What I am playing, what I miss in HZ

[Dohin Bleris]

I miss HZ very much. Like an old friend that would treat me to hours of fun (hunting necroflys!) and relaxation (crafting in Mahagra!) But what I miss most are my guildmates and friends.

Alas, I had to move on....and I am happy don't get me wrong. I enjoy the new EverQuest 2 Echoes game very much. No PvP (that is unless you decide to duel) on the servers I am on. I love it. But I miss you....is anyone from HZ playing EQ2? If so what server....let's play together....

[Ivy]

used to play eq2 but went on to vanguard with my guild when that was released. I miss eq2 a bit, but since I was playing it til quite early beta I already needed some change.

[Goriax]

Played EQ2 awhile and cancelled. Was in Vanguard beta, couldn't hold interest and did not get Vanguard release. Playing Guild Wars but that's mainly to keep in touch with friends. I even did the trial for SWG but it was *blah*. I periodically look over the huge list of MMORPGs out there and none really grab me. They all blur together. In all of them you get into a balanced group and go out and kill stuff in large numbers. Ho hum. That was fun for awhile 7 years ago when I was playing EQ1 but there's only so much of that I can take.

With superficial changes only it's the same freaking formula in every game! They even have roughly the same races and classes. You have your melee guy, a caster of some sort, and some sort of healer. Somebody will have the job of holding agro, someone will have the job of dealing damage, and someone will heal. You invariably kill something by reducing it's hitpoints to zero. Tougher mobs have more hitpoints. You'll have additional classes whose functions usually boil down to those three. No game has much in the way of hit location that I know of. Magic consists of clearly defined spells that you learn. Everything is laid out and you can usually get detailed walkthroughs for anything once a game's been out for awhile. And those walkthroughs WORK because everything in the game is so static. Go to a different game and it's the same formula with slightly different window dressing.

This is virtually the same formula as the original D&D published 30 years ago. Right down to a combat system consisting of swings which gradually whittle away the hit points of your opponant. For D&D that was ok since it was new at the time and they didn't have computers to do the grunt work of a more complex system. Now I think it's just a lack of creativity.

Heh, E&B even tried that same formula with spaceships.

Would it kill developers to try something truly original? They sure act as if it would. Or maybe they think that some new biped model which looks a bit different from other biped models yet plays the same counts as unique. I don't.

I'm still playing HZ though. At least my dragon is unique. Heh, just not being biped makes the dragons pretty much unique for modern hide bound MMORPGs -- it seems that most can't even make the leap to a non-biped race. Let alone making a more fundamental change in 30 year old formulas for how to design an RPG.

[Peaches]

Yes, I do miss my best friend, Horizons, but am content in LOTR.

[vahrokh_the_ancient]

@Goriax

You are so right. Since when I lost everything here, I tried so many games.
They are all a photocopy, they even published an iterview of prominent MMO makers and all of them were convinced that copying World Of Warcraft is THE ONE way, hence we have:

- boring games
- photocopy games, even the user interface and combat style. Because The One WoW can't be wrong.
- always the same "Elf, Human, Dwarf" bullcrap.
- always the same rules
- always the same stupidly boring environment. Want to create a water closet? You can't. A 8 millions subscriptions game and you can't poop where you want.
- always the same boring crafting. Label it whatever, it's always some drops + some resources = some piece of gear. No houses, no gardens, no towns.

How could Horizons fail when it has much more than most of the other games put together completely baffles me. They had to work HARD to make it go under.

[Dhalin]

How could Horizons fail when it has much more than most of the other games put together completely baffles me. They had to work HARD to make it go under.

Horizons failed, because:

1). The Client was very poorly written, bug-laden, and takes -ages- to load. Go try WoW sometime, you boot up the game and log in, and are looking at your character within 60 seconds. Hz, I tell it to boot, go to the bathroom, make myself a sandwich, stick it in the microwave, come back, sit down, eat the sandwich, and THEN the game might be loaded up... oh wait, I need to wait some more. Okay, I'll go out, get the newspaper, go back, brush my teeth, and then when I come back, the game might have everything loaded so I can be ready to play then, without taking 2 steps every 10 seconds due to having 2-3 FPS in towns.

2). Low-Budget No-Name Company. Final Fantasy XI, WoW, EQ, etc succeed because they are made by BIG companies with lots of moolah. Square-Enix is a very big company. Blizzard is an absolutely -huge- company. SoE isn't exactly little either. But what do we got? Artifact Entertainment? Never heard of them. Tulga? Never heard of them. EII/PME? Never heard of them.

3). Basic things were missing. No MAIL option? I can't send items to my friends while they are offline? No Offline Messaging System? I can't send messages to my friends while they're offline? The only way you can "send items" is they must be in the same guild, and you have a guild-only consigner, and then that only lasts for a couple RL days.

