New server?

[Hal`cyon Sskyler]

With an real investment, such as bringing the servers back to life, fixing some bugs, and delivering on a couple of communicated milestones - you would get back quite a few people. Who knows the numbers and ultimately if it would be profitable.

Their largest hurdle is likely with the fact that they probably just have any idea what to do with the game (if they had any intention, ever, of doing anything with it). The end was obvious when then didn't retain anyone from Tulga. Even if they did have some solid programmers, it was going to be a major undertaking to get them up to speed. So that, they say, is that.

The largest hurdle would be convincing someone to blow 2-3 million on a game that is 1.)Only profitable without employees, 2.)3 and a half years old, 3.)requires an almost complete rewrite of the client, and 4.) probably has an installed user base of about 500 right now.

For about double that amount you could create a /new/ game that could implement the successes from Horizons without the current drawbacks and negative image after the series of fiascos that lead to this point.

[Theros Ironfeld]

/rant on

There are a number of reasons why hz is in the state its currently in
Most of the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of ei/pm
as mentioned earlier the billing is screwed AND has never been fixed .... maybe because there is no-one at ei/pm that CAN fix it .... just look at savage eden's billing page .. same deal

as ei/pm HAVE no coders/programmers there is NO chance of any work on patching to hz ... how do i know ... take a look at savage edens latest so called patch ... all ei/pm did was test it .. supposedly .. and release it on their servers .. NO ONE coded the patch at ei/pm that was done in asia .. next point is blight .. ah yes blight my home shard .. the TESTING shard .. the shard we were TESTING the then upcoming patch for hz on .. where is blight now ?? probably in a box in a wardrobe somewhere

what happened to blight was a bloody disaster ... 3 days notice of closure .. the email addy for our ' copies ' wasnt working AT ALL .. ei/pm didnt even research WHO was playing on blight and so came up with the ' bloodoath assencion guild ' remark ...HA HA HA BLOODOATH IS MY DRAGONS NAME the guild was Conclave of Shadows

here we are 5 months after blights closure and where are the blight copies ...... gee i wonder ... anyone been copied to a live shard ????
dont look for Theros or Kirsanth or BloodOath to be copied as my accounts have been BANNED .. thats right 4 accounts linked to my then credit card were banned after 5-7 overbills on EACH account in a month for THREE months EVEN after i raised it with them , i eventually cancelled the card

after recieving ZERO feedback about this and NO refund i brought it to this forum where upon a war between me and the lead mod broke out ... I attempted to have the lead mod step down or be sacked ..net result .. a forum ban for me to go along with my lost shard and banned accounts read all about it in full colour at rants refugees also Ray posted his dramas on the vn boards http://vnboards.ign.com/horizons_general_board/b5252/p1

where is Unity ?? blight hardware was going to be used for that ... heh another bloody tall tale

as for future investment ... that is a dream ... rask had to put his own dollars into savage eden to keep it afloat ... entirely possible they cant get investment money .. /s gee i wonder why /s off

sorry to pop some bubbles out there but these yokels have no idea how do to do much of anything

/rant off

[Yarsgo]

Theros has several valid assumptions concerning the status of the game and the maintenance thereof. But frankly, I play for the community aspect of it and will be here until the server shuts off...

Having played SWG since Beta and becoming a refugee after they totally screwed up the combat, crafting and career systems (making them more appealing to children), I bounced around from WoW to Dark and Light to D&D for a period of about 4 months before landing here. Sorely disappointed in all of those others.

Bottom line is that HZ is in need of several updates which would make it more appealing. Things like an in-game mail system, an ingame main directory of the connies (both private and public so folks could shop around for the best prices), the ability to decorate one's home (furniture making would be a nice side craft for carpenter!)..etc etc...Yeah, I know such things are for dreamers, yet I remain because I enjoy the community (dwinding or not). It would be nice, though for the staff to at least make some input here now and again. If they need help, hell, they should say something!

Look, how often we forget that it's only a game. As was pointed out earlier, there are tons of MMO's out there- and new ones on the market every day, it seems. If you don't like it here, quit bitching and go find one you do like! My main char I left in SWG took over 4 yrs to perfect, was friggin awesome and respected by tons of folks. But when I grew to dislike the game...I LEFT!! Every MMO out there has tons of problems. Shoot, ever looked at the WoW or SWG forums? It's so tame here compared to those!

Yarsgo

[LOVWYRM]

( I do not quite get the point what Justa and Kulamata say- but this is a prob of language- I`ll take a good dictionary and try again^^ but I do not agree to your platitudes, Dwarf,sry)

Indy: This are only THE TWELVE of C´gan - take annother 20 from my side, then average and count again

hmm -HZ2- I could cotton on to that

[IndyMan]

still less than what it would cost to hire a programmer to fix problems Lovwyrm. Your number is no where near the 100 I mentioned.

