Earthrise mixes zone preview with lore in The Boneyard
Earthrise is the upcoming post-apocalyptic MMO from Masthead Studios, and a game with a substantial body of lore released already. Masthead Studios had a lore series on IGN in the past, and more recently MMORPG.com has been hosting dev blogs which explain the game's zones and how they are tied in with Earthrise's backstory. The latest dev blog from Masthead Studios is "The Boneyard", and focuses on the game's desert zone.
As with their past combinations of lore releases and zone previews, The Boneyard sets the tone for the game: Humanity was wiped out in World War III. Nuclear and seismic warheads obliterated civilization while nanomachine clouds unleashed bio threats which finished the job.
One such bioweapon was the A.S.H.E.S. virus, released at the end of the third world war, which triggered mutations in what plant and animal life survived. In the centuries that followed the end of the war (and preceding humanity's resurrection via an automated cloning facility), the surface world changed as new species evolved, but a single colony lifeform dominated the oceans.
Eventually, this colony began to emerge from the ocean depths to feed upon the largest source of biomatter remaining in the world -- the island of Enterra where Earthrise is set, and where the players will find themselves in a radically altered and dangerous world.
The Boneyard picks up where Masthead Studios left off with The Hatchery, telling the story of this desert zone strewn with massive ossified remains of god-knows-what, and with a few exclusive screenshots included as well. If Earthrise is one of the MMOs on the horizon that you're keeping up with, The Boneyard at MMORPG.com is worth checking out.