4). BIG. Sprawling. Areas. That have absolutely nothing in them. Its kinda boring wandering this vast world, listening to the same tune (IF music is playing, heh. otherwise, you hear silence...) and looking at nice beautful rolling landscapes that.... serve no purpose whatsoever. There's nothing in them, no mobs, no NPCs, no towns, no nothing... some places have blank plots, yeah... but other places... mountains, meadows, etc... and not a single creature anywhere, for miles....

5). Broken Mob Spawns. Its very annoying to have to do a quest that needs you to kill mobs, you arrive at said area, no mobs... you wait, wait, wait.... OMG! There's 20 of them around me, Run Before I D....... *splat*

6). While on the subject of quests.... Bipeds only have quests up until like Lv10. Once you get Lv10ish, MEANINGFUL quests end. You're left with some quests that give absolutely no reward for your work, and spend the next 90 levels grinding for no apparent reason, other than "to level up".

7). Another quest issue.... Lv50 quests in areas packed with Lv90-110 mobs. Yeah, what a way to get a dragon's spirits up by making him sprint through things that can one-shot him. Let's further that by making it so that dragons cannot Resurrect fallen allies until they are Ancient, and even then its once per hour, and takes 5,000 hoarde.

8). Economy. What Economy? There is no Economy. Other than "Craft 1,000,000,000 of X items and sell them at various PBs to get enough moolah to buy a plot/lair". The only purpose consigners seem to have in this game, are for Newbies at NT to buy stuff they need, or, in Aughundell (WHY do people choose Auhgundell? its almost as laggy as Tazoon!) to pawn off Dragon Hoard items, and/or a few expert forms (never the ones people NEED, mind you.)

Most of the Successful games don't have the issues I listed above. Yes, Horizons has build-able buildings and Lairs. Yes, Horizons has Flying Dragon Player Characters. Yes, Horizons has spells you can craft yourself and modify with Techs. Yes, Horizons has craftable armor, with techs.

But.. eh.. what else does Horizons have? Lag, Bugs, Missing Content, and Issues that have been issues ever since Beta, that are still (and will forever be) unfixed.

I loved this game as much as anyone else, but... things needed fixed that weren't fixed. When Tulga had the game, hopes were high, they were starting to fix things... though, instead of fixing bugs, they chose to piss the players off, esp. with the T6 debacle, instead of fixing little bugs that have been around since the game's conception.

Someone sure had their priorities straight.....

--Dhalin

[Uro]

Let's see. What I miss from my HZ days would be the community, my friends and my dwaggy.

I'm atm still playing WoW(draenor) though I now have canceled my subscription there I still had 1 or 2 months left on playtime.
I recently moved to LOTR on Gilrain server with a bunch of old HZ'ers actully, mostly while I wait for warhammer online to be released. Have coordinated with a bunch of the old HZ'ers to go there so we migth play together, like Varan, Daedra, Thumb and Saphi . Unfortunatly I do not have the contact info on all those I used to know from the game, due to my HD dying on me, but if any of my old friends should read this you can always drop me a PM

[Senkeleron Fell]

I find LOTRO to have almost everything I liked about Horizons, with the addition of stuff that was in the Suggestions forum here. Sometimes it feels like it was done by some of the same people, just done better. Everything feels somewhat familiar.

[Goriax]

I don't suppose LOTRO has playable dragons. Oh well.

I looked over Warhammer Online and it looked like what I've been complaining about.

I'll probably try Age of Conan when it comes out. They're trying a few original things (or at least things which haven't been done in some form in 2000 other games). I'm willing to cut anyone some slack if they're trying to be original.

[Tanaros]

My wife and I both moved on to Lotro as well for most of the reasons listed here.

A few others from our guild have come over as well.

[AA0]

LotRO has similar feel compared to HZ, except the building part until you hit 50.. once you hit 50 it is hardcore gaming.

[Rayth]

Just toying for WoW, waiting for something interesting to come out. I goof around with Eve Online, from time to time.

Played and discarded Lotro, Vanguard, EQ2, SWG.

What I miss about Horizons is the community and crafting. Some of the events they had for opening up new lands, etc. where pretty cool. Unrealized idea's like the artifacts bothered me, because I never really understood their importance. The multiclassing in Horizons was pretty slick. I enjoyed totally changing around my character.

What I don't miss is one of the most boring loot tables ever created as well as the total lack of a real endgame. During the end of the world stuff (shard consolidation), the idea of a "boss" during that time was someone how just hit really really hard and killed you in on shot. It would have been nice to see Horizons introduce things like aggro and hate, beyond the ultra simplistic mechanics they had. Dungeons would have been nice, along with a better grouping interface. The housing didn't seem to come together, as well as the player vendors. Would have been nice if something UO'ish had came out of housing.

Overall I miss my time here, hope you remaining are having a good time.

[Ryver]

I play WoW sparingly, in fact I've played once or twice in the past month. Logging in is so much faster there but HZ will forever be my home which is why I have remained there. I absolutely refused to give up and once I did contemplate whether or not it was worth it but still I stuck on because I'm that ******** stubborn Nothing else sparks my interest enough to quit.

