New server?

[Goffy Monekin]

Tis not so much a pity that a new server can't be made, more of a pity that the current owners have decimated any possibility of the game going onward.

Tis a pity that the current moronagement can not figure out how to disable unregistered posting in the "discussion" forum. A **************** monkey on crack with a paint huffing addiction would be able to figure it out quicker than they.

They could of had so much... picked up a struggling game with tons of potential, only to discover that they have no clue what so ever. PMEIEIO is nothing but a joke of a company, forming a corp in Nevada to dilute personal liabilities as well as delay the inevitable federal disruption of service for Savage Eden.

The only true pity is that those who play the infamous SE, don't speak up and confront the morons on why exactly the payment methods is still UNSECURE and open to any scriptkiddies to hack away on...

There are so many wrongs, as I realize now, about PMEIEIO, that it truly is scary...

[AA0]

See.. the thing with profitable is this..
Income = $1
Expenses = $0
Profit = $1
When you don't pay your bills or hire any staff for the game, it will pretty much always be profitable

[LOVWYRM]

I totally agree with Justa.
And C`gan.

I do not agree with AAO:
The playerbase is not destroyed. They/we keep in touch, playing "new" "better" games- and fantasize about HZ.
Lot`s of us will return! I`m sure!

*sigh* referring to what Solitaire said about SONY and HZ:
Is there a real chance that we can direct SONY`s attention to us?
Many, many features of HZ are unique (no only the dragon thing),
worth kept alive in the scene of mmorpg`s.
And profitable if handled proessional.

It might not be too late- HEY OUTTHERE- DOES SOMEBODY LISTEN?

[C`gan]

As far as keeping in touch, I am in ICQ contact with four of my guildmates who cannot or do not play right now. I also have phone contact with a fifth. Should something change, all of them want to know about it.

HEY PME! WITH THOSE FIVE, THAT'S ABOUT TWELVE RETURNING ACCOUNTS AVAILABLE FOR YOUR BILLING PLEASURE JUST BY MAKING POSITIVE CHANGES TO THIS GAME! Think about it.

[Solitaire]

I never said anything about Sony, but at this point I would probably say that we are below their notice. I have no direct experience with SOE though I have heard several horror stories about them. But I would have to say that if nobody else can step up and rescue Horizons that I would reluctantly hope that Sony would be interested.

C'gan, I don't think they can make positive changes to the game even if they wanted to at this point. I've come to the firm opinion that their people are can't even qualify as second rate. They lack the skills and, most certainly, they lack the knowledge. That knowledge went with the people that they could have hired to keep things progressing. Even if those people were still interested in helping Horizons, I doubt that many of them would be willing to help PME/EI at this point.

I just wish that I was wrong...

[Tcei]

There are a few other options, in addition to Sony (who currently own eq1/2, swg, and recently bought Vanguard) theres Blizzard, Ncsoft (Lineage 2, City of Heroes/Villans, and Guild Wars). As well as other smaller companies who've had sucsessful mmos in the past.
Tho I have to agree with you, Solitare, Hz is most likely beneath anyones notice. Imho we'd have to throw one heck of a sales pitch to these guys to even get them to consider possibly even thinking about possibly buying us.

Opinion piece follows
Of the three its hard for my to decide which I'd rather see Hz go to.

Sony
Sony has several years experience with mmo's after all eq1 is a lil over 8 years old now. They would probably have the easiest time figuring out Hz's code, and undoubtedly have the financial backing needed to help Hz stay afloat.
On the down side, Sony isnt exactly known for listening to its customer base, but they do communicate with it frequently. Indeed with eq1 when they first started chruning out low quality expansion packs every 6mos it took a major protest and boycott to get them to listen to the playerbase (somewhat). There's also the Swg incident tho to my understanding that may have had more to do with some sort of contractual agreement with LucasArts at the sale.
Sony is also known for catoring to uber raiders, which Hz really doesnt have any raid content to speak of. Their games also tend to be group centric, which isnt really a bad thing, assuming they'd be able to get the population up enough to make it grouping a really viable option.

