I was actualy very active in the beta.
Not a bad game but far from great. Not realy worth paying for in my opinion but it was great fun for free.
3 races, 2 clases (warrior or explorer), limited advancement options (very few skills, even less that mattered). EQ in space so if you were not a fan of the level treadmill avoid it. Same stuff as EQ or DAOC, kill mob, loot it, sell loot buy equipment.
The graphics were very pretty, the physics... there wern't any. You can move your ship in most directions but limited z axis movement, very limited. Warping around was need and a safe way to travel around, warp speed graphics were very nice. The story was fairly well fleshed out with a decent plot.
You could not run into anything so you would fly *through* stations, asteroids and such, no collisions. Target enemy and hit the attack hotkey for whatever weapon you want to use, and keep hitting it because it is not an auto attack like EQ or DAOC. No dogfights, no seat of your pants exilaration just target mob and hit fire then it does the database check and random number generating to determine a hit. The different classes have some unique skills like Hacking (to take out ships systems) and gravity well (snare the mob) etc... some based on race most on class. The Explorers had "spells" that could "heal" and "Resurect" etc...
That is not a bad thing, I like RPGs and that is just the way combat is in an RPG. There just was not enough variety between people for me personaly. You were either an Explorer or a Warrior no matter what race you chose. The diferent races had some different abilities in technology on their ships which made their play style a bit different but not a lot of variety within races.
Ships had a lot of customizeably options (but only 3 hull styles, lots of colors to paint it) and the off ship avatars had a lot of options for customizing. Nothing happens off ship other than buy/sell, getting quests or doing trade skills... no off-ship adventuring or combat.
Like I said I enjoyed it and even considered buying it till I read about (drum roll) Eve Online: Eve
Where as Earth and Beyond went in for the saturated color look (kind of cartoonish) Eve when for the darker BladeRunner type of look in space. Eve is supposed to have more options in characters and development.
Final: EandB is fun but not great.
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