Westwood har åbnet dørene på vid gab og i løbet af de kommende måneder håber man på at kunne samle 100.000 Beta-testere til Westwoods store nye Online satsning, Earth and Beyond. Er du frisk på at deltage?
Der er imidlertid nogen begrænsninger, som gør sig gældende, man skal nemlig være over 18 år og så selvfølgelig have en PC som opfylder de tekniske mindstekrav.
Spillet sendes på gaden i august 2002 og de næste måneder vil der blive testet for fuld skrald frem til releasen. Du finder ansøgningskemaet og al den information der er nødvendig på de officielle Beta-test sider .
Her følger en lille beskrivelse af bla. de nye features, som er implementeret: Players captain their own starships and live star-spanning adventures as they explore, trade and fight with thousands of others. Testers will be part of the creation process and will see the universe take shape around them as the developers add more sectors, planets, missions, quests, monsters, characters, features, evolving plot lines and more.
Testers will also become founding members of the Earth & Beyond community, giving them access to exclusive game information, contests, message boards, chats with the development team and special offers from EA.
The Earth & Beyond development team continues to add new features to the game and testers have seen (and helped to improve) these recent additions:
- A galactic navigation system - Players have instant access to a map of the galaxy that grows with every new sector they visit. It also serves as an auto-pilot, making for easy navigation across the stars.
- Fully-customizable avatars and starships - Players can customize their ships and avatars in thousand of ways, everything from choosing the body type and color, to mounting hundreds of different weapons, shields, engines and exotic technologies.
- New player ships - All player ships were designed by Doug Chiang, the Academy Award(tm) winning art director of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.
- Expanded avatar interaction - Players now see a visual representation of their character when outside their starship, and can interact with other players and game characters while inside a starbase.
- More than 40 unique skills - Each player archetype now has more than 40 skills and abilities to use while fighting, trading and exploring the galaxy.