Blizzard
Granted Blizzard only has one mmo under its belt, but you cant deny that its done insanely well. Based off their single game, WoW. They definately seem to focus on the casual and solo gamer. This is good given Hz's very low populations. Wow's graphics are very easy on system reasorces, tho granted its very stylized and cartoony looking, if they were to keep Hz's basic look and feel and just fix the issues... Blizzard is known to listen to its playerbase a little more often (or so I've been told). On the down side to this, as many mmo veterans have said in the past, Wow was dumbed down for the masses. It is extreamly easy to lvl to max very quickly in that game, which creates an issue running out of things to do, and, given Hz's age and relitive unknowness means we'd have a high turnover most likely. There's also the issue of what are typicly called wowkidies, or its imature player base. Granted every game has these types of folks. It just seems wow has a greater percentage of them versus the normal population on a server.


NCsoft
I dont know a whole lot about this company or its games as I've not played them very much. From what experieance I have with them their games seem to focus heavily on pvp, tho im not sure if Coh/v has much pvp in it or not I didnt play it long before I lost interest in it. Lineage 2 and possibly Guild Wars (fyi never played GW) have some unique features to them. Most notably largescale wars, and the ability to take over kingdoms (at least in Linage2). Also if I recall right Linage is a seamless world much like Horizons and is about the same age too. From what I can tell their games tend to fall inbetween Blizzard and Sony as far as playstyle goes. I think I'll leave this up to someone with considerably more experience with their games.

This all assumes of course that these companies stick to their tried and true mold and change/modify Hz to be more like their current games.

In short, Sony has the experince in creating games that seem to linger forever and do pretty good. Blizzard, based off the sucess with wow, could potentialy turn Hz into a late-bloomer of sorts tho it'll most certainly do as great. NCsoft
seems to create some fairly solid games and seem the most open to unique games/ideas.

[LOVWYRM]

upps- sry Solitaire for misquoting. It was bright who wrote:

"now of course the problem IS lack of vision, stupid owners that dont know how to run a game to save their lives, and also still the lack of real capitol to fix this game. as much as everyone hates sony maybe we should beg them to buy it haha. they cant frack it up anymore then these bozos have. sure sure youll say think of SWG, but see SWG was a solid running game, not too many flaws. this one has many flaws right now, so maybe they can take a messy bag of snakes and lay them out straight and this game can actually get the glory it deserves"

I sign that.

[Solitaire]

The problem still remains that any potential buyer would have to pump in a lot of money just to figure out what is wrong and how to fix it. Nobody is going to fix the game out of the goodness of their hearts. A good profit potential needs to exist for that to happen. If SOE or any other company that has a grain of common sense would have purchased Horizons last July, it would have made sense to invest money into it. But as it stands now, the damage and loss of knowledge and continuity would most likely make that prohibitive for "good" business sense. As much as it pains me to admit it, I do not think Horizons has any future now. We are going to have to accept that and either move on to something else or play for the enjoyment that does exist until the day that the plug suddenly gets pulled. And "suddenly" will probably be how it goes cause I don't think that PME/EI would have the class to even let us know it is going to happen and let Horizons go down gracefully.

[Rayth]

Hello,

Pop in from time to time to see what's up, and juding from my year absence, I would say the rest of this world - sadly - is falling apart. I used to read up on the patch notes and see if anything interested me enought to come back to this game, and now I see there no more patch notes...

I kept hoping that someone would take pitty on the game and rescue it, but sadly it doesn't look like the current keepers are willing or able to breath new life into this game. Sad really, when you see games like UO getting some love after 9 years.

I noticed people mentioning Vanguard and the parallel's between the 2 games are amazing... You have 2 people with "The Vision", that clearly mismanaged their development and sadly killed their games before they really got off the ground. Both games have amazing depth and, sadly, were programmed like garbage. I would have like to see SOE pull a Vanguard with Horizons (one is more hard core and one is more casual), but sadly I don't think this game is anywhere on their radar.

This game will go down as one of the largest disappointments with MMORPG history. Some much potential that was never fully realized.

