Why I prefer Horizons to WoW

[Chioxin]

Sigh...

I agree with some things, disagree with others. I really wonder how many truely tried to find folks to play with. It's just like Everquest or any of the other old games. You had to go out and be social to find people to play with. There are going to be total jerks out there, of course... but man there are some of