So I saw another website...

[Dhalin]

So I saw another website just now, and I blinked and did a double-take, and wondering if I was looking at pics of Horizons, or something.

I haven't played Horizons since like October of 06, with my GF rarely logging on, I saw little reason to log on myself.

But anyways, I was browsing through Allakhazam's many areas, when I was curious about EverQuest. So I mosey on towards the Screenshots gallery, and started clicking on pictures, when a picture of a PC standing right beside a dragon came up.

I did a double take and I was like "I didn't know Allakhazam had a Horizons website!"

I looked closer, and checked other screenshots, and eventually found a screenshot that included EQ's UI. I've never played EQ before, obviously, but I just couldn't get past just how much EQ's graphics engine appears to look like Horizons'. At least the characters, and dragons look similar, as does some of the landscape, etc.

A few pics later, I deduced that the quality of graphics in EQ were not quite as good as those found in Horizons (there was this one place, some mines of nurga or something, where the walls were nice even square rooms, etc.). The UI is what stunned me, assuming Horizons came out after EverQuest did, it looks like they basically ripped off EQ's UI... or, if EQ came after Horizons, then EQ ripped off Horizons lol. I could literally, with a bit of work, make Horizons' UI look almost exactly like the UI in that EverQuest pic. I didn't get to see the character screen or the inventory, but I mean the general/battle/movement/etc UI was very similar.

EQ is still alive, even today... kinda makes me wonder where Horizons would be had it been bought by a company who was serious about the game and intended to develop it further...

--Dhalin

[Tcei]

Everquest came out in '99. Its a fun game. The graphics in alot of places there are very...dated, tho they've been slowly updating the old places. The mines of nurga (or however its spelled) would have been the dungeon that came with their first expansion around 2000 I think.

If you're thinking of playing it be warned, its not the most new player freindly game any more. Mostly due to their releasing a new expansion every 6mos or so and the fact that vast majoraty of the populations are fairly high lvl. Most servers you'll hardly find any new/lowbie players. For the most part almost all dragons in the game are kos (kill on sight) to players with out some extream faction work. Except for a few in one of the new(er/ish) expansions and one or two scattered around the old world.

[Dhalin]

Wasn't really thinking on playing it, really...

I was curious to see what the game looked like, what its UI looked like, etc...

And yeah, a game that old... is bound to be tough on newbies lol. That and I already have WoW, FFXI, and I still have Horizons laying around on my HDD... I can't really afford to join yet another MMORPG lol.

--Dhalin

[Goriax]

I played EQ for years. It's original graphics were far inferior to HZ as you would expect. Especially if you had many of the HZ graphics options turned on (and they didn't kill your comp) but even if you didn't, the original EQ characters were a LOT blockier. For '99 I considered it pretty good though.

They had a major graphics revamp a few years ago (but still before HZ released) which would have gotten the character models at least comparable to those in HZ. I wouldn't be surprised if there were more revamps after I stopped playing.

I haven't played EQ in years. It's general solo unfriendly approach and the fact that dragons are mainly raid monsters to be killed by players turned me off. Plus the fact that it's far less casual gamer friendly then HZ. There are a few dragons players do not start KoS to, but only a few.

Yes I suppose the HZ UI has some superficial similarities to the EQ UI. For that matter so do the UIs of every other MMORPG I've played. EQ was (in my mind) the first modern MMORPG. They invented things like PvE and it was the first RPG I played with polygonal models (before that they were all billboarded). EQ had a massive influence on the games which came after.

I did consider the HZ UI an improvement over the EQ UI when I first started playing.

[Evera]

Its also possible that a player who liked the Horizons' UI used it as a basis to create his own custom EQ UI. Almost every aspect of the EQ UI can be customized.

[Kulamata]

I played EQ just to learn about those MMO things, as I had signed up for Hz beta. I was accepted after playing EQ for a couple of weeks. What a relief! The UI was FAR, FAR better than EQ's, which was just plain clunky. Controllable camera too! Hz was further ahead of its time than it's usually given credit for.