Positive or Negative?

[Fierce]

Just a poll to find people's thoughts

[Sigi]

And where is the positive or negative in this poll?
(No) change can go both ways.

[Takora Drakan]

And why you ask 2 years? Would be better if it was 5 years because the game will be soon 5 years old.

[Zexoin]

Before the EI days I suppose, the Tulga era

[Fierce]

Funny to see people's posts on how there has been no change with this game in the past couple years... I wanted to see a show of hands for what people are thinking or have thought about the status of Istaria and why they say they are leaving and have left b/c of no new content or change within the game itself.

[velveeta]

no sure what the reason for the poll is, but i answered 'great change' anyway.....
from my perspective, the last 2 years have been the depths of despair and the highs of happiness, with no grey area in between to cushion the blows.......

[Fierce]

For all the people who come back to Istaria and say "nothing" has changed...

[Sigi]

Nothing has changed.
I still enjoy playing Istaria, I still have a lot of goals to reach, I still like most people I meet in game.

A lot has changed.
Shards merged, lands changed, Unity died, Unitarians were revived, quests and stories and events and mobs were added.

[Fierce]

Great post Sigi, that's exactly the input i'm looking for!!

[Salama]

I'd say there's been great changes lately. (especially for us old Unity players - we got a new home! )
And we keep getting new additions and quests pretty regularly. Sure, gameplay or the world maybe haven't changed a lot but that's just fine for me.

[Teto Frum]

I voted little change, but by no means intend it as any indication that i feel Vi isnt working.

When i left about 3 months ago or so id say very little had changed from a game play aspect, there have been small additions of things to do and minor tweaks and a couple major like confectioner/death point. The only reason i didnt vote the higher change was even though Vis been very busy most of what they did the first year was very needed, but did not do much to enhance game play at all.

Billing needed fixed, blight needed restored, unity players needed life, vista still needs to be addressed, logos needed made, appointments needed to be made...etc. So though i concede Vi has been busy, from a game play standpoint at the time i left id say there was minor change made with death point revamp the cornerstone.

Even all the plot revamp and auctions mechanics getting restored which im sure was a massive undertaking only added to any game play if your moving or plotless.

Just my opinion, though i can state i didnt leave because i was unhappy with current development speed.

[Raisty]

As far as game updates like most mmorpgs there hasn't been any large progress made. But for this game with the devs they have working on it a lot of progress has been made.

Think about it... the game was basically dead to the point when it went down that one day a few years ago people were questioning if the plug had simply been pulled. We had no plot auctions, no plan for unity players, no test server, and no working billing system. In two years the game went from what seemed like days away from destruction to a fairly healthy mmorpg.

[Skaladar]

Well, as a player who's returning after ~4 years I won't take part in the poll because I don't know how things were 2 years ago. What I can say pretty much echo’s Sigi's post. I still enjoy the game and the people. I played from the beginning until shortly after the server merge when I left because of lack of free time. What knocked me off my feet about the then Horizons was the sense of community. Having scores of people working on a coordinated effort to open a new land mass or complete some other projects was, and still is, unheard of in the MMORPG world. What I sorely miss now is the lack of players. Back in the day every cosigner in major towns was stocked with a good part of your needs. It may have taken a while and a bit of shopping and patience but you always could find what you needed. I returned when former guildies told me about the resizing project. Now I have to admit I am a little concerned that construction is not going to be what it used to be. It was fairly easy to apply your specialized skills where needed and have others use theirs to get things done. It's a little sad seeing all the abandoned plots but I feel pretty confident that once the dust settles after the auction I will get that feeling of community once again ...

Dot

[Vlisson]

would be interesting to see such a poll sent via eMail to all subscribers

and its intersting to see that 32 guys say that great changes happened

[LOVWYRM]

and how about the girls who vote here?l

[Steelclaw]

Change is a vector that contains both magnitude (no, little, great) as well as direction (good,bad). I think the poll needs to be re-done to reflect that.

Though for what it's worth, I'll say that I feel that there is great change (in the 'good' direction) from 2 years ago. Not only change in the /current state/ of the game, but in its future. Under the "care" of EI, there was no development and would be none, making for a stagnant future of nothing new but poorly run "live events". The Virtrium team, while moving along at a pace slower than Tulga, is, nonetheless, doing real development with persistent content. That means content for everyone to experience, be it today or next month or next year. Because of that, Horizons / Istaria has a promising future now, and alone constitutes a big change from when it was under EI.

That being said, the hard part may not yet be over. It feels like the player community and developers still have to come to an understanding, trust each other, and get into some sort of rhythm. That is a slow process and one that will surely have bumpy times that will try the patience of both parties.

And remember, the support from the community is still one of the strongest assets of Horizons / Istaria / HZ / iCOG / whatever you want to call it. Don't forget that. Try to think about the experiences you had that made you decide to stay past the trial period and realize that it's your turn to make an impression on new players.

[Vlisson]

thats true

i dont know why but the HZ community is uniqe and i never felt a same positive energy in any other game (and be sure i tried them all ^^ )

[Thangorodrim Atanatari]

yes vlission that is true, and i think aside from other unique game features this is also why people stick around. however technically compared to the average game changes in other games 'little' has been changed.

just not enough dev power to do it.
however considered the small amounts of devs, and not considering other games progress, they made huge changes (VI that is)