the Sparkplayer plugin and Flash or Java are that Sparkplayer is only used for EE (for now, anyway) and the download time is about 1/4 that of Flash or Java.

Speaking as a developer, the big difference is that Java can and will work on pretty much anything above 16-bit systems.  There's probably an Acorn Archimedes port if you look hard enough.  Flash works on all the major platforms.  There's even an ARM port of Flash on the Nokia N8xx series.  Spark only works on Windows (*).

If they said upfront that it only works on Windows, I wouldn't have been nearly as irate (like the guy in the forums who asked for his account to be deleted because the 'runs-in-a-browser' game it won't work on his non-Windows Netbook).
The big attraction of making an application work in a browser (be it via Flash or Java, or high-speed javascript) is platform agnosticism - i.e. it will work on nearly anything no matter what is under the hood.  Otherwise, you may as well simply write it as an app because it will be less clunky that way.


(*)  To their credit, from what the people trying to make it work in WINE noticed, they seem to have written the thing from the ground up to be portable - but they haven't yet released any ports.