Well, THis is what I wrote for a local game mag. Some of you may have seen an earlier draft, and this is what the final outcome was before i sent to editors...

Now some may note i dont mention PvP. Well, thats honestly because the PvP in the game right now servers no purpose other then to steal someones loot. Once the get the whole warfare stuff in game I might do an update..

Im not bagging on MMORPG.com's preview but I just feel it was a little dishonest.... or rather it glossed over some VERY serious problems with rose colored glasses.

Earthrise Preview/Review

Earthrise is the FPS-RPG MMO hybrid release by indie developer Masthead Studios. Earthrise is a post apocalyptic science fiction MMOFPS/RPG were as so many times before, after a great war mankind has essentially destroyed society once again, and is now in the process of rebuilding. The games two main factions consist of Continoma, which is essentially the Big Government faction, and Noir, which are the rebel faction. One unique and interesting feature is if you play your cards right you can essentially stay neutral in this conflict, playing whichever side benefits you most at the time. Some of the main game play elements include a FPS style combat, an expansive skill system, and a deep crafting system that is more than just an assembly process.

Starting Off

Starting with character creation you can essentially pick if you are male or female, your ethnicity, your head type, skin color, hair type and hair color. That’s pretty much it for character creation. You won’t see any fancy sliders or ways to form your body or face. You also won’t see any way to pick your faction as this is essentially done once you are in game based off your actions and choices. While some players may be turned off by this lack of customization, others will appreciate its simplicity for not having to spend hours agonizing over an Oblivion style slider system trying to get just the right nose size.

Once you finish with character creation you begin your journey into the Librarium, where adventure awaits. Earthrise starts you off in a tutorial which does a few things. You start by interacting with terminals, which teach you basics such as equipping items, and accepting and completing quests. It also has a small portion that shows you how to move around and jump to get around and over obstacles. The last part of the tutorial consists of giving you a chance to try out the 5 basic weapon types in the game. You will go through 5 small sections of the tutorial area, trying the different weapon types out, killing X amount of mobs based off the mission requirements. Unfortunately while the tutorial does a good job at introducing you to the game, it doesn’t really teach you some core fundamentals you will need to succeed in the game, how to use skills, or anything about crafting. There is however a pop up window that will show up when you login however that included what is essentially a help file on playing the game.

After you finish the tutorial you get to what I like to call “Newb Island”. This is a small island that you get the chance to start doing quests and really grinding BP. Strangely enough I got a very Lord of the Flies vibe from this little island. The island is very free form, and is essentially your first experience in the unstructured sandbox world. It also introduces you to the two main factions in the game. One thing that I am not sure was intended or not was that the minute you step foot on Newb Island, you will be making a choice, the choice as to what faction you choose to go with. This isn’t thrown in your face like so many other MMOs like to do either at character creation or in game. You may even accidentally end up on the wrong side of things because you were not paying attention to what you were doing. Basically if you happen to head down the right path when you hit the fork in the road, you end up doing Noir quests; hence if you aren’t paying attention you will end up being Noir faction. If you go left, you end up doing Continoma quests. Some players who like to just zip through quest logs and hit accept may not like this as it actually forces you to read and digest what the quest is asking you to do, while others will find it great that for once in an MMO we can’t just click our way through the story.

Now let’s talk about the quests themselves. As far as I have seen you have two types of quests. Go here and kill X mobs X amount of times, Go here and collect X item from killing X mob, and Go here and talk to this guy. The quests are pretty much the major way you will end up making CC (which is Earthrises form of money) so you will find yourself repeating the same quest over and over to collect money. (You could also sell stuff to vendors, but the return is very low). As for quest design, sometimes it is completely clear where you need to go/what you need to kill. Other times, you may spend hours wandering around trying to find Joe. There are no quest markers in this game, no arrows, or shiny lines and circles on your map. About the only thing you get is a marker over the head of people who can give you quests. This is both good and bad in some ways. Again some players will find it nice that people have to actually read and understand the quest instead of just clicking accept and following the shiny arrow to the quest location. But on the other side of the token, most MMO gamers have grown accustom to having the path laid out before them, so you may find yourself being frustrated if you are unable to find the specific location/mob the quest mentions. Earthrise’s shortfall in this regard is while it refuses to hold the player’s hand the whole way, sometimes the quest text is like Tom Hanks trying to find the Holy Grail in Angels and Demons, meaning sometimes an NPC will say “Go kill John.” And that is literally all you get. No hint to the location, not even a “Head west”.
Once you get out of Newb Island into the bigger world of Earthrise you can really see the time Masthead put into developing a world that not only includes some interesting locations, but a playing field designed for warfare, with crags and valleys, natural choke points, bridges, and little bases all over the world. The first major continent also has a clear division between which side is controlled by the Continoma and which side is controlled by Noir. Those players looking for a little exploring will have a lot of fun trying to locate all the major faction cities, as well as the little neutral towns and villages, while at the same time enjoying the destruction of a civilization recovering from almost total destruction.

