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Mihaly: There are four basic classes: Mage, Warrior, Druid, and Sneak. The twist that we’re going to throw in is the ability for players to multiclass. You start off with a particular class, but once you reach a certain skill level in your starting class, you can choose a second class. Finally, after reaching a certain status level you’ll be able to multilclass again into a third class. However, the second class and third class skills will cost more than the first class. To explain further, if you start off as a Warrior and multiclass into a Mage, you’ll never be as highly touted as a person who started as a Mage.

It’s a little scary balancing this sort of system, because there are just so many variables. It also makes it interesting to see what’s going to happen when people get in groups, and they really won’t know exactly what kind of Warrior or Mage a particular person is, but we’ll see what happens when we get there. We’re really looking forward to see how it plays out.

Mihaly: It’s a level-based skill system, where every level you’ll be given points to distribute in a skill tree. There are some main branches that you’ll need to go down, but you’ll eventually begin choosing specializations as you traverse along this tree. It’s similar to the idea of the talent tree in World of Warcraft, but it’s the basis of your character rather than an extraneous part of your development.  

Players will probably want to go through most of the major branches in their main class, but I’m sure many players will be excited about the prospect of advancing in their secondary and tertiary classes when they achieve them.

Mihaly: Groves are an instanced space that belongs to you and/or your friends – like your guild – and is anywhere that’s visually bounded. It could be an island surrounded by water or a valley that’s got steep sides. It can be two miles across or a hundred meters across. That’s the player’s space to collect and put things in. When players are hunting they can collect monsters to put in these groves and you’ll eventually create a menagerie of monsters that people can come in and view.

You’ll be able to expand your Groves as well, but we haven’t thoroughly thought out our business plan for that yet.

Mihaly: We like the virtual goods business model because it means that the entire game is available for free, and we’re really looking to give players certain augmentations with the virtual items rather than allowing them to buy levels or XP. It’s small advantages rather than big things that might break the game. Real game gold is also not something that we’re interested in selling to other players or allowing players to cash out of the game.

Mihaly: Let me go through them in my head. *lists them out*

Mihaly: I’m really of two minds when it comes to “furries.” On one hand, I’m not a furry, and I don’t want to be one of those guys who just denies it. I’m really not. I had never heard of the word “yiffing” before until I started Earth Eternal. Then someone told me that we’re going to get so much yiffing in our game, and I had to ask what it meant.

We’re certainly not opposed to them playing, but there won’t be any explicit emotes in the game. We can’t stop any sort of chat sex, as long as they’re doing it privately.

Honestly, I think that community is a little persecuted. It’s not why we created the game, but I don’t like the way they treated by some outside individuals. I don’t understand why they’re hated so much. They’re very weird, there’s no doubt about that. It’s really out there. But there are certainly freaky people doing weird heterosexual acts as well.

Mihaly: We really wanted to find a niche for our game somewhere in this crowded marketplace. We initially went for the hyper violent, super sexual game, but we didn’t have the budget to make it really stand out visually. We just realized it was going to be really half-assed by the time we got done.

After that, we decided to go cartoony. We knew that everyone loves “anthro” animals, both in the East and the West, and no one has really made a full-scale anthro-based game. That’s how it happened!

Do you think Earth Eternal can avoid the “furry” stigma? Are you interested in playing a game with “anthro” characters? Let us know on the forums!