After shutting down for a year, Earth Eternal has been reborn in North America. Staff Writer Paul "LockeColeMA" Cleveland takes a fresh look at this free-to-play MMO that's full of anthropomorphic animals.

Since we took our first tour of Earth Eternal in 2009, the game has fallen on hard times. Sparkplay Media had to shut the game down in summer 2010 when it ran out of funds. The game was then recently reborn in Japan under the name Ikimonogatari, and now Earth Eternal has made its return to North America in open beta under the direction of TurnOut Ventures and OutBlaze.

The team behind Earth Eternal has said that it's best to think of it as a brand new game, so I decided to dive in and explore the revitalized world. Keep reading after the jump to find out what Earth Eternal is all about!

Earth Eternal's big draw for many has been its huge story. The backstory involved with the game is massive, and includes the origins of most of the game's 12 playable races in a PDF file that is almost 150 pages long. The very shortened version of it is that there were four ages of the world of Earth Eternal, and players are currently in the fourth, the Age of Beasts. The Age of Man has passed, so the setting includes conventional European-inspired and named areas, now filled with various bestial and mythological humanoids. Players can choose any race they desire, as each is based purely on cosmetic looks and has no difference in ability.

The first thing that threw me is that there are no traditional fantasy game races like humans, elves or dwarves. The closest players will find are demonic and clockwork races, but by far most of the races are “furries,” human/animal hybrids such as frogs, foxes and deer. While the term “furry” brings a sour taste to many mouths, the team has made it clear in their terms of service that absolutely no sexual messaging is allowed in their game. And honestly, the closest I came to furry culture was passing by other players with clan names like “Furry Fighters.” However, the game has, for better or for worse, been labeled as a “furry game,” which many regard as both one of the game's strengths (a great sense of community) and weaknesses (a niche gaming environment that can turn off outsiders).

The character customization isn't bad but, at first glance, didn't offer a wide variety of options. Players have complete control over the color of their characters but there are only a few general options for height, build and intensity. The color options themselves I found clunky and difficult to use; instead of a color wheel there is an RGB slider option. After fiddling with it for a while and completely failing to get any semblance of decent coloration on my Yeti, I gave up. A slight plus is that the game allows first and last names. Since the lore is a big draw to players, this allows a bit more freedom creating a story for their characters.

Players also choose one of four classes: knight, rogue, mage and druid. Each class has its own strengths and weaknesses, with knight, rogue and mage being the general archetypes while druid fills the gaps as a “jack of all trades” style with a slight emphasis on archery and healing. One of the best features I found was the hybridization within the class system; upon leveling, players receive ability points that can be spent in several different talent trees. These trees include the trees of the different classes, thus allowing a knight to cast some mage spells or a rogue to heal. The majority of the talents in each tree are locked unless the player is that class, but I'd say around one-third are available for adding points. My druid, for example, took a frostbolt spell from the mage tree for a 15% movement speed debuff and a ranged attack with a chance to stun from the rogue tree, both of which complemented my archery-oriented play style. Abilities are locked by both point-cost and level requirement.

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