Gameplay

As for the game play mechanics in earthrise, you essentially have 3 things at this point in time. Gear progression, BP gain (For Buying combat skills), and CP gain (For buying crafting Skills). (As well as CC gain to a lesser extent). To get higher “Tier” gear, you need to gain BP and spend it on unlocking gear tier levels, so you can equip that tier gear. And no you can’t skip a level. To get BP you need to either kill mobs, or do quests. Other things you have to buy then just gear tier levels include skills for your weapons. These include your basic Dots, snares and debuffs/Buffs. To give you a rough estimate of cost, your first skills are between 200-600 BP. Then the next skill will be about 1000-2000 BP and the third will be 4000-7000 BP. The curve for equipment proficiency and skills starts off slow, but once you hit about tier 3 it tends to jump up sharply. As for how to gain BP, if you kill a Mob about the same level as you, you will gain around 10BP or less per kill. You can of course go after higher level mobs to gain more BP, but the risk is greater. The quest BP reward is actually most of the time less than the amount of BP you would get if you just went out and killed the mobs themselves. So ultimately the only real reason to do quests is for CC (Money).

Speaking of risk versus reward, for those of you that didn’t know, Earthrise is an open world PVP full loot game. Yes that means players can kill you pretty much anywhere in the world. It also means if you die you will lose almost everything you are carrying, but as bad as that sounds there is an upside to it. First off, all of your newbie gear that is given to you, as well as the tier 2 gear, will never be lost upon death. Second, you won’t lose any money you are carrying, nor will you lose collected quest items. And finally if you can afford it you can buy insurance for slots in your inventory. So you could for example insure your gear slots, and your “belt” slots. This will be very expensive for a new player, but not as bad once you are bringing in more money.

Now for the final kind of progression in Earthrise, we have CP gain. CP points are used to purchase crafting skills. Along with spending CP points for each crafting skill, the game requires you to spend CC (Money) for each skill as well. Depending on the time spent crafting you may barely scratched the surface of options available, but you have two sets of crafting skills, Processing, which focuses on breaking stuff down and refining stuff, and Production which focuses on building stuff. Also what sets Earthrise’s crafting apart from your average MMO assembly system is that each component and final item has quality levels that will affect the final stats of the item when finished. The costs for all the skills vary, but they seem to be on a much steeper curve then the combat skills. For example to craft mid grade gear you can expect to spend ~17000 CC and 13000 CP, and that’s just for that item, not including all the sub components and processing skills you will need. CP gain is also much slower then BP gain. Working about equally with CP and BP gain, the average player will gain about 4x the BP compare to their CP. Ultimately this leads to the conclusion that unlike most MMOs out there, where crafting is an afterthought, in Earthrise you really need to be truly dedicated to crafting to get anywhere fast. In theory you could eventually gain every crafting skill in the game, but in reality it could take you years of game time. So essentially what Masthead Studios has produced is a game where crafters actually have to rely on each other to specialize in specific areas of crafting. An example of this is a rifle producer will buy his sub components from a components maker, who will buy his raw materials from a harvester/processor.

