This is a repost from the official forums:

 Additional feedback after further testing - fewer positives, more negatives:

• Races - 22 races, absolutely nothing to distinguish one from another except for looks.  No traits, skills, quests, starting areas.  Nothing.

• Linearity - caveat - I haven't played to higher levels yet, but you can't leave the starter zones without doing quests to unlock the exits to the new zones.  In other words, you're forced to quest.

• Difficulty curve - imagine my surprise after having waded through all previous opponents in the various starter zones, making my way to level 10 or 11 in Anglorum, getting a quest to kill a named mob and getting pwned almost instantly.  Ouch.  To be fair, though, the quest description did recommend a party of 2 or greater, but it still seemed like a pretty steep curve and it basically forces grouping and/or purchasing potions.

• Combat - Pro - you can attack while moving.  Con - it doesn't do anything for you.  There's no "action rpg" style dodging, etc..  All attacks are still autohit/miss, whether you're moving or not.

• PvP - doesn't exist yet, possibly slated for future

• Crafting - doesn't exist yet, possibly slated for future Exists, but I'm not familar with it - the market is remedial in that there's only a channel, but no linking as mentioned in the post above.

• Player Housing - doesn't exist (possibly going in @ launch in the form of "Groves") - hasn't made it to open beta, though

• Secondary attacks - all four classes have both ranged and melee attacks, but characters don't start off with a secondary weapon (throwing daggger for a rogue, as an example).  Instead, the first starter island quest rewards the player with gloves.  Unless you're lucky enough to find a secondary weapon for your class, I highly recommend new players buy one as soon as they get to the second island. It makes a huge difference for extra dps and pulling/splitting for melee characters.  I'd highly recommend Sparkplay swap a ranged weapon for the gloves in the first quest or provide a secondary weapon from the start, especially since a secondary weapon auto-attack is slotted from the very beginning, but isn't usable.

• Cash shop - the game is in open beta, still needs a ton of polish/features, IMO, but the cash shop is open for business. That seems wrong to me. 

• Target Audience - i mentioned this in another post and have mentioned it on the official boards.  Who is this game for?
  
  • It's cute enough to appeal to kids, but the game isn't a "kids game".
  • It's got decent, albeit generic core mechanics for an adult game, but it doesn't have enough polish yet to be ready for launch and it's almost too cute.
  • It appeals to the furry crowd, which the developers didn't even know existed. On top of that, the furry demographic is both small and stigmatized, so being known as the "furry game" might not bode well for Sparkplay unless they can demonsrate they understand and can appease a larger market.

The cash shop being open for business really bothers me.  Nobody's required to use it, but frankly the status of the game feels more like a soft launch than an open beta.  After all, they're taking in money. Is it a cash grab, are they short on funds?  Couldn't they test the cash shop by giving beta testers credits (not without wiping open beta characters, else they'd get free gear)?  Couldn't they hold off testing the cash shop until other, more important MMO mechanics are put in place?

I do think EE is a fun game with lots of potential, as I've stated before, but it really lacks the kind of depth most experienced MMO players would appreciate and even expect.  If the game launched today in it's current state, it would probably be panned. Yes, it's still in "beta", but it's "open beta", which is generally pretty close to launch condition for many games.  That concerns me. I'd love to see some sort of design roadmap from Sparkplay that might alleviate these concerns.

~Ripper

Regarding the large number of races, here's a quote from a TenTonHammer interview with Matt Mihaly:

Ten Ton Hammer: Earth Eternal boasts an incredible number of races: 22 in all, covering most of the animal kingdom (the land dwellers, anyway). What makes each race different or special, given that none has a gameplay advantage over another? 

So, the lack of differences between races is intentional.  Personally, I don't agree with this approach.  I think there are things that could be implemented to differentiate between races without turning it into a min-max stat game or forcing class choice based on race.  So, as far as feedback goes, I personally don't think this is a good design decision.  I hope it changes over time.

Regarding the target audience, from the same interview:

Ten Ton Hammer: What’s your target audience? What does Earth Eternal have to offer, say, a hardcore MMO gamer who has over a dozen hours a week to play but expects to constantly have a new carrot on the proverbial stick?

Sounds reasonable, but I think the game needs a lot more polish in order to have a "ton of depth".  I think Sparkplay has a good vision and the game is fun, albeit shallow, so I'm anxiously awaiting new content and features.

~Ripper

Further feedback:

My son's impression- Created brand new character and played with my son tonight (he's 10).   When asked what he liked about the game, he said "because you can play as animals with other animals".  When asked what he didn't like, he said he didn't understand the loot rules.  I'll get to those in a minute, but IMO, that's just a learning curve.  When we played he had fun, but mostly because it was dad/son time.

