Long-ago player returning and saying hallo

Hey all...

Well as the subject states, I played Horizons a while back - originally, hmm... geeze... well, it was still owned by Artifact and published (if memory serves me...) by Atari.

I don't remember when, but I know that I left the game for a variety of reasons - well, one at least was FFXI - but I'm not here to go on about long-ago issues. I remember having good memories of enjoying the game play... but really poor memories of game performance. Unfortunately, the latter can have a significant impact on the former, as was the case with me.

I came back when Tulga had it for another try and found that the same poor performance was still making it difficult to play, so I figured "okay, well I'll let them work on it a bit more..."

We all know what happened with Tulga... and EI...

Anyways... now I find that it's been picked up yet again (I swear, the number of new lives this game has had so far could make a cat envious :-p) by a company whom, based what I've read in an interview on mmorpg.com as well as the fact that they are obviously very serious about turning the game around and giving it the chance that it has always deserved. And man, we need something unique like Horizons, now more than ever, what with all the shallow, derivative... dung... flooding the MMO scene lately. As a game, I always thought Horizons had insane potential and deserved to succeed. I couldn't say the same for some of the people who've had their grimy paws on it, however. It's just needed the right team to do what it took to make it work. Looks like that team has finally shown up... at least, here's hoping :).

I figured "You know what... let me give it another go". I downloaded the trial, fired it up and... man... I'd forgotten how much I love the soundtrack for this game... The game patches without a hitch. Launches smoothly... I kinda chuckle at one of the loading comments about "... loading structure beneath character...", remembering back to when I used to load into the game and find myself beneath a town or something and load in, sure enough, to find myself *above* ground.

Now for the moment of truth... First thing I notice is, the performance. It's *smooth as silk*. I mean.. not as in "smooth compared to how bad it was before". I mean smooth, period. I don't know what they did since I last tried it, but man... what a difference. I cranked the settings up to full, expecting there to be a serious hitch... but nope.. the frame rate has dropped only slightly, but other than that, still smooth.

I then messed around with the interface a bit, remembering - and forgetting at the same time - just how configurable it is. All set, I start off in the newbie area which seems very new to me. I don't remember running any of the quests I was given, nor going to any of the locations I was sent to. I remember there being this loooooooong hallway with a variety of different side-rooms you had to go into, talk to a trainer, do a small task and so forth. None of that. This new setup is so much better.

Then there's the crafting - something I always loved about Horizons. It took me a little bit to get my bearings again, but I picked it up before long, especially thanks to the extremely present tutorial pop-ups. It looks like the crafting has also been sped up? Instead of crafting each item individually, an entire "batch", no matter the number is created at once. I don't know if I like that. I rather liked the sense of "time and effort" that went into crafting. I'm one of those people who finds it more immersive that way... call me crazy. But then again, I *do* play Final Fantasy XI. So it's consistent, if nothing else :).

In any case... I finally finished the tutorial zone and was on my way to New Trismus (If I spelled that right). I'm there now and sorta running around, getting my bearings again. I ported to some different spots and vaguely remembered some of the scenery. I haven't ported to Tazoon yet - which was one of the *worst* areas for lag and chop that I remember. If that area runs as smooth as everywhere else has, then I am officially 110% impressed with that.

The only thing that's thrown me off a bit, and I'm hoping someone (or several someones) can perhaps point in me in the right direction... is the chat system. For one.. it seems like it doesn't work quite intuitively. I'll join a channel, and can see people talking, but for some reason everything I type, under that tab, goes into "local". The only one I could seem to get to talk in was "Former Unity Players" or something like that, and of the several people listed, only one was responding. Hopped over to the Dragon channel which was far more active, but again... couldn't communicate because for some reason none of my messages were "picked up" by that channel.

So... could someone help me out in that regard and let me know what I'm doing wrong? Also... it'd be really cool to know of some people to, perhaps, talk to in-game. I'm a rather social person (if you couldn't tell by this post.. heheh - it's almost over.. I swear!) and not having any way to communicate really bums me out after a while, particularly in a MMO where I can *see* other people talking.

In any case... I'm done yapping for now and "thank you" to those who endured through it all :).

Thanks and see ya in-game!

Welcome back Lupine :)

As for chats not letting you talk: go to a tab that does this; rightclick in it and choose chat setup; then in the window that comes up, go to the bottom and check 'primary chat' to on. That should solve it for you, I think.

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Originally Posted by Galilee

Welcome back Lupine :)

As for chats not letting you talk: go to a tab that does this; rightclick in it and choose chat setup; then in the window that comes up, go to the bottom and check 'primary chat' to on. That should solve it for you, I think.

