Hey all,
Just wanted to throw this up there on my experience with Horizons and my recent re-visit to the land of Istaria.
First I would like to say that I have loved this game from day 1. I started maybe 1 month after launch and was hooked from the start. Playing as a dragon and a bi-ped was alot of fun. I joined a great guild which I later became 1 of the GM's. The community was nice, player base was large and the game ran smooth.
Then eventually the game started to be plagued with lag and lack of content with no real quests with just a few exceptions (RoP to name 1) and no real high lvl content. When they decided to merge the servers and change EVERYTHING in the game practically is when , IMO, they ruined this game. The resources have been relocated to crazy locations, the mobs scattered even more. They added some more mobs which was nice but the damage was done.
I stuck around for another month or so till EQII came out. I went to EQII for about 2 weeks and switched to WoW which is just amazing. So I receive a email about Horizons giving old players some free playtime to experience Istaria again. I jumped on this as in the back of my mind this was always a great game.
I re-download Horizons and log in. This is when the memories of this great game came flooding back in. The music was great, spreading my dragon wings again was a joy (even though I gave away all my scales and gold and left with nothing). But then I quickly realized why I left.
I looked in market and maybe about 60 people on. I flew around for over 10 minutes without seeing 1 single mob. I hit 3 towns to run into 3 people total. The world is so lifeless. No activity in the towns, no player base, no mobs roaming the lands. On top of that, the lag was just horrible! I run 1gig RAM with a 6800gt OC and I had to have all my settings at low to just be able to run/fly/kill at about 10-20 fps . I did see that on the forums they state that this card has some issues but this is just crazy.
I finally find a spot to kill some mobs. The fights seem boring and they seem to take a while. I decided to fly over to where I use to kill marrows...cant find them. I did find a bunch of new higher lvl mobs which was nice but still seems that 70% of the land is without any mobs.
I still play WoW daily which is a fantastic game. The graphics are great, music, fighting, quests everywhere, steady fps of 70 etc... If Horizons would run 1/2 as good as WoW, I bet you would see alot more people come back.
IMO, Horizons needs to populate the land more, give quests that are worth doing, better loot tables (although I see that this is in the works with bindable loot etc) and drastically improve the gameplay as it is very poor. I know the graphics are outdated (I can live with that) but for me it is unplayable almost. I do miss this game, it was loads of fun 1 yr ago and I bet it still can be. With the competition of the newer games that blow away Horizons in performance/graphics/questing/gameplay etc, I cant believe Horizons hasnt shut down yet! There are almost no players!
It hurt when I logged in and the world was soo dead... I wish that a few changes would be made as I would love to jump back in and get my dragon to ARoP 1 day. I am not trying to flame or anything like that, I'm just expressing myself to how great this game once was and how the gameplay is just poor now.
Flame away, I dont care. Just wanted to say what was on my mind. I do miss Istaria, maybe 1 day I can play again with the same joy I had when I first started...
Aouvek Bloodvein 100/100/68/63
Drakkor -88/53 Adult Lunus