Yes
, sadly, like everyone else we’re not going to make our original release date. We were aiming for a late summer open beta but instead we’re looking at a late fall open beta I think. It’s never fun to go over budget but my god is it worth it. If you had showed us a year ago what Earth Eternal was going to look like in terms of our tech (which is the main hold-up) we would have told you you’re smoking crack. We were aiming for “one step above Runescape” but have blown way, way past that target.
We told ourselves in the beginning that the #1 rule we would follow would be never to let the quality bar rise (as raising it costs money and we’re on a tight budget) but that is really hard to avoid doing if you’ve got any passion for what you’re creating, and so it’s happened in spades. Thank goodness we let it happen as though it’s costing us extra raising that bar is really looking like it’s going to be worth it.
Stomping down on feature/quality creep is truly difficult I have to say. Every day we find something new we can do with the platform we’re building but at this point we have to just grit our teeth and file the idea away in the “sometime post-release” category.
I can’t wait until I can post screenshots openly. In the meantime if you want you can search the ‘Game Design’ section of the Earth Eternal forums at for some prototype shots.
5 comments
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April 30th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
Boon
While I hate to see you go over budget, I am glad that your not going to push the game early. Vanguard taught a valuable lesson, and that is releasing early is a very bad thing for these types of games in this type of market where they are dozens of others out there waiting to snag your entertainment dollars.
I do wish you and the team all the success pushing forward and hope the game is all and more than you expected it to be when envisioning it years ago.
April 30th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
Matt
Thanks Boon!
I will say though that EE is not going to release at a ‘completeness’ level that you’d expect from, say, Blizzard. Our goal is to have reasonable polish on what we do have but we recognize that this necessarily means limiting what we do have in terms of content and gameplay systems.
May 1st, 2007 at 2:12 am
steve
Whilst I’m sad to hear the release has been pushed back, I’m glad it’s for the right reasons. Looking forward to those new official shots!
May 1st, 2007 at 3:29 am
Cousin Martha
Hey Matt,
I can only imagine that it’s like building a house…you have your ‘needs’ and ‘wants’ and then you are on the slippery slope to ‘well that only adds a few dollars to the whole price and oh my gosh it’ll be fantastic’ catagory.
I for one am cheering you on to further great gaming Matt (if you recall I tried achaea once for 10 minutes!).
July 28th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Little Kaimanawa
I cant wait to see Earth Eternal come out. It looks like so much fun to play. It makes it even better that you dont have to download so my computer doesnt get crowded up with the files of my gaming fetish. Yes, I am bad about my gaming
. I play Fiesta and by the looks of the graphics and the screen shots EE is gonna out shoot Fiesta by a million miles. Fiesta is just simple Anime artwork, but EE looks like my type of game. Animals, no downloads, all I want in a game! Keep up the good work, Earth Eternal Team!
from,
Little Kaimanawa