I also did get into Vanguard beta (before they opened beta) and couldn't play at all. Apparently my computer isn't equipped enough to handle it and I have no means to upgrade atm so I cannot play.

[Justa Mirage]

I Unsubbed Vanguard after my 6 month pre-pay was up...

NO machine is able to run that game smoothly, even mine...

You would think that a core2 6700 intel with 2gb ram, 10,000rpm sata drive and ATI 1950 Xfire card setup could handle Vanguard... HA!

I studdered, the sound and graphics studdered, everything studdered.
The game was boring and directionless with out a clue as to what my motivational goals were except to get quests, kill mobs, and run around forever.

Why do I need to be high level? to get a flying mount of course... I can just log into horizons and play my dragon and not have to wait.

[LOVWYRM]

no studdering here, Justa,
but the game was boring and directionless and without a clue.....^^

Flame and me went to LotR
waiting for a miracle
and always ready to take off with our dragons

[LaughingOtter]

I studdered, the sound and graphics studdered, everything studdered.
The game was boring and directionless with out a clue as to what my motivational goals were except to get quests, kill mobs, and run around forever.

No stuttering (8800GTX been very very good to me), but I could go back to working on my Lunus great hall and have less grinding to do.

And let's not forget a crafting system that was - by admission of the crafting team lead - intentionally designed to be adversarial and impossible to level by anything other than ginding out thousands of individual work orders.

[Shur]

i had no real issues playing vanguard on my laptop as long as i kept the setting around 25%. i keep my settings at 75%+ (except viewdistance and terrrain clutter. viewdist at 40% and terrain clutter off) for HZ and only lag in heavy towns some of the time.

it seems that people can either run HZ well and vanguard poorly, or the other way around. anyone have both games run same way at similar settings? we could use some benchmarking between the two. be nice to see why some can run one well and the other baad, while others run the other well and the one bad...

My rig:
MacBook Pro
Intel CoreDuo (not core2) 2.16 GHz
1 GB DDR2 667 MHz (windows thinks it's 994 MHz, O.o)
ATI Mobility x1600 256 MB GDDR3
Dual-booting XP Home on a 32 GB FAT32 partition (BootCamp boot selector)

it may be two revisions out of date (the first round of Core2Duo MBPs came out three weeks after i got mine) but it's still the most powerful computer i have used (not counting my grandfather's über gaming rig desktop, which blows away anything else I've ever even -touched-)

[mage]

While I play LoTRO and do enjoy that game I really don't believe it has most of the elements of Horizons. LoTRO has the same rigid class structure that most games since WoW and EQ have followed. There are some very nice aspects of LoTRO but aside from Monster Play I wouldn't call the game revolutionary. I still play this game and enjoy some aspects of it.

Vanguard was another game I tried and I found it to be sorely lacking. Crafting was a horrendous grind where rare forms were doled out through a lottery system and it was nearly impossible to get them. The world also felt very empty and the game had a very rough, unfinished feel to it and to make matters worse every patch seemed to break some existing elements or introduce new bugs into the game. Thankfully I quit that game after the free month.

Horizons has so many innovative elements to it that most games still don't have or that some games have tried to copy:

1) Dragons as a playable race.
2) Captive races that can be freed through the actions of players in the game (EQ II stole this idea with their Froglok locked race quest)
3) Plots with buildings that exist in the game world for all to see (EQ II uses instanced housing and from the latest dev chat LoTRO is planning to use that style of housing as well)
4) Dynamic quests that allow players to truly affect the game world (EQ II tried to steal this idea as well with a plague event of their own which seemed so very similar in many ways to the Horizons plague event)
5) Flexible character system that allows you to evolve the kind of character you want (while I like the fact that Horizons allows players to have multiple classes I always wished there was some limit for balance sakes- that is why my favourite games have always had skilled-based systems (like UO and the Elder Scrolls) as opposed to class-based systems.
6) Crafting that allows a crafter to truly customize items for the needs of the user. While Horizons never fully developed their system no other company has even come close to approaching the flexibility of Horizons tech system.

These are just some of the many reasons I find Horizons compelling. Another thing I like is that they use a stylistic form of art that feels more immersive to me that the cartoony graphics of games like WoW and soon to be Warhammer Online.

[Nayuaka]

Actually just a point on number 6. Ryzoms crafting and tech system was very good too. For each item you had say 4 things you needed to put into it, seed, oil, bark, and resin for example. There are many different types of each of those but items only require one. So you if you have red resin, or blue resin you could use any one of them and the same with the rest. Each had different properties and depending on what you used the item you made had a different colour or different stats...made crafting very creative. Also you could add techs just like Horizons but even easier.

PS. I know those arn't proper names for resins but for the life of me I can't remember and I'm not loging in just to check. :P


Edit: As much as I liked Ryzoms crafting system for pretty much anything armour/clothes/weapons better then Horizons there is still absolutly nothing like building your own lair or plot.

[LaughingOtter]

At least in Horizons you won't get killed by an exploding slate node...

That is one way to cut down on AFK macro crafting, though. :-)