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Hi, Galilee and thanks for the suggestion. I'll give that a try when I log in next. I know I did *something* to make the "former Unity players" work as the "default". I was thinking it would automatically post the message to which ever channel was set for the active tab. I guess that's not how it works, though.

Thanks again :).

Lovely little guide to chat I wrote a while ago should help.

http://horizons.gamersinfo.net/guides/default.php?id=5

(Man, Ophelea's so going to owe me for posting all these links :p)

So awesome news... :)

Was online and someone mentioned that your email address used to be your login ID "way back when". I figured "hmmm... I wonder if I can track down my account" and tried an email address I thought I might have been using back then and... Bingo!

I've now got my original character from.. geeze.. 3 years ago? Longer? I really don't
remember exactly.. but I know the game hadn't been out long. So, she's on Chaos, she's 11 Scout and 9 Druid... I remembered, thanks to help from someone in chat, that I was working toward Ranger. Still have all my gear, both on me and in my vault.. right where I left it. Still got money... only 2 silver and change, which I don't know if that's good or not; don't remember what the economy's like in this game.

But anyway... now I just need to figure out how to change my information, since the email address I use to log in is wayyy old; I haven't used it in a couple years now and can't because it's through a service provide I no longer use. Though it seems we're playing gratis for now, I'd really like to get that squared away so I can re-up that account. I guess I should contact their customer support about it? I tried logging in with the same info as for the game, but it didn't work; so I guess the account and game logins are different.

Anyway... I'm pretty darn psyched that I get to pick up where I left off soooo long ago. For anyone on Chaos interested, my character's name is Perrina Fairwind, an Elf.

See ya in game!

You have to create a support account now. They are two separate accounts as of about 2 or 3 weeks ago now if even that long.

I see... Hmm... Where would I do this? I looked around and didn't find anything that seemed to let me access my account info. Couldn't find any stickied forum post or anything either.

I'm a wost wittle puppy... :rolleyes:

thanks again :)

I don't put my email anywhere when I play nor when I paid.

Where are we supposed to use it now, for the "lost password" thing?

(On Unity everything was completely different, so I am learning from zero myself).

Go to here http://support.istaria.com/support-center/index.php Left side under log-in is register. And it looks like it is just log in by email address for the support site.

Hmm,

I'm going to contact support, anyway, and find out. Since the account I want to use is very old, and is not using the same login information that I registered with recently, I want to make sure there won't be any trouble changing the actual contact email address, since I can no longer receive email at that old address. So, if they send something off for me to confirm it, they're going to be sending it to an inactive account and I'll be stuck in limbo.

Maybe they can associate the account with a more recent email address or something.

Thanks!

Yes they can merge and or move char between accounts.

Yep... I'm all set. I contacted CS and explained the situation. Inside of a day, they got back to me with instructions on how to switch it over. I was a bit confused between using my email address to login versus the account name, but it's all taken care of.

I just signed up for the "better" standard subscription (the one with 7 available characters).

Needless to say, I'm really having a ball and plan to continue playing :).

Started a dragon last night, named simply Eiyele. After about 40 minutes of playing with the options, I finally got as close to the look I wanted as I could, based on a porcelain dragon statue I'd had custom-painted some time ago. It has the dark purplish black color, (#2 in the scale color options) as its "base-coat", pale purple highlights and the turquoise-colored small-spots decal.. With sorta pale white-ish chest plates and white eyes. It really gives a somewhat pearlescent appearance and looks very cool. If there were some kind of specular mapping on the dragon's scales, it'd be an almost perfect replica of my dragon statue.

What's really funny is that no more than maybe an hour after creating the character, I ran into another dragon - an ancient dragon named Luthen (for those of you on Chaos) - with the same exact color scheme, the only difference is the head was different and the decal pattern was a striped one. It was quickly deduced that I'm pretty much officially their "mini-me". Ended up talking at length, getting some good advice, sharing some good laughs and am now in their guild (Draconic Brotherhood). And such was my formal introduction to this game's community. In a word: awesome.

Oh, and playing dragon is sweet. Reallly loving it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lupine73

Oh, and playing dragon is sweet. Reallly loving it.

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Just wait until you can fly.

S W E E T ! ! !

Don't know if you can quite tell by the angle of this pic, but he is indeed my mini-me!

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...90337212-1.png

Heheh :)

Here's a couple other shots with other views...

Same spot, in daylight; proof that Luthen clearly found a time machine, went into the future, copped my style, and then made his dragon... Actually thought he'd get away with it, and I wouldn't find out. Pfft.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...igmeminime.jpg

Me hangin' out in Feladan.. 'cause I totally belong there at level 9.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...eInFeladan.jpg

Glomps the hachling i have a Reason to be in the game a gain i have a Hachling to Protect Comes back to spoil the little one Rotten


after all thats what a Lunus is all about !!!