I was thinking about reactivative for a bit (the last time I was on my old guild was still pretty active), but now I am even scared to try and do that with all the things going on. Hell I don't even remember if my server is even up now (used to be Shadow and got rolled into something else I can't remember).

I will continue to look back and pray that someone will resurrect this game. It's was the best gaming community I was ever in and the most fun I have had in any MMORPG. I would come back in a minute, if someone every fixed some of the bugs that plagued this game, built an end-game (a dungeon would be nice), created more interesting loot tables (even if it was just newer variety from an updated crafting system - which I still think was the best ever made), and made some of the constuction a little less silly (the amount of time needed to make a walkway was kinda silly).

Oh well, glad to see someone of you guys are still holding up the fort...

-Ormon

[pevil2000]

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*

[Romirez]

back in 2001 i heard about this game being made, and i was instantly excited. i watched this game ever since, for 4 long years, before i could finally play. i started playing in the winter of '05, right about the time of the Winter Festival. Tulga has bought the game, and things looked good. solid playerbase, and lots of them. i continue to play through 2006. i kinda lag a bit in fall... but i pick up in winter, where i begin my RoP. i finish my RoP in February(Helian was broke...had to go Lunus.). i foolishly switch to Vista in march, and cannot play HZ. i go to Korea for a month. i come back, still cannot play HZ. i get XP back a couple weeks later to find a totally destroyed game and a desolate land. noone in sight.


what the hell?!

seems i have missed the point where everyone got fed up and left. i am even bored myself, and i find myself sad to find this game destroyed. i was dead set on playing this game for 4 LONG YEARS. i waited 4 YEARS!!!!! to play this game...to find it dying and destroyed. time wasted? no. i love this game. i will never leave it. i will continue to sub until the day the plug is pulled on the HZ servers. i love this game, and i still login to admire my draggie and do a bit of combat with my guildmates. i put a lot of time into my dragon to not play now, i am forever and will be ever addicted to this game. sure, it has bugs. sure, it has no content being added....but you all have the wrong idea. you need to play the game and do with what it has now... fight in the ED(if you have the strength and numbers) and just discover what all the classes have to offer. play the ******** game and sub, keep it alive. just don't leave! if you leave, the game will -surely- die. i might not be around as long as you other people, but i was around during the glory days of Tulga, and i dearly miss those days. for you level 100 ancient dragons, why not play a different race, and see what it has to offer? why not do something you have not done before in the game? it will still be fun if you do somethin you never did before in the game. it still has lots to offer. you just have to look, instead of depending on a company to add content. i hate EI - PME as much as the next dragon or Naka-duskail. i just don't want everyone to leave because no contend is not being added or bugs being removed. play the stuff you never did before, because whether you like it or not, you are all addicted to this game, and won;t leave. might as well use that and enjoy the game.

[MadDwarf]

Actually MadDwarf...

I log in and play Horizons more than I play my Vanguard account.

Why?


And right means.... make an MMORPG that is not bleeding cutting edge, tone the graphics down to about 1 generation back so that those trying to catch up to technology don't miss out, while on the other hand those with high end systems won't have anything to worry about. Keep the same lore and game play, there is something more to horizons than just a poor company trying to milk its players for every dime they can get.

Horizons back when it was released and now does not even come close to meeting your last paragraph there. What lore ? what exacty ? umm not even high end systems can play horizons well. Horizons has never been a shining example of what an MMO should be. In fact it was a shining example of how the industry's absolute worst grind design killed a game. Yes it has its good points but those obviously were not enough to stop the playerdrain even when tulga had the game. Sad thing is Horizons was becoming stale, Tulga never had enough money or resources to even keep it competitive. It simply needed to much work and to many key systems needed to either be totally replaced or totally reworked. If it was more than a company trying to bleed money off than it would have never reached its current state. Sorry not ever.

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.