The last thing you will be doing in Earthrise is exploring. While not really a “skill” in game, there are a few things you will need to do. Exploring the world will lead you to all sorts of interesting places you need to explore to unlock respawn locations, teleporters, cities and little camps. Also there are places in Earthrises world where things like hidden super crafting stations are located, so you never know what you might find. In the future the Developers plan to add harvesting nodes for resource gathering, because as of right now the only place you get crafting materials is from killing mobs (Or killing other players, technically). This will increase the need to explore to locate these resource nodes.

As of this time that is about it when it comes to game play in Earthrise. Kill Mobs for BP, craft for CP, repeating quests for CC, and exploring. In the future we should have harvest nodes, and territorial warfare included in the mix, along with other features. Masthead has released a roadmap of what features they plan to add in the next few months.

Controls and Interface

The controls in earthrise are pretty much your standard wasd keys with the number keys and f# keys for using abilities. You shoot with the mouse button; draw your weapon with the alt key, sprint with the shift key, and autorun with the NumLock key. The only problem is there is no way within the game to change these key bindings. In fact the options menu is actually very sparse compared to most modern MMOs, and this is where Earthrise really falls short, its user interface and controls. The chat system is something you would expect to see in the old Everquest days back in the late 1990s-2000. You can’t change the font size, color or font type. You also can’t even filter which channels are open, so you will be viewing all channels at all times. To do basics things in chat you will have to familiarize yourself with various forward slash commands, such as /w “Name” and /invite, and well as /y, /s, /p etc to be able to do pretty much anything. There is a little GUI popup that lets you pick which channel to talk in but it’s just quicker to type. Also as of right now there are a lot of issues with the chat system including some players not seeing other players whispers, party and guild chat not working, and the whole system going down completely at times. There is also substantial chat lag at this time.
As for the other GUI parts, you have a compass rose minimap in the top right corner, a status bar for your character (and your party) on the left, and your skill bars along the bottom, pretty standard UI so far. You also have a map, which is very basic, it shows the location of discovered respawn points and teleporters, yet unlike most MMOs for everything else you have the ability to make notations on your map.

That is pretty much where it ends for the UI though. You do not have a friends list, LFG list, or any sort of guild GUI from what I have seen so far. You also are missing some very basic functions such as the ability to ignore users. As for the inventory system, it is pretty much the standard like World of Warcraft or any other MMO, with tabs for types of items, and sorting buttons. Unfortunately though for crafters materials and items do not automatically stack so you have to do that manually. It is unclear at this time if this was intended or a bug. Your character equipment screen is also pretty standard, and the crafting interface works well once you figure it out.

Graphics and Audio

For Earthrise’s visual and audio aspects, the game is pretty much standard fare. The character models are well detailed although the animations are sometimes very bad. The special effects when using skills are also pretty much standard fare. The environment graphics can go from stunning to lack luster, depending really on where you are located. The trees and foliage are very well done, as well as the water, but the ground textures look to be very low resolution and don’t appear to have any sort of bump mapping or depth, sort of like a painted on look. There are also a lot of areas where you get clipping problems and texture tearing and stretching. One thing worth mentioning is the water in streams and rivers actually appear as if it is really “flowing”, which I haven’t seen in a lot of MMOs. Going back to the animations, Masthead really needs to do some work there. A lot of animations are just plain missing at this time, such as walking backwards at an angle, and at other times the animations are just clunky, such as the sprinting animation, or when you are moving up a hill. They also do not seem to be in sync with the speed at which your character moves, so at times it feels like you are moonwalking.

The sound goes from great to poor. The game has a great mix of music from techno music, to some kind of German death metal, but the sound effects themselves sometimes seem out of place. The assault rifle lacks that “punching” sound when firing, the precision rifle sounds like an air rifle, and the shotgun just doesn’t have the BOOM you would think a shotgun has.
As for the mobs themselves, there seems to be a lot of retextured mobs, or straight up rip offs scattered throughout the world, but there also appears to be a mix of unique mobs. Some areas of the world it seems though are actually not populated with anything at all, as though Masthead never got around to finishing specific areas. The mob animations appear to be much better done then the character animations. As for the mob AI itself, it is very basic, mobs use skills sometimes when appropriate, but don’t expect to see humanoids with guns taking cover or doing anything much more then standing there shooting back at you. You will have essentially two kinds of fights in Earthrise, ones where you kite melee mobs around, and ones where you and a mob will stand still and trade bullets. They did seem to get the agro range appropriate on the mobs, but like so many other MMOs I can shoot a guys buddy right in front of him, and he will just stand there dumbly. A huge glaring problem with the game as of now however is the server zones. Basically, the entire server is made up of little invisible zones, and if you are standing on one side of the zone, shoot a mob on the other side, he will try to get to you, be unable to cross the invisible zone line, move back to his spawn area, and heal to full health. This may seem like not such a big issue, except you can’t tell where these lines exist, might spend 5 minutes kiting a mob around, accidentally go over a zone line, and BAM, all your work is undone. Also some mobs appear to spawn right next to zone lines, so in essence you can shoot them and watch them instantly heal to full health indefinitely.