In addition there is no guarantee that the 32 of you would stay and pay for anything that was done.

The majority has spoken about this game (compare the starting numbers to now) and they say it is garbage. The surprise is that it is still online.

[Hevach]

If NCSoft took over Horizons, I think I would be in heaven. SOE and Blizz.. I could live with, better than these guys no doubt about it, but NC seem to really know what they're doing, and they only concentrate on MMOs. Or the creators of UO... and I mean the real creators, not EA. Origin, is it? *shrugs*

I'm finding myself lost here. I'm playing WoW simply coz I have a 6 month sub to use up. I gave up on VG, good game, but too buggy. Not to mention it didn't run great on my pc (far too pretty lol). I'm even considering going back to UO when they release Kingdom Reborn or whatever its called. But I just want to get back to Istaria and say hello to my dragon again.

Seems I can't let go... I said I'd stop checking after march... oops... *blushes*

(Made this account and played a free trial months ago, I've been lurking the forums ever since but stopped playing)

Anyway, of the three companies mentioned (NCSoft, Sony, and Blizzard), there's only one really viable option: NCSoft.

SOE's got EQ1 and 2, but those are the ones they made. Not the MMOs they bought or otherwise acquired. They've got a glorious history of destroying the games they buy. Star Wars Galaxies, Planetside, Matrix Online. All developed out-of-house, two were launched out-of-house, and all three were doing quite well. Sony managed to make all three implode (Planetside is in the process of it right now). MXO wasn't even good, but Sony managed to ruin it somehow.

Blizzard won't buy a game. Not this game, not any game - they supposedly turned down an offer to buy Fallout for a song before Interplay started auctioning licenses off. Their reason: They're not in the business of games, but of game worlds. They might launch another IP some day, but as long as the current leadership is there, they won't buy one.

NCSoft's record is a bit spotty, but they've at least been dedicated to their games for the most part. Downside: They're less than 50% for successful MMO launches (stack of games they made didn't make it out of beta or last a year after going gold), and they've got a lot on their plate right now. Several games in beta right now, several others live, and a couple that are widely considered to be in decline, if not death throes. Probably wouldn't want to add to that.

Edit: Missed Origin. Most of the surviving team made Vanguard. They couldn't manage it, and handed it off to Sony. From what I've read, most of them were canned shortly after that, so who knows what happened to them.

Edit 2: Better bet might be a smaller developer. Even one that wants to get into the MMO market but hasn't made a game yet. Always iffy like this, Hoirzons has bounced about a bit, hasn't it? Another game I played years ago, Ashen Empires, is on it's fourth or fifth developer now (though at least one of the original devs is still around I think).

[Goriax]

Interesting idea.

I'm not thrilled about an emulater of a game not in the public domain and would not take part (and if you're serious about an emulater you're crazy to be discussing it here). However, if EI ever gets ready to pull the plug things would change. If that ever happens I think we should all beg and plead that they put the source and artwork in the public domain. Perhaps we could pick it up and run with it. If some parts of the source can't be put in the public domain (i.e. a third party owns it) they could put out what they could and community programmers and artists could write something which did the same thing as the missing parts and which were plug in compatible. We should try to stay on EI's good side for that reason. I would be willing to donate my time as a Windows/C++ programmer if that happened.

The huge memory requirements per player at first glance seem crazy, but I can see a possible reason. For example, they might cache large portions of the database for each player. The advantage of that is it would allow them to do everything for that player without going across threads thus avoiding holding mutex locks, pushing data across thread safe queues, etc. This would definately be trading memory footprint for speed. However, since they weren't running on 256 CPU boxes it would make no sense to have a seperate thread per player (and if they DID have a seperate thread per player performance would suffer, possibly by a lot). So that more sophisticated programming would probably be able to GREATLY reduce the memory requirements without really hurting performance simply by arranging to share cached data among several players.

I don't see hardware requiremnts as so much of a problem. As has already been said, the high end Xeon of 2003 is the low to mid range desktop of 2007. It would be necessary to come up with a few thousand dollars (unless you know somoene donating modern computers) but we are DEFINATELY not talking millions and probably not even tens of thousands.

The sticking point as I see it would be bandwidth. If this were to become some sort of open source community project, the bandwidth would have to come from somewhere. It would probably have to be donated. I don't know how feasable it is to find someone who would do such a thing or what we could offer (besides advertising) in return. Perhaps there are others here with more experience in getting people to donate bandwidth.

