Masthead releases first Earthrise expansion, reactivates old accounts

Today marks a significant milestone for Earthrise, the indie sci-fi sandbox from Masthead Studios. A rather large patch has made its way to the live servers, and the changes are so numerous that Masthead's press release labels the update as Earthrise's first expansion.

The big kahuna in terms of new content is the Territorial Wars functionality, and the patch notes mention new zones with bases ripe for the capturing as well as the ability for guilds to construct various economic and military structures. Speaking of guilds, leaders can now make use of a new ranking and permission system, and Earthrise now sports both friend and ignore lists in addition to improved client performance.

The patch also brings a laundry list of weapon effect changes, combat re-balancing, and bug fixes, all of which are viewable via the patch notes on the official Earthrise forums. If all that's not enough to whet your appetite, consider that Masthead has reduced the initial client cost by 40% as well as gifted all previous account holders with 10 days of free play.

Reader Comments (21)

Has anyone here played this? Is it any good?

@TheMustacheHero

Only played it around launch and some time after that and it left a lot to be desired back then. This first "expansion" contains features that they left out at launch it seems.

Maybe there has been significant improvements, but some caution might be good also.

Added friend and ignore lists? Wow. I had heard things were missing, but... Well. Congratulations on entering into paid beta stage Earthrise!

@Transientmind

I guess the fact they're heralding such basic features says it all.

I guess they may even allow you to remap your controls by now! :O

Or maybe that's waiting in another expansion.

@Transientmind

My thoughts exactly. No wonder this game was such a massive flop.

It's like a kind of drug haze... every so often the word 'Earthrise' floats through my conciousness and I try to remember to check it out, but it keeps slipping away again. Hey Dr. Massively, can we... investigate this Earthrise thing? It's Masthead after all!

The price reduction was necessary. Putting down $60 to even download the game in the first place, in its launch state, was a crime.

Nice image, American History X anyone?

@(Unverified)

I was thinking Fight Club.

I watched this game forever...then there was no news..then there was release. Scared me enough to avoid it and heard of nightmares of performance issues. Reading some of the forums seem to indicate they have made strides there and I may have to give it a try.

I tried this game 2 months ago and it was downright horrible. Masthead should have waited another couple years to release this game. Environments were nice thugh.

This is one of those games I regret purchasing. Up there with MO and Xsyon. I refuse to install it back onto my computer, no matter what the patch changed. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Not doing it.

@MMOaddict can I have your account info so I can try it =) I promise to be nice

I couldn't get it to work on my computer, crashed constantly. Character creation seemed cool though. =p

@Plastic Frankly don't feel bad, I doubt it was your computer. This is unfortunately another of the oh-so-typical launch of a beta product. I'm amazed it hasn't been forced either to shut down or go "freemium" yet, but I'm sure it will.

I can haz trial? Please?

It's still a horribly mediocre offering, that combat engine / ui mechanic is TERRIBLE!

@JohnLane

lolol; loll fail

i was one of the fools who bought it day 1 and stuck with it thinking it would get better til may.......it never did..these guys are terrible developers.so many basic mmo features are just making it in...for the first 2 months there was no auto stacking in your inventory..you had to hand stack every single thing you picked up....not to meantion it took 3(almost 4) months for them to put actually fix there pvp combat...yea these brilliant devs had a feature that automatically removed your character from being online if you alt f4ed out....so guess what????if you came up on someone in the wild and they were losing the fight...THEY alt f4ed to save there loot.that alone ran most the player base off...along with broken promises and terrible road map times.STAY FAR AWAY from this shit stain.wait for planet side or darkfall 2.0

@blix2006

You are talking about past things that most people observed and reported. It really doesn't matter what happened months ago. What matters is the current state of the game. Seems like the new patch is great and the game is worth a trial. Guess what, it is on sale at D2D - $12. I am buying it now, it is worth trying even for the sake of it.

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Masthead releases first Earthrise expansion, reactivates old accounts

Reader Comments (21)

Posted: Jul 13th 2011 6:03PM TheMustacheHero said

Posted: Jul 13th 2011 6:29PM Sente said

Posted: Jul 13th 2011 6:08PM Transientmind said

Posted: Jul 13th 2011 7:00PM Popplewell said

Posted: Jul 14th 2011 9:55AM Harley Dude said

Posted: Jul 13th 2011 6:18PM pcgneurotic said

Posted: Jul 13th 2011 6:22PM cowboyhugbees said

Posted: Jul 13th 2011 6:28PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 14th 2011 9:13AM Bladerunner83 said

Posted: Jul 13th 2011 6:42PM Halldorr said

Posted: Jul 13th 2011 7:01PM Krayzjoel said

Posted: Jul 13th 2011 7:10PM MMOaddict said

Posted: Jul 13th 2011 8:16PM The Minn said

Posted: Jul 13th 2011 7:21PM Plastic said

Posted: Jul 13th 2011 11:02PM Saker said

Posted: Jul 13th 2011 8:44PM bcrfan said

Posted: Jul 13th 2011 8:53PM Darkstryke said

Posted: Jul 14th 2011 2:05AM cordinate said

Posted: Jul 14th 2011 10:18AM blix2006 said

Posted: Jul 14th 2011 5:54PM theorb said

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