Performance and Server Issues

Towards the end of the article I would like to get into the technically issues. These will hopefully be addressed, but to be honest there are a lot of them to deal with. First starting off with performance, Earthrise system requirements are as follows; 2 GHz CPU, 1024 MB RAM and 256 MB VRAM video card supporting shader model v3. Now keeping in mind this is the minimum requirements, that’s actually not bad until you run into the glaringly severe performance issues. Issue number one is the game was not designed to use the benefits of Multicore CPUs. So the game actually has better CPU performance with those of us who have the higher clocked dual or single cores then those of us who have multi core CPU systems. The second issue has to do with the games textures. For whatever reason, every time the game has to load the texture for a model, it has to do it from your hard drive, for some reason the game is not preloading textures into your memory. Those of you with 5400 rpm hard drives beware; these two issues alone could pretty much bring performance to a crawl.

As for the server lag, at launch it was arguably one of the worst server performances I have personally seen in an MMO since Anarchy Online. Without a real way to judge ping to their server I can tell you that I could click my mouse button to fire, and at times it would literally be 30 seconds until my character responded. At the best of times this was brought down to about 1-2 seconds. Fortunately Masthead has been working nonstop to bring server performance up to snuff, and things have been improving. Things are still very laggy and almost unplayable in Newb Island as well as all the starting areas, but once you get away from other players things become a lot more tolerable. But combining this with very poor frame rates and all said it can lead to a very frustrating user experience.
Community and Support
Bringing to our last portion of this review, we are going to be looking at the community and developer support. At this point in time, the Earthrise community, especially the forums are incredibly toxic. This could be from users being stressed about game play issues or general dissatisfaction with the game. But overall, with the except of a few individuals, the community will tear the average MMO user apart for asking what they deem to be “stupid” questions, or just tear them apart in general for the fun of it. There are some very knowledgeable and helpful individuals on the forums, but digging these nuggets of wisdom from the trolling and spam at the moment can be difficult. Masthead themselves just seem to be over worked, and I have had mixed results with their support staff. One support email was answered within 6 hours and the issue was resolved. The other support email took almost 24 hours to get a response to, and it seemed that the reply was meant for another user and got mixed up with my support ticket. That issue was never resolved. My third support email has been waiting for over 3 days without a reply. Ingame support from GMs went from poor at launch, where you might be lucky to get a GM, to nonexistent, being, I haven’t seen a GM ingame anywhere for 5 days. An announcement on the forums from Mastheads support team recently has stated that they are working through launch issues and expect to get control of the support situation soon.

Conclusion

In conclusion we have a MMO from Masthead that shows the promise of being fun for someone looking to get involved in a sandbox themed PvP game, with hardcore elements such as open world PvP and player looting, light PvE elements, and a mix of Eve, Star Wars Galaxies, Ultima Online, and Tabula Rasa game elements borrowed liberally. Considering the features promised to come this could be the Sci-Fi MMO gamers are looking for, however with all its technical issues, graphic problems, sparse user interface, and generally speaking unfriendly community and sub-par developer support I cannot recommend this game to anyone but the most hardcore of MMO PvP gamers. Fans of Planetside, Eve, and Darkfall will probably find the game enjoyable, but fans of World of Warcraft, City of Heroes and Dungeons and Dragons Online will find themselves wishing for something more to do then repeating kill x mobs quests, and PvP. Overall I rate this game at 5 out of 10.
 