Programming the coding itself takes a very very very very very long time when it comes to something like this. Just from program design itself takes TONS of time. More importantly man hours and lots of them, spread over a competant team your time qoutient is lowered but the overall time and effort is not. Now add in a programmer a team of programmers who have to go through someone else's work. That time quotient is quadrupled, the expertise factor is as well quadrupled, wading through anothers code is not for the feint of heart. Some here believe this is a simple thing. Sadly someone has to point out that their delusions are just that delusions.

PME bit off more than they could chew and I am willing to bet they were mislead as to the real state of the game. Billing was broken before PME took over. Probably more broken than anyone even ophelea ever admitted to. PME having no expertise in programming and the IT world in general just got in way over their heads.

So now we are left with this one fact.

The only way horizons will make any meaningful comeback is if someone who has many many millions to burn with little to no promise of need of a return on their investment takes it over. There is no professional entity out there that will take this game over. Why, do you actually believe PME was on the top of Bakers list to sell this game to ? Im very sure the MMO dev circle knew horizons was on the table to be sold and yet no one came forward to make an offer to Baker. Heck we know that PME got horizons at fireburner discount. It would not have taken even an offer of $1 million to get Baker to sell the game to a more credible buyer. Instead he sold it to someone with no garantee he would recieve the whole amount agreed to. Sorry but this fact alone speaks volumes as to Horizons professional future which is it has none period.

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.

[Daedalus]

Oi MadDwarf you silly boy stop trying to kill a dream. 5 mill? Hahahaha yeah right, piss off.

All this game needs is a company that cares about its customers. Period. You can try arguing that the game needs x, y and z done but the truth (and you already know this but refuse to admit it) is that a bit of TLC towards the playerbase will go a long a way towards making the game appealing once more.

All it would take is one programmer to make the minor fixes needed to resolve a couple of known issues. That programmer might need several months to understand enough of the related code to fix them. What's the annual salary for a decent coder? 5 mill? yeah right.

You keep trying to make people believe that the only way Horizons will ever make a come-back is if it's completely overhauled. Piss off. You really don't have a clue.

[Rayth]

Obvioulsy the game in it's current state still makes money. From what I read on the E I site, my guess is they are just hijacking their current infastructure to power the boxes on and provide connectivity. It's likley not very expensive.

I believe some other mmorp's had games that survived for long periods of time with a thousand or so people logging in daily. So this game could linger for quite a long time. The thing that baffles me is all the stuff I see around here where the billing system is screwed up and insecure. That can be fixed with minimal investment and would likely have a very short RoI, just by probably billing the number of people with subscriptions.

The problem with having one dedicated coder (for bug fixes and server support) is that now you are putting an investment into the game, you have skin in the game - even if it's around 100k (with benefits). That person would also have to be brought up to speed, and with no one from Tulga around... It's likely a daunting task.

I don't agree that it would take a 5 mil budget to do anything with the game, that's a development effort - like an expansion or overhaul (like they are doing with UO). Stablizing the enviroment and providing bug fixes and small content changes (I assume they have some type of scripting capabilities), would likely take a couple of people max. The question is would enough people come back to justify the investment? Once you stabilize the user base, then you can think about any real developement efforts.

Doesn't look like E I want to or even can go there. I don't know enough about E I, but it looks like a rather small company that might have had the best of intentions, but really doesn't have the resources to do much.

[AA0]

The billing system was working until EI messed with it, and tried to remove it.. then put it back in. Mad Dwarf is nothing but a troll who hasn't even played hz since near release, never mind knowing what the hell actually happened in the game. He constantly references imaginary events and pulls facts out of the air.

[Justa Mirage]

Poor poor MadDwarf.... so lost...

You have to remember, Horizons was conceptualized way back in 1999-2000 with original ideas and art from Dave Allen. Back then MMORPGS were these little cookie cutouts running on a three quarter perspective screen map. Your "avatar" had no animation, and was running from rats most of the time, or getting hungry and seeing "you are too fatigued to move" messages.

