History
Development for Earth and Beyond began in 1997 and was originally designated as Project G. By 2001 Westwood had created content for over 100 sectors of playable space. Public Beta for the game began on March 9, 2002, allowing up to 100,000 new players to roam the sectors and test content. The finished game launched on September 24, 2002. It was initially shipped in limited quantities to retailers to allow for smooth experience as new players sign on to the servers. In January 2003, the main story line and accompanying events began. This required all players to download a patch and wait for servers to be upgraded. This was the first of regular monthly story driven updates designed to gradually change the game environment as the plot unfolded. In June that year, players met a new race - the Vrix. This was a substantial update to the online universe, adding many more missions for higher level players and improving the intelligence of all NPCs in the game.
Read more about this topic: Earth & Beyond
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)