Back in the pre-Web days, I was a huge fan of bulletin board systems (BBSes). Even was a co-sysop for a while. Even then, we had multiplayer games online, though only a handful of people could log into each BBS at once. One of the most popular games was Trade Wars, wherein players schlepped items from one planet to another (to make a profit), and along the way fought against each other and NPC pirates.

Trade Wars led to games like Privateer and Tachyon: The Fringe and, now, Earth & Beyond.

Earth & Beyond has a whole lot of good points and even more potential. Were it single-player, it’d maybe be on par with Privateer; as an MMORPG, it’s an engaging, evolving galaxy with some killer visuals.

From the outset, the player is asked to choose a character. Humans are traders based on Earth, Progen are genetically engineered warriors based on Mars and Jenquai are explorers and intellectuals based on a station orbiting Jupiter. Each race has a few specialty classes, each with its own set of strengths and weaknesses.

The three races warred, thanks to the discovery of mysterious gates near each home world. The appearance of aliens from said gates, however, has led to a fragile truce. While this plot serves as a backdrop, and does factor into some missions, players will mostly cruise the starlanes trading items, hunting NPC enemies and surfing job boards. In this way, E&B reminds me a lot of the Black Isle RPGs – lots of throwaway secondary jobs to boost experience, with the occasional plot-moving mission.

Let me get sidetracked here by some problems: First, plot-moving missions don’t actually change the plot. The galaxy has to be unchanged for folks of all levels, see, so the NPC you’re tasked with arresting can’t actually leave the station. The dialogue is a bit clever about covering this up. Second and more important, once done with the new-player missions, anything goes. The very next mission you get could be far beyond your abilities. Couple this with the fact that a player can only have six missions at one time, and you get into some frustration. (Yes, some missions can be forfeited and redone later, but that’s really annoying.)

I started my E&B career as a Jenquai Explorer – I’m not big on guilds, and combat in these things tends to be skewed against new types, so I figured I’d spend my time as the mysterious loner who returns from the depths of unknown space with exotic artifacts. I should have been deterred by the fact that Explorers have the absolute lowest offense and defense ratings.

See, teamwork and guild membership are really important in E&B – heck, the game awards you bonuses for both. My dreams of playing the mysterious loner are quickly dying, even at an overall level of 30. (As of this writing, I haven’t joined any guilds, so hit the e-mail link and make me an offer.)

Speaking of levels, each player has combat, exploration and trade ratings. Each station has jobs for each of those three, though of course each can be raised by, say, going out and blowing up baddies or running a shipment of goods to another planet. The player gains one level overall (and a skill point) for each time a rating levels up.

What I really love about the game is that it was built with expansion in mind. Each station has many locked doors – it won’t be long before we see new stuff behind them, I think. Plus, there’s plenty of room to add more NPCs, more locations, even entire stations and planets. What I’d love to see is more player involvement. This happens at a crude level – players can meet to trade items – but it’d be even better to allow players to open their own shops on stations. That’d give even more incentive for folks to mine asteroids, shop for goods or loot baddies, all of which can be tedious.

Most folks talk about combat, which leads us into gameplay. Flying is simple; right click to thrust forward, move the mouse to move. In combat, weapons and skills are mapped to the number keys, so you can navigate with one hand and fire with the other. (Yes, this sometimes gets folks killed – “folks” meaning me, who’s died more than once because I was pressing wormhole rather than shield leech.) If your ship is destroyed, it can be towed back to the last visited station for XP debt. In other words, most of your experience for a while after destruction will go toward paying back said debt, after which you continue to level normally.

(Quick strategy tip: Logging off for a few hours also reduces debt. So I spend most of my time building stats with low-danger jobs, then go for the risky stuff just before I’ll be logging off for the night.)

E&B’s graphics are amazing, with some very pretty effects. Ships and characters can both be customized, so it’s rare to see the same design twice on either. Sound is good, with background music that changes from the lull of space to the danger of combat to funky techno in stations.

Here’s to hoping the E&B universe gets a chance to grow. Once the devs throw in more events and expand the stations to include more playing interaction, the game will give oldsters like EverQuest a run for their money.