Then Asheron's call and Everquest came along to show you can have a "first person view" MMORPG with actual 3D graphics and models. Even by then, when they started throwing Horizons together to release it by the end of 2003, 2 years (rushed) in the making, the graphics didn't look like bulky polygons glued together with a texture map for faces that looked painted on. Heck, Horizons looked pretty good back then. Real animated parts, swinging tails from those that had them, moving jawlines as you breathed, artistically the game was ahead of the "present day" MMORPGs that existed. Even DAOC looked like you had a turd stuck up your butt when you walked.

It had its nitch of things that made it unique: battle music, a very nice UI, and a lot of "/" switch commands to customize the game to your liking. Not many MMORPGs offer as many "customizable / hackable" components.

Of course when the WoW bulldozer came through and leveled Horizons to build a shopping mall, it was a sad day. Unfortunately the game didn't keep up with the Joneses and now is aging. Still, by comparison to the games of long ago, this one was considered "next gen" in graphics at the time.

There is lore in the game, just not pages and pages of it. People are so spoiled by the "previous MMORPGs" they have played that have established storylines and had re-occuring villains that Horizons was not "lore rich"

It isn't lore rich by a long shot, but it still has a story in which to base the existance of the world on. But because of the depletion of the players, the constant bug fixes ongoing, developing new storylines and lore didn't happen in buckets.

You keep harping on the "PME got a messed up game and that's why they can't develop it"

Get real, stop taking those medications, and really look at the picture.

The game was being "developed" although HUGE changes and HUGE additions were not forthcoming, stuff was being done. There WAS a small playerbase 30 times the size that it is today. And it was NOT because Tulga had a broken game. The population died when PMEIO took over because Baker had enough of funding a game that was bleeding from every artery and sold it to the first person that would sign the dotted line, just to be rid of it.

There were confection changes, new dryad housing, possible additions of portals to Draak, and the rebuilding of a new city. If Tulga were still running it, Plot and Lair repossessions and auctions would still be going on. The billing, though not perfect, would still be in place and SECURE. And there would be developers that cared about the game and sacrificed salaries and worked many hours with the small staff they had to make, WHO???, THE CUSTOMER, happy and with knowledge that the game would still continue to exist, even though the new content took a while to get to us.

Now look at what this has become; Unsecured billing, people playing without paying either on purpose, or because their account was never rebilled when the renewal came up. A picture of the day that has been there for a year, not because there are no submissions to switch it to, it's because NO ONE CARES to switch it. You have a company that knew they were buying a game that can't be profitable to develop, so they just keep dinging people's credit cards for what cash they can get, and continue to keep the server alive. There was no intent by them what-so-ever to develop / add to the game. The best thing they can do is run a world master character and be able to fix problems in the game only a world master can fix.

If it came down to fixing the crafting exploit bug, or making sure that the mithril golem spawns were readjusted back to pre-patch, or even adding the changes that were coming, they haven't a clue. And before you start saying "give them time" I am sorry, but no programmer (expert or otherwise) is this inept not to have been able to say "Here's a new quest added to the game." just to keep the players happy and satisfied.

Why do you think the remaining players bailed? It wasn't Tulga's doing, because those that have recently bailed left because even though they knew the game was broke, wasn't "WoW" or wasn't even going to be close, they knew that Tulga cared and was trying with the resources they had, to at least appease the customers. People left because they had hope that a new company meant new finances to maybe develop the game, fix bugs, and get the ball rolling... how little did we know, the comany they sold it to was in the business for making profit on the dying hulk of the game, and for as long as the carcass sits and draws onlookers, they will never develop it.

So next time MadDwarf, don't rip quotes from the middle of my posts and make wide accusations about what Tulga did or didn't do, or what Artifact Entertainment did or didn't do, or hell, what David Allen did or didn't do, to get this game off the ground and have 8 million customers.

The game started, had lots of players, went bankrupt in 6 months due to WHO??? it was partly the game engine, but for the most part, the CUSTOMER BASE who found every exploit, cheat, hack, and problem the already bug ridden game had, made the game fold. No money, time, or staff to fix the glaring oversights the game was lacking. Word of mouth from unhappy customers staunched the growth of a truly unique game that still has people playing it even today.

