Matt Mihaly's Earth Eternal announced

[CmdrSlack]

How the hell do you even remotely find a community that a furry would be part of? What kind of crowds are those then? Where do these people come from? Like I said, I never knew any of them existed until someone here said something about SirBruce.

Nowadays, I don't think you could really 'stumble upon' furry stuff, unless you wanted to. Back in the nascent days of the intardnet, it was easier than you'd think.

Given that there was a CSI episode about furries and a BBC mini-documentary (amongst other things) I'd venture that it's quite a bit easier to run across furry stuff than you think.

I'm glad that we can trust you to catalogue all appearances of furries everywhere.  Clearly, you are just taking one for the team.  Can you publish a pamphlet that helps teh rest of us avoid them?   :-D

[squirrel]

We don't just see animal sex.  We see hot animal MONKEY sex!

Fuck ya baby - let the monkey brain reign - what do we see? HOT MONKEY SEX! HOT MONKEY SEX! HOT MONKEY SEX!

Ok then, I'm done for a bit...

[Modern Angel]

You can subscribe to my newsletter, yes. What can I say, I'm a junkie for weird shit like dead baby sites and furry convention videos. Sue me.

[HaemishM]

Personally, I don't care what people do as long as they don't tell me anything unless I ask. 

This is the way I am as well. My problem with furries is that I don't think I've ever met a furry that could resist telling me they were a furry, then defending furdom as "normal" when I got all weirded out by the idea. I don't care if you are a furry so long as I don't know about it. The minute I do, I just want to go back to that warm puddle of ignornance about your sexual fetishes, a place that I didn't picture you getting assfucked by a dude in a unicorn costume while watching Care Bears' episodes.

[HaemishM]

When I said "crap" I of course meant "crap for me". And it is, I don't like the premise at all, and knew what the premise was before knowing anything about the game because of who it was made by/for. :P

Oh yeah, I just obviously have a different opinion.  I just get weary with the general "SL sucks and is full of sex perverts" meme.  While it's largely true, there's some value in it if you look for it.  Also, I like building stuff -- it's like legos, but with lag and more flexibility.

It's full of pr0n of all types too, including user-built pr0n.

One should always know where there are sources of pr0n.

[Signe]

It'd true... we'd be none the wiser unless they galloped up to us in a big fuzzy panda suit and tell us with their very own soft plushy muzzles.  I enjoy being none the wiser.

Dammit.

[bhodi]

No, I can't even grief this. It's too painful.

[img ]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v371/EmpyreanBand/catform.jpg[/img]

[Nonentity]

No, I can't even grief this. It's too painful.

[img ]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v371/EmpyreanBand/catform.jpg[/img]

...

Ew. :(

[Yegolev]

Sounds like you lost your.......FURGINITY.

I think Trouble wins.  Let's put this behind us.  I mean, forget about it.

[Calantus]

I'm glad that we can trust you to catalogue all appearances of furries everywhere.  Clearly, you are just taking one for the team.  Can you publish a pamphlet that helps teh rest of us avoid them?   :-D

I was going to do the "You sound awfully defencive, are you sure you're not a furry?" line, but then I realised that if you were a furry you'd have told us already.

[CmdrSlack]

Heh, nope, not a furry, just someone who doesn't understand being hung up on their existence.  Considering that I said earlier that they're not my cup of tea, you'd have been wrong anyway.   

[Soln]

seems like EE has responded to this issue today (via KTR):

This game looks awfully 'furry.' Is it?
That depends on your point of view. We, the developers, are not developing this as a 'furry' game. None of us are furries and the game doesn't really embrace what we, at least, think are furry themes (though as we're not furries, we're not experts on this).

Having said this, we realize that our choice of anthropomorphic characters (ie humanoid animals) is likely to attract a fair number of furries. We're ok with that, and if there are enough furries, we'll consider creating a dedicated furry server. We will not, however, be ok with public sex, and won't be providing any sexual animations or content, furry or otherwise.

[Signe]

I emailed him when the thread disolved into furridom and he told me that too:

Hi Signe,

Thanks for the support!

