Earth Eternal not so eternal after all...
It appears Earth Eternal is not so, as it was shut down for the second time on November 21st, 2011 at 9:00PM EST. No reason was cited, but the game's website (and that of its Japanese version, Ikimonogatari), were withdrawn, with an announcement on the project's Facebook page the sole notice — much to the outrage of fans in the comments.
Earth Eternal was a post-apocalyptic/neo-medieval furry MMORPG started by now-bankrupt Sparkplay Media. In late 2010, the game was shut down for a few months, put on the auction block and sold to TurnOut Ventures.
TurnOut decided to contract Japanese game maker Sankando to make an all-new Japanese version (Ikimonogatari, or "A Kemono's Story"), with new kemono models that would replace the originals in Earth Eternal. While the two games remained separate, the second incarnation of Earth Eternal inherited many of Ikimonogatari's features and qualities — while removing many races from the original.
With the new North America beta, all accounts from previous Earth Eternal releases were purged, the browser version was dropped, and the game required a Facebook account to join.
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Ringtailed Fox — read stories — contact (login required)a freelance editor & writer and Fox-raccoon hybrid from Windsor, Ontario, Canada, interested in bicycle riding, reading and video games
Comments
Yeah, I knew it wouldn't last a second time. I honestly hoped that maybe something would come of it being bought out, but when I logged in and saw that there were fewer races (most of which I didn't like the looks of), the landscape was virtually untouched, and that it was WAY buggier than before, I knew that it would be doomed. I played Runescape for four or five years, (mostly because it was free and worked on dial-up), and I have recently realized that while it may have been fun for a time, Jagex is trying to make up for something that should have had these same graphics four or five years ago! Even so, I think that they would have done a much better job with EE.
Maybe one day we will have our MMO.
Silly game designers, furries like pseudonyms which aren't allowed on facebook, that's half your problem right there.
That aside I've once or twice tried to play a Facebook game but they ask for the game to read all your info and to be able to post as you and all sorts of weird things. I click 'no' I won't let them do that and then they just don't let me play. Most of the stuff they want is completely unnecessary.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
Yeah, this is just poor design on their part. What they should be doing is to get you hooked, then ask you for those permissions when they actually need them. It's possible, just more complicated than asking for them all at once.
I honestly think it's a mistake to market any sort of online roleplaying game through a method that requires one to reveal private details in a meaningful way. Look at the outcry that surrounded Blizzard's RealID, outcry by their own World of Warcraft players.
I think this intrinsically has to do with the nature of an RPG and similar games - we play them as escapism. They're a way out of reality, we don't want to see our name screamed at us whenever we decide to play or interact with that game's community.
If I'm playing Shadow Era (a digital trading card game that I absolutely love the heck out of, since it has werewolves), I can interact with people as 'That Auld Wulf' or similar. I don't have to be 'Mr. Real Name Here,' which would creep me out on every level, and certainly go a ways toward alienating me and making me dubious of the developer's intents.
When we play games like those, we play them to get away from reality. So tying such a game into Facebook at all is a grandly humongous mistake, a mistake similar to Real ID. I think this game or a game like it could have a fair shake if it had the right people running it.
Shame, really. Good ideas, poor execution and all that.
Still, the cause isn't lost because for the past couple of years it seems like furries (or related beasts) have been trending, so we may yet still see games like this. I was truly surprised to see werewolves in the aforementioned digital trading card game, and it's always a delight to come across something like that.
And really, if we're talking MMORPGs... I think at this point it's fair to say that Champions Online is probably the closest thing to an official furry RPG that there is. They've done a lot to cater to their furry audience, and they seem to have more on the way.
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