Child safety, from a parent's perspective:

• Chat - there's a chat censor feature you can turn on.  Please note, however, that the filter is dictionary based and there are a lot of words that get through ("gay", for example).  Unlike a true kids game like Wizard101, which uses a list of allowable words, vs a list of prohibited words, chat in Earth Eternal is just like it is in most other adult games - filtered, but easy to get around (and people definitely try to do so).  The good news is you can turn off chat channels.  So, even though my 10 year old son only gets to play and group with me, I can turn off the regional and local chat so he doesn't see the idiocy.  He gets to play and have fun and I don't need to worry about "barrens chat".
• Quests - the quests are relatively easy for a child to follow, but I'm not a big fan of the "kill x mobs" quests.  Once again, this is a teen+ game, so it's "kill" vs. "capture" or "knock out".  Same thing mechanically, different semantically, especially for kids.
• Blood - there isn't any, which is nice for kids.  Attacks/hits  have various "energy" particle animations.  When you loot a mob, it turns into a cartoony gravestone.
• Graphics - definitely cute and cartoony and colorful.  Very appealing to kids.
• General impression - not a kids game, but can be fun for kids. Be a good parent and play with your kids.  Teach them the fun parts of playing this game and limit their exposure to the seedier aspects of world chat.

Shards - in open beta, there's only 1 server.  In order to handle the load, the server is broken up into shards.  These are basically instances of the same region (zone).  When you look at your minimap, it will tell you which region and shard number you're in ("Corsica 7", for example).  Regardless of the shard, you can still see all chat in the /region chat channel.  That's really useful.  To change shards, simply click the region name in the minimap to pull up a list of all available shards and pick the one you want.  Please note, however, that you  must be near a sanctuary (located in camps, cities, etc...) in order to change shards.

Targeting - targeting is tab-base\d.  Just hit Tab and you'll target the nearest mob.  The downside is the nearest mob might be off your screen to the left or right.  In other words, the cone of vision for the tab-based targeting is too wide.  It needs to be narrowed to the field of vision for the player, IMO.

Group mechanics:

• Invites - in order to invite another player, you need to right-click them. You can't invite them via command interface.  There appears to be a command to allow you to do so (/party invite, but it doesn't seem to work).
• Group control - the leader can invite, kick players and change loot settings.
• Loot rules - there are two types of looting allowed: Free for all (everybody can attempt to loot the mob) and Round Robin (the game will let on player loot, per mob killed and then move to the next player when the next mob is killed).  Regardless of which of these two options are selected (FFA is default), there are two optional settings: Need for Greed (forces a random roll for loot if players select Need or Greed on non-mundane items) and "Include mundane items", which forces rolls on basically every item in the game.
  • Bug - the loot rules seem to default to the standard settings when you change zones.  We tested this going in and out of Corsica and the LIghthouse (an instance).  That's bad.
• Main assist - doesn't exist.  Would be great, since I had a hard time explaining to my son which mob to attack together.  Main assist would be great. Per official forum member Raymond, main assist does exist. In order to use it, a group member would need to target the main player by clicking on them. All attacks would then attack the main character's target. That's very useful, but mouse-based party member targeting might get messy in a large battle with a full group. As such, I think this mechanic could be improved.
• Voice chat - none built in.  I hate voice chat personally, since listening to some squeaker (WARNING: NSFW comic due to language) complaining about how gay a drop is tends to break immersion, IMO. Not being a big raider, I don't miss it.
• Text chat - the /party chat channel is fine.
• Combat - it sucks when you're in front of the person pulling and the mob runs behind you, forcing the dreaded "must be facing the target" message.  Once again, it would be great if your character just spun around, especially since the attacks don't seem to be position based.
• Experience - XP is split equally amongst all party members and the distance between party members can be pretty large.  I'd recommend that the XP radius be lowered significantly in order to mitigate rampant powerleveling.
• Disconnected characters - This is handled very well, IMO. Tthey remain in the group. My son completely logged out, yet was still in the group.  That's good for linkdeaths/accidental disconnects. Furthermore, the XP isn't split to the disconnected character.  If the loot rules stipulate Need/Greed rolls, the Need/Greed window still pops up, but the active players don't have to wait for the disconnected player.  Looting is immediate.
• Group member targeting - you have to click a group member in order to target them - no hot keys like F1, F2, etc.. - wow - that needs to change, IMO.

Trade - attempted to give some items away yesterday.  Was a real pain due to the lack of item linking, as mentioned before and also due to the fact that I had to run to a sanctuary to change to the same shard as the person I was trying to give the items to and then still have to meet up at the same spot within the region.  I'd LOVE a game that let me trade across the region via command line instead of having to physically be next to the other player.  Seriously - originally, that was the plan when Dungeon Runners first introduced it's trade window, but they removed that aspect of it for some reason.  If EE or other games had this feature, it'd be the win.

In-game help - doesn't exist.  You can't even see a list of emotes or the key mapping.  If you click the help button, it simply launches the EE website and a very small list of articles, none of which pertain to actual play.  They're all technical or legal articles (EULA and ToU, for example).  In order to see the list of emotes and the key mapping, I had to read a post in the forums.  Lame.

Summary - still testing it, still think it's fun and shows promise.  The types of things I mention above (main assist, item linking, auto turning to attack, etc...) would help polish the game, IMO.

~Ripper