A good non-bias review, bravo. I really wanted to give this game a try but the lack of "real" info (from beta testers/players) discouraged me a bit.

Now, i'm going for it...when i get my pay, lol.

Originally posted by yaminsux

A good non-bias review, bravo. I really wanted to give this game a try but the lack of "real" info (from beta testers/players) discouraged me a bit.

Now, i'm going for it...when i get my pay, lol.

Dont waste your money on this game for a couple of months, this game is in a pre release alpha state in my opinion. The game is not tollarable at the start, which will make u rage quit like I did. Ive tested many alpha games, and none ran as bad as this one.

Wait a couple months, then give them money that they will deserve. Dont give people who have not proven there selfs money... that will just create a over saturation of games on the market.

Thanks, I offered to write the one for MMORPG.com, but im guessing they already had someone in mind, probably the same person who wrote that preview...

Originally posted by yaminsux

A good non-bias review, bravo. I really wanted to give this game a try but the lack of "real" info (from beta testers/players) discouraged me a bit.

Now, i'm going for it...when i get my pay, lol.

there is more than enough info, just need to dig through it, most of it is negative though.

Ive been following this game very closely since it was announced. Once a release date was set I was sooo close to purchasing. Im glad I holded back an wait for a couple of months.

The main reason to this was I had very simler experience with Anarachy Online launch. I loved that game and played it untill 2006/7. Since Ive been looking for something to replace it, with no luck. I hope they figure it out quickly before it becomes a dead land.

Good review btw!

No offense, but your review is pretty poor. It reeks of poor grammar, and in my honest opinion, i think you spent more time writing this review than playing the actual game.

Originally posted by Oddzball

 Considering the features promised to come this could be the Sci-Fi MMO gamers are looking for, however with all its technical issues, graphic problems, sparse user interface, and generally speaking unfriendly community and sub-par developer support I cannot recommend this game to anyone but the most hardcore of MMO PvP gamers

Unfriendly community and sub par developer support? What game were you playing? I haven't felt a sense of community like this since my Neverwinter Nights days. You hit some good points, but the whole thing sounds like it was a massive chore to write, and that you are simply hammering through it to get to the end. The conclusion alone tells me you had no passion/interest whilst writing this review. Lets see, you even bother to mention the specifics of the controls being wsad, and how they're 'similar' to other MMO's, (when in fact they're completely different). You spend more time listing out keybindings than actually reviewing the game and how good/bad the default control's work with the games mechanics. No-one want's to read what key they have to press to open their inventory or inspect their character screen in a review. You also use the term 'that is pretty much' or 'this is your standard' or 'thats about it' a billion times, which should tell yourself it's not worth mentioning. Review sounds very informal like its my friend telling me over the phone.

Good try for a first review, but in my honest opinion, it could have been cut in half and pre-structured with 4-5 main focal points of review, as opposed to every monotomous detail. The 5/10 score was a bit harsh, but then what do you expect reviewing a week old MMORPG released in a Beta state? In a few months i think we can expect solid 7-8/10 for this MMO, when a lot of its lacking basics are updated (as mentioned in the review), as well as further performance issues rectified.

BTW, whats the name of your local mag where this is being published?

Originally posted by D_TOX

No offense, but your review is pretty poor. It reeks of poor grammar, and in my honest opinion, i think you spent more time writing this review than playing the actual game.

 

Originally posted by Oddzball

 Considering the features promised to come this could be the Sci-Fi MMO gamers are looking for, however with all its technical issues, graphic problems, sparse user interface, and generally speaking unfriendly community and sub-par developer support I cannot recommend this game to anyone but the most hardcore of MMO PvP gamers

 

Unfriendly community and sub par developer support? What game were you playing? I haven't felt a sense of community like this since my Neverwinter Nights days. You hit some good points, but the whole thing sounds like it was a massive chore to write, and that you are simply hammering through it to get to the end. The conclusion alone tells me you had no passion/interest whilst writing this review. Lets see, you even bother to mention the specifics of the controls being wsad, and how they're 'similar' to other MMO's, (when in fact they're completely different). You spend more time listing out keybindings than actually reviewing the game and how good/bad the default control's work with the games mechanics. No-one want's to read what key they have to press to open their inventory or inspect their character screen in a review. You also use the term 'that is pretty much' or 'this is your standard' or 'thats about it' a billion times, which should tell yourself it's not worth mentioning. Review sounds very informal like its my friend telling me over the phone.