A smart investor would buy the Horizons franchise, but not fix the game, but to keep the playerbase for their new game... in one post Fridledk put it best...

"As soon as another MMORPG comes out with playable dragons, Horizons will die."

[Kulamata]

In general agreement, but with some slightly different views. Certainly a MUCH more complex story than "it was bad, always bad, never any good, blah, blah, blah".

Hz initially was NOT a grind fest. It was decided that adding grind to piece out the content was the best way to retain players with a small development staff and limited real content production. A bad idea, and it really damaged crafting, and terribly hurt the player count.

It had many more innovations than listed above; flying players, a really good UI, easy death penalty, multi-classing, tails (!), markable maps, unique crafting, REAL music, (Some like the dragon music totally innovative), and on and on.

It was mismanaged from initial design (NO design documents!!!) to the end. With staff turnover, a lot of the original lore was forgotten or disregarded. During the Chris Baker era, some very good steps were taken; a very well done questionnaire (finally!) that was addressed to ex-players as well as players, an overhaul of dragons making them much more playable, and revision of the tutorial and low level areas. Player subs went from 5400 or so to roughly 10,000 as a result of the changes, and trial offer retention went from 2% to 58%. An expansion was announced that would have addressed some long needed features. (And some misguided changes were made too, and some problems added, which are now embedded in the game.)

Subtracting out the second game development costs, which was part of the justification for the client rewrite, the game had become self-supporting. The dev staff was pretty well boiled down to a more professional group. And that staff pulled off that extreme rarity, a successful turnaround of an MMO. This success made Hz salable; and it was sold.

[Rayth]

Mass exodus (the first one) started long before the WoW bulldozer got here. The first few months saw a lot of people leave long before WoW was a reality. I was playing the dung heap of a game, SWG, when WoW came out. I had been playing Horizons for quite a while before I jumped over to SWG to follow some friends and played SWG for a good 6 months easy.

As far as a grind fest, I find very few, if any MMORP's aren't a grind fest. WoW, UO, EQ, EQ2, SWG, Horizons, Vanguard - all the ones I have played are a grind fest in one form or another. WoW just had quests to distract you from the fact you were grinding.

What got me to leave was...

1. The lack of any end-game. No dungeons. Very few world mobs. And short of "I hit for your 1 gazillion damage or 2 gazillion damage, you die", there was no real variety in mob encounters. Plus they (mobs) couldn't seem to figure out that object existed in the world. LoS and mob pathing was just wacked.
2. The worst loots tables anywhere. There was no point in killing anything, outside of tech comps. Everyone pretty much had the same armor and weapons, all the way down to techs. Let's face it, one of WoW's greatest draws where "OMFG EPIX!!!!" There were no epeen drops. I think they addressed some of that later, but I wasn't around to see some of the new drops and sets.
3. There was nothing that really reseambled an aggro list.
4. Camping created by tech components. The same techs were used by everyone, so the same tech drops were in demand. Camping the 1 spawn location FTW!!!!
5. Bugs
6. Golems and undead. Let's use the same 2 models for 90% of all the mobs in the game.

As far as outdate graphics and the such, that will only keep a game from being popular with the masses - not keep it from being profitable. Good lord, look at UO. The dedicated players would have stayed, if some of the core problems with the game had been addressed. Alot of my list, the dedicated Horizon player probably didn't even care about.

[IndyMan]

HEY PME! WITH THOSE FIVE, THAT'S ABOUT TWELVE RETURNING ACCOUNTS AVAILABLE FOR YOUR BILLING PLEASURE JUST BY MAKING POSITIVE CHANGES TO THIS GAME! Think about it.

and with that $9,000.00 (for the whole year) they can get about 6 weeks of programming (if they are lucky). do you think anything can be done in 6 weeks ? hardly worth the bother for 12 ... get to 100 and you can pay for 1 programmer (depending on where they work).

I just dont see 100 people jumping in as soon as they hire someone. I just dont see PMEIPQRWQSIYRS or whatever they are called now hiring someone without an increase in subs. /shrug

[Rayth]

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.