I went and read the f13 thread but yeah, as you say, the thread kind of
devolved pretty quickly into discussions of furriness (for the record, we
intend to try to segregate the 'furries' from the other people playing the
game, by providing them their own server).

--matt

I thought he was kidding but now I'm not so sure!  I like humour and I can say sincerely that MUD devs have seen everything and can handle nearly anything.  A good sense of humour is an absolute staple.  Of course, I'll give this a go... I give everything a go.  And I used to love BatMUD!  I will be a bunny, of course, and not on a furry server, which I suggest they name Slurry.  Hopefully, he'll come back and chat with us as things develop.  With luck it'll be more fun than furry. 

[Lantyssa]

ARISE!

Beta Keys to get your furry on.

http://www.freemmogamer.com/2009/01/earth-eternal-closed-beta-keys-giveaway.html

http://tentonhammer.com/giveaways/ee_beta

The Ten Ton Hammer one requires an account.  The other you just click on the 'gimmie' button and it's done.

[Ghambit]

How's the NDA?
I was invited to Beta but getting my furry on isnt something I'm good at.  Is there anything "anti"-furry in the game?  Like a redneck hunter or something?

[Lantyssa]

No idea on the NDA.  I was told they have keys and that's all I've done, so you know as much or more than I do now.  Work's been hectic today.

[Aez]

I grabbed a key from Massively and made an account but it doesn't recognize the key.  Bye.

[kondratti]

WTF!

Our beta servers are only live on Thursday 3-6 PM PST, Saturday 12-8 PM PST and Sunday 12-8 PST.

Why bother running a beta if you are barely going to have servers up?

[Ghambit]

WTF!

Our beta servers are only live on Thursday 3-6 PM PST, Saturday 12-8 PM PST and Sunday 12-8 PST.

Why bother running a beta if you are barely going to have servers up?

It's a trick to only take opinion on folks with genuine interest in testing.  Happens a lot.  I'm not that interested though.

[Bzalthek]

Naw, that's when their Mom is out drinking and they can run her computer as a server.

[Nonentity]

Welp, I got my key. My foxman will have a phallus that puts others to shame.

[Signe]

I grabbed a key from Massively and made an account but it doesn't recognize the key.  Bye.

They issued (or ussued, as they spelled it in the email) new  keys due to some error or something.  I got an email with a new key the other day.  I haven't downloaded it yet or anything though. 

[Mrbloodworth]

I enjoy the artwork done for this game. Cant say i have paid much more atention than that. I hear they are unabashedly aiming for kids and early teens. It will probably work.

[Pennilenko]

The armor refashioner thing is  .

[weblegend]

I found http://contest.bbgsite.com/giveaway/earth_eternal/ has more free keys if you still are interested to try Earth Eternal :D

[schild]

I found http://contest.bbgsite.com/giveaway/earth_eternal/ has more free keys if you still are interested to try Earth Eternal :D

Thanks for the link, I've deleted you because you'll never show up again anyway.

[UnwashedMasses]

necro

Earth Eternal is in open beta now.  I spent several hours on this trying to figure it out.  Not the gameplay, that is quite straightforward.  But the business model.  Anyway, here are some thoughts.

EE is a free-to-play browser-based MMO with microtransactions.  The gameplay will be quite familiar to anyone who has played, well, any MMO.  The basic quest grind is there.  No PVP.  Crafting is there, but I never accumulated enough mats to make anything.  Only saw one recipe drop, and some mats dropped that apparently didn't go along with my recipe.  It is streamlined PvE questing: go kill ten boars, kill a named, collect plants, fedex.  Some instancing.

Graphics are nice for a flash/browser based game.  Certainly no LOTRO, but that isn't what they were going for here.  Art style is cartoony and pleasantly mythic, maybe childlike.

Character generation is simple.  You choose from a wide variety of races, most of which are furry.  A few non-furry races were added, so I picked one of those.  Race is purely cosmetic.  A few very basic customizations, but you can be any color you want.  Four class choices: Knight (tank vs DPS), Rogue (melee DPS), Mage (?ranged nuke), and Druid (ranged + heals).  I don't know who does crowd control, etc because I never needed a big group doing the lower level stuff.  Anyway, you choose your race, class, and first and last names and off you go.

