There's been a few discussions about this before. Obviously the game you like better is going to depend on your particular tastes. For most of us, we much prefer having a real sense of combat rather than the extroardinarily dumbed-down combat of Earth & Beyond. I was in the beta for E&B myself, and others here have played at least a trial run. We're just not impressed by the gameplay.

I also think there's going to be a much better, much tighter storyline in Freelancer. I don't even know if E&B really has a storyline that players get directly involved in, but even if it does I don't think it'll be as good as Freelancer's.

Also the multiplay is alot smaller (you could probably run up 32 players on a top of the line dedicated server with a good pipeline) and as Starkiller said there is actual combat, a coherent storyline, also you don't haveto pay $10 bucks a month to play

I rule the world incognito!

The fact you have to pay 10 and up $ to play E&B and EVE is the reason I wont buy those games.

For one thing, the combat ins E&B consists of pushing a button. Second, you have to deal with idiot humans. Third, as MechWarrior pointed out, the montly fee turns a lot of people off. FL has MP that is a lot like a MMO game, without the fee. I'm sure FL will do pretty good, both games are good but very seperate. E&B is more like Everquest than it is like FL.

Earth and Beyond could have been great, except the combat system sucks, and there is no PVP.

Everquest in space, ahoy!

Please do not turn this thread into a E&B is bad thread! Combare, argue, but not just "E&B sucks"....

Best Regards
Christian "Bargib" Koerner
Editor in Chief, The Lancers Reactor

I like games i only have to paid once for. I also like games that have both freedom to do things and a story line. That is Freelancer to a tea.

May luck is either good or bad so I'm First to kill or first to dead

I hope you didn't interpret mine as an "E&B sucks" post - it wasn't.
I simply meant it wasn't for me, it's fun for a while, but I need tension between players, and the ability to act on these and become hostile. It's still an entertaining game.

Well, I'm downloading the E&B trial (a 1.05 Gig) so I can give my opinion on E&B. But for opinion on FL, you have to wait a tad longer

so, we don't have to pay anything to play online Freelancer???
i was under the impression a year ago that it was going to cost $$ because it was a persistent universe.

Playing Freelancer online is like playing Quake 3 online. You're not likely to find a persistent server that will accomodate more than 128 people anytime soon, though.

Freelancer Online is a separate idea, and whether or not it ever gets made depends on the popularity of Freelancer. That most certainly would be a pay-for-online-play service.

What I was thinking was something like NeverWinter Nights, where I can save my character on a server out there. I can go back to that server anytime and play as that character, having my level and weapons saved from when I last played. NeverWinter is free also.

Oh, sorry. I only meant it was like Quake 3 in the sense that server access was free.

DA wanted to make sure that one would NEVER have to pay to play online with Freelancer, which is why they only support fan based servers. Microsoft will be providing a global list server so anyone playing online can see if the server they like, or have built up their character, is up and running. So far it works great, just that there aren't a lot of servers running with the PR build. In fact, there are basically none so I use my machine as server and run mulitplayer that way.

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