 

Good try for a first review, but in my honest opinion, it could have been cut in half and pre-structured with 4-5 main focal points of review, as opposed to every monotomous detail. The 5/10 score was a bit harsh, but then what do you expect reviewing a week old MMORPG released in a Beta state? In a few months i think we can expect solid 7-8/10 for this MMO, when a lot of its lacking basics are updated (as mentioned in the review), as well as further performance issues rectified.

BTW, whats the name of your local mag where this is being published?

I think he was being generous to be honest. The beta could have been the worst beta experience I have had with an mmo.

Mortal Online is in better shape that this game and that's saying something.

Originally posted by D_TOX

No offense, but your review is pretty poor. It reeks of poor grammar.....

No offence, but grammar had nothing to do with how good/bad review is, as long as you get your points across.

edit: grammar....

Originally posted by Geowash

Originally posted by yaminsux

A good non-bias review, bravo. I really wanted to give this game a try but the lack of "real" info (from beta testers/players) discouraged me a bit.

Now, i'm going for it...when i get my pay, lol.

Dont waste your money on this game for a couple of months, this game is in a pre release alpha state in my opinion. The game is not tollarable at the start, which will make u rage quit like I did. Ive tested many alpha games, and none ran as bad as this one.

 

Wait a couple months, then give them money that they will deserve. Dont give people who have not proven there selfs money... that will just create a over saturation of games on the market.

What can i say, i'm a sucker for pew-pew.

No offence, but would EvE be like it is today without suckers giving them money to produce more contents, fix bugs, polish stuff? Granted EvE have good community (one thing i'm concern of with earthrise) giving feedback.

And mmorpgs are already saturated now, look at all those wow clones.

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Originally posted by D_TOX
No offense, but your review is pretty poor. It reeks of poor grammar
 

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Look upon oneself before judging others.

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Good try for a first review, but in my honest opinion, it could have been cut in half and pre-structured with 4-5 main focal points of review, as opposed to every monotomous detail.

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it could have been cut in half and pre-structured with 4-5 main focal points of review, as opposed to every monotomous detail.

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4-5 main focal points of review, as opposed to every monotomous detail.

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as opposed to every monotomous detail.

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monotomous

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What game are you playing D-Tox? The community is the worst, if this was the best you've had I feel sorry for you. No offence, but I hope you stay with Earthrise, just so you won't be in any other game I play.

I've never deleted a game from my hd as fast as Earthrise.  What a complete joke of a game!  People can say "at least it's not a WoW clone" all they want but if that WoW clone is a polished/finished game, I'll play that over this garbage 10 times out of 10.  This game shouldn't even be in beta as it still has alpha problems that still need some fixing.  The number of games about to hit the market that will not be finished at release is astounding!  

Good review man, I gave DCUO about the same score and stated my case but got jumped on for it, just like some people are doing to you but some people cant accept their game isnt the best for everyone.

I personally didnt like this game, but City of Heroes is my favorite MMO of all time so like you said its geared towards more sci-fi players.

Everyone has to find their own games, I am looking for a new one since Going Rogue gave the finishing blow to CoH, this game wont be it either it looks like, DCUO and FFXIV both failed for me, so I guess gotta keep hoped in TERA, Blade and Soul and SWToR.

Maybe CoH2 or WoW2 will come some time down the road haha

Originally posted by intoExile

What game are you playing D-Tox? The community is the worst, if this was the best you've had I feel sorry for you. No offence, but I hope you stay with Earthrise, just so you won't be in any other game I play.

The general chat is full of helpful, mature players who are capable of seeing past the lack of polish and enjoy the game for what it is, bar a griefer or two, but what do you expect? It's an online community. No community is worse than this one right here, how hypocritical. No community is perfect. Have you even played the game? I bet you were simply ganked once then you quit, forever damning the community for the suffering it caused upon you.