Newbie areas are well done.  Tutorial island, followed by a larger island newbie area, followed by an even larger island newbie area before being ported to the "main" world.  Definitely by the time you get to the main world you have the basic gameplay down.

World shards exist but you can move from one to another, and global chat is "regional" across all shards.  Chat is adequate with the expected channels, tells, clans, and a few emotes.  Servers seem stable.  Nothing blatantly broken that I found.

I did not see any player economy, but I've only made it to about level 15 or so.

Combat is autoattack with special attacks on a quickbar.  Autoattack doesn't do much so you'll be watching those cooldown timers.  Some skills combo off of each other.

The longer you PVE without dying the better your item drops: increased "Luck."  When you die, you have an option of paying gold to mitigate the loss of Luck.  Forego the gold loss and you and take on a timed stat penalty as well as having to rebuild more Luck.  No item loss or exp loss.

Lots of gear and loot drops, at least as a lowbie.  Drag and drop inventory and paper doll.

Skill progression is done with ability points, which you get a few each level and can buy with credits (fairly cheaply, too).  At level 15, I had enough points for all of the skills that were available in my class.  If I wanted some extra healing skills, I would have to pick up some credits.  Looks like a lot of skills, and you can cross to other class skills with enough points.  I believe some core skills are restricted to class, however.

Money is made by buying credits.  Credits are used in an online credit shop accessible at all times from your in-game UI.  Most of the purchases are temporary buffs, like run speed, exp gain, and modest stat boosts.  There are some more interesting ones: a way to sell vendor trash at 80% of shop value, increased inventory space, and a turkey hat.  Aside:  I am very much over holiday celebrations in my MMOGs.  Not to go all "war on christmas" here, but the world does not need another online pumpkin helm or turkey hat or Harvest Festival.  Anyway, you can also get credits by buying third-party products through the EE web gateway, which is interesting.

Permanent stat boosts are possible, but capped and expensive.  A 15% increase in a base stat (does not count equip bonuses) is $30/3000 credits.  Some forum goers are complaining that this is not a good buy.  I guess we will see what the market will bear.

Since this is a browser based game, I decided to try EE on my work box, which is a piece of utter junk.  And the game runs; a few crashes, but overall it's playable.

I've played other IRE games, been off and on Achaea for years.  Thrown a few bucks Matt's way.  Other than the existence of credits and macro-microtransactions, this game has nothing in common with the text-based worlds.  Which is fine.  The question is:  In 2009, with all my other options, do I still want to kill ten boars, even for free? 

And finally, this game is furry.  Very furry.  I'm sure they knew this fact when they were building it, but damn.           

[Malakili]

  The question is:  In 2009, with all my other options, do I still want to kill ten boars, even for free? 

And finally, this game is furry.  Very furry.  I'm sure they knew this fact when they were building it, but damn.           

Sooooo cannibalism then?

[UnwashedMasses]

  The question is:  In 2009, with all my other options, do I still want to kill ten boars, even for free? 

And finally, this game is furry.  Very furry.  I'm sure they knew this fact when they were building it, but damn.           

Sooooo cannibalism then?

I see it more as an internecine feud. 

Anyway, there are 140 pages of lore, maybe it gets explained there.

[schild]

Pedobear has nothing to do with furries.

[Bzalthek]

[Teleku]

Wow, I missed this thread the first time around, and now its been rezzed.

Wow.

[kondratti]

Wooo... I cant wait to make me a Randicoon.... 

[Signe]

Matt Mihaly swore that he wasn't going for the furry crowd, but I don't see how he wasn't.  This extreme furriness couldn't be an accident!

But a turkey hat!  It almost tempts me.  Almost.

[Yegolev]

It's like Furtopia threw up on a copy of Lord of the Rings.

Prognostication accurate?
[ ] Yes
[ ] No