Rock, Paper, Shotgun

This is an odd one: a trailer which combines what is clearly in-game footage minus the UI (complete with some bunny hopping) and footage that is obviously pre-scripted stuff. Anyway, it gives us a good glimpse of some of the environments and characters in motion – which are intriguing enough, if bland in places – and introduces laser action for the first time. All of this makes Masthead’s sci-fi MMO all the more interesting. Earthrise is something of an odd fish, with both real-time XP grinding and offline advancement, as in Eve Online. It’s got a huge PvE world, the size of Azeroth, but also territorial PvP between guilds. It’s not exactly looking super big-budget, but there’s nevertheless a good chance this might actually last longer than Tabula Rasa – assuming Masthead don’t aim too high… Anyway, the beta sign up is on the site, so it might be worth putting your name down.
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Edit – comments closed on this because it’s attracting an insane amount of spam, for some reason. If anyone desperately wants to add a comment to this story, just lemme know and I’ll open ‘er up again.

All eyes are on Conan and Warhammer, MMO-wise, at the moment. While both are undeniably exciting, they’re still clinging onto the same fantasy lifeboat as their established competition. Rippling muscles, mystic blades and snickering goblins – pah, I say. Pah. With Tabula Rasa proving that you can make a classic-model MMO that’s built around shooting instead of stabbing, there’s clearly room for a few more science-fictional efforts.

The announcement of Earthrise earlier this week is surely good news for laserbrains, then.
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