After saying all that, I feel obligated to also say that, from my experience, open source games don't do well. Yes there have been a few successful open source projects (none of which were games to the best of my knowledge). Every open source game I've followed except trivial ones has died when the people working on it burned out and lost interestt. The closest success I know of is the OGRE graphics engine. It's HARD to program all day at your regular job and then come home and program even more. I would be willing to give it a go, but I have to be honest and realize I couldn't take on too much or I'd burn out and then wouldn't do anything at all.

I don't think it's realistic to hope for a big game company to pick HZ up at this point. They had a chance last year when TG was looking for a buyer and HZ would only look worse now. NCSoft DEFINATELY won't pick it up. They had part interest in HZ during development and chose to give it up. They said at the time they didn't expect it to succeed commercially. Turned out they were right.

If a big name company did want to do HZ (which they wouldn't but just suppose) they'd have to redo virtually everything. The graphics are becoming outdated and both client and server have had serious problems. If they're going to redo everything they might as well just write a new game from scratch.

I think the most likely favorable long term solution is if someone did an MMORPG similar in concept to HZ. They're putting more and more crafting into MMORPGs so that will probably come to pass. I'm still surprised nobody else has done playable dragons. Playable dragons have always been something to grap people's interest in HZ. You'd think someone would bite the bullet and try, but so far nothing. Meanwhile MMORPG after MMORPG gets released and most of them are just warmed over variations of MMORPGs which have gone before. Hopefully sooner or later someone will try for something different.

I think that eventually someone will do something with a concept similar enough to satisfy HZ fans. I have no idea how long it'll be though.

[Rayth]

The largest hurdle would be convincing someone to blow 2-3 million on a game that is 1.)Only profitable without employees, 2.)3 and a half years old, 3.)requires an almost complete rewrite of the client, and 4.) probably has an installed user base of about 500 right now.

For about double that amount you could create a /new/ game that could implement the successes from Horizons without the current drawbacks and negative image after the series of fiascos that lead to this point.

As I said before, 2-3 mil would be for a development effort, such as an expansion. Huge difference between that and hiring people for stuff like bug fixes and small content releases.

As I said in another post, games have lingered for quite a while only a few hundred people logging in nightly. Depends on what you want to accomplish.

As far as graphics and that kind of stuff.. UO has the worst graphics of anyone of them out there, and has lingered for years. The community just won't let the game die.

EI has probably destroyed the community beyond repair, however I know some people that would sign back in if they could (fixing their server) or if EI showed any interest in the game. Certainly enough would come back for a few hundred to log on daily. I know I have thought about coming back a few times.

/shrug

[LOVWYRM]

I disagree with all who say that the community is destroyed.

That is what I was tryin`to explain to Indy:
If I could at least reach 20 people, at least 10 of them will stay and pay, and each of them brings back (again at least) 5 more players- new or old ones-
( and I regard that a realistic number)-and so on... that should be a nice, little(compared with WoW^^), paying community.

But that requires running servers, fixes and all that we`ve been talking about.
Or at least an bearable offer towards potential customers.

I´m sure: The community IS NOT the pob.

[diabolis]

Seems to me that under the circumstances of nothing new added to the game, we should be playing for free.

Diabolis Sslanis Order Shard

[Deth]

You can play for free and a lot of people are I think.

[diabolis]

I mean...when the company says "Nobody needs to pay any longer", not because of a glitch in the system, im still getting billed every month for at least one of my accounts.

still me order shard

[Spirit]

Believe this or not... my new computer (E6700 core2 with 2gb ram and a crossfire 1950XTX video card) studders, gags, and lags playing Vanguard

Perhaps I won't be installing it on my laptop then...

Has anyone tried http://www.prairiegames.com/ Minions of Mirth?

There are dragons, but playable as a monster race (as I understand so far) once you get some quest reward. I'm still downloading it so not certain what it's like. Almost certainly it lacks the depth of Horizons, but I'm gonna take 5 to check it out now I've got my net back...

Rakku

[Rayth]

I disagree with all who say that the community is destroyed.

I´m sure: The community IS NOT the pob.

Depends on your definition of destroyed. The few I know that would come back are dwarfed by those I know that will never come back (baring a miracle rebirth that would basically be HZ2).

The community has alway been the strongest part of this game, and there would be minorty that would flock back. The fact that the game survived as long as it did, was because of the strong community, not the game itself.

[vahrokh_the_ancient]

Look, how often we forget that it's only a game. As was pointed out earlier, there are tons of MMO's out there- and new ones on the market every day, it seems. If you don't like it here, quit bitching and go find one you do like! My main char I left in SWG took over 4 yrs to perfect, was friggin awesome and respected by tons of folks

I played many games. You can bet your nuts, no one is even remotely close to Horizons. Period.