Originally posted by D_TOX

Originally posted by intoExile

What game are you playing D-Tox? The community is the worst, if this was the best you've had I feel sorry for you. No offence, but I hope you stay with Earthrise, just so you won't be in any other game I play.

The general chat is full of helpful, mature players who are capable of seeing past the lack of polish and enjoy the game for what it is, bar a griefer or two, but what do you expect? It's an online community. No community is worse than this one right here, how hypocritical. No community is perfect. Have you even played the game? I bet you were simply ganked once then you quit, forever damning the community for the suffering it caused upon you.

Some earthrise forum posts today.

oh god get over it. u bought it, deal with it! how many fucking useless DvDs, games, beer, drugs, chinese-hoe`s did u buy in the past just because u thought it could be fun?!
 

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD RESTART THE SERVER wtf

tl dr but i voted yes
 

When you give us a time on when the server is going to go down.

STICK TO THE DAMN TIME AND STOP TAKING IT DOWN LIKE 4 MINS EARLIER!

Seriously, learn some time management skills!
 

(Fricken italic, and bold wont turn off..)

Now to be fair, the community has improved some, but honestly, there is still a lot of asshattery in the game. Not to mention, you get to listen to the yell channel in game, the whole time you play, since you cant do anything with the chat options. And you cant ignore anyone.

God i almost forgot the best part speaking of asshattery ingame.

Dont suppose you where there for the kkk/stuck incident?

Basically a guy was getting beat in pvp so he tried to type /unstuck to use the unstuck exploit. except it showed up in global. Then of course he started talking smack in chat about the guy who beat him, not realizing everyone saw his kkk/stuck mistype.

Remember now, this is in a channel that you cant turn off and you cant ignore anyone in game.

So we literally spent 2 hours listening to this guy telling anyone and everyone (I am serious btw, 2 hours)how he was going to violate their mothers and do things to their skulls, racial slurs, the whole nine yards.

Two hours.

No GM in game (there never is) so nobody bothered to boot him or ban him.

Oh and he filled the entire screen with AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

                                                         AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

                                                         AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

for a good 15 minutes so nobody could talk.

SO yeah, bad community and subpar developer support, pretty fair in my mind.

The thing where he wrote AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA is hysterical rofl.

As I have said, the pvp psychopaths take over this type of game with no penalty for pk's. Now were going to get an avalanch of DF types, not to say everyone who plays DF is like that, but alot are.

Remember when the community was really good (pre launch)? Good times...

Originally posted by Gintoh

as I have said, the pvp psychopaths take over this type of game with no penalty for pk's. Now were going to get an avalanch of DF types, not to say everyone who plays DF is like that, but alot are.

Remember when the community was really good (pre launch)? Good times...

I never really understood this need for "community" in MMOs.  Isn't it really about the group of people you directly play with? (guild,squad,clan)  As in life, like minded people will group together.  I have easily witnessed more "psychopaths"  in (carebear) type games in my almost 15 years of MMOs.  I've found real PvPers fight for each other, (guild,group,squad) and the others fight for gear.  

Originally posted by Peckus

Originally posted by Gintoh

Remember when the community was really good (pre launch)? Good times...

 

I never really understood this need for "community" in MMOs.  Isn't it really about the group of people you directly play with? (guild,squad,clan)  As in life, like minded people will group together.

The "community" is what is a new player will have first contact with.  Say a new player jumps into a game, knowing no one else, none of his/her other gaming friends are playing this game, and everyone in said already established game community treats this new player like crap.  If people are complete jerks to this new player, he/she probably will not stay in the game long, which in turn hurts the game.  On the contrary if people are helpful, friendly and at least act like they want this new player to continue playing this game, the chances are, as long as the game fun, they will stick around.  That's at least how I look at it.

A lot of my "online" friends are still stuck in the other games, so often times I am trying games out completely on my own.  If the community seems like a bunch of asshats, I usually don't stick around long.  Yes you are correct, it is more about the direct people you play with (clan, guild, corp, alliance, etc).  But if your first contact with a game is dealing with awful people, why even bother looking for like-minded people.