The few I know that would come back are dwarfed by those I know that will never come back (baring a miracle rebirth that would basically be HZ2)

If I could have my dragon back, I'd pay yearly subscriptions again, I don't even care that the game will never change again.

I'd prefer burning 3000 euros and have my "whole" dragon (he and his things) than logging here every 2 weeks with that unending, painful hope to ever see something happening and Unity resurrected somehow.

[HAG]

Hello Folks, long time no see.

Very interesting thread, which has brought a teardrop in my eye, as i understand many of the strong feelings some have expressed here.

Still, i have come to the conclusion for myself that it's best to bury HZ and keep up the good memories to a good time, period. Even if some of you would manage to bring up an own server, it would be nothing like a "zombie" - a dead body kept alive by force to not let the brain die too.

I found a new home in Telon (Land of Vanguard: SoH) and due to the fact that many ex-Istarians are there, it feels really comfortable. We have our own channel (Istariaexiles), some of the old guilds just formed there anew and the community between the Ex-Horizon-Players is still existant.

It will never be horizons, i know, but everything new bears the chance to something brighter and unique than the former thing.

Oh and Justa - i'm running Vanguard on a much weaker machine than yours, and it runs pretty fine.

[Justa Mirage]

Oh and Justa - i'm running Vanguard on a much weaker machine than yours, and it runs pretty fine.

I gave up on Studderin Joe Vanguard. Whe When you have haaave to play the the game with 7fps in sssome areeeas...

Even with the graphics at medium and the game sounds turned off... the game still does not perform well on my machine... and it probably has to do with video drivers, sound drivers, but all in all, just like a lot of games out there, don't cater to all "computer setups"

I have read the same complaints on many of the Vanguard boards so I am not in the minority here... Great it runs on your machine... here's a gold star and a cookie!

[Vlisson]

Still, i have come to the conclusion for myself that it's best to bury HZ and keep up the good memories to a good time, period. Even if some of you would manage to bring up an own server, it would be nothing like a "zombie" - a dead body kept alive by force to not let the brain die too.

i fully agree

i have very positive memories about Horizons, great screenshots to remember my experiences in this world.

but i gave up the hope to see my unity characters again.

there is a good quote: change it or leave it

I cannot change anything and i left it

sad but true

[Sunuke]

Wouldn't it be an option to run the game in a VMware cluster which would cut down the amount of machines required?

[vahrokh_the_ancient]

So unless someone wants to sink $ 5 million plus into horizons it is never ever coming back.

Yes $5 million plus

Not a couple hundred K not even $ 2 million

or...


some love and care.

How comes that a MMO is going on since years

http://www.prairiegames.com/


and is made and maintained by two (2) persons?


Keeping Hz going would not really require much more.

To keep up with the "speed" Tulga had you need 3-4 people working on it, I never understood where they found the slow monkeys they had.

Months to fix 20 database rows, months designing 10 new 3D objects and textures. Months to add to a pre-existing database some confectioner new "rows".


Looks like they "hired" some skilled programmer to do some "big stuff" like the whole lair crafting but on part time schedule.


And yes, I have been C++ programmer and DBA for 15 years and I have an idea on how long it takes to do stuff.

So do you know anyone who just won the powerball and wants to burn $10 million totally redoing the current horizons ? Heck you win a lot there spend another $10 million and make a new game totally. Call it Horizons II done right

No one sane of mind will "revamp" Horizons.

The only feasible action is to "create" something with players housing, playable dragons etc. etc. and call it "Empire of Beozia" or something and sell it as new product even if it shares 99% of the code with Horizons.

Horizons - the name - is not reusable any more, it lost every credibility and the IGN idiots-a-like would flame away at once since it's "still Horizons".


BTW $10 million nowadays is what you waste in the starting merchandise.

Make it $50-80 and we start talking of a modern MMO with a target of > 100k players being developed.

I'm not thrilled about an emulater of a game not in the public domain and would not take part (and if you're serious about an emulater you're crazy to be discussing it here). However, if EI ever gets ready to pull the plug things would change. If that ever happens I think we should all beg and plead that they put the source and artwork in the public domain.

Imagine Netscape.

They discovered MS Explorer given out for free AND installed by default on every computer would kill it.

So they made it open source, removed the licensed and not open source libraires.

After quite some time, it reborn as working and nice browser that you are suggested to use not to compromise your computer so easily.


I wish Hz would be finally considered "dead" and its details made public so who cares for its legacy can put together a team and raise a new Horizons from the ashes of the old.



Whatever you consider Horizons bad, I have yet to see one game that lights me up like it.

I am in a top guild in WoW, I have every best of everything in the game.

I'd quit WoW today to play Unity again, and would not look back.

Why play WoW when a game 10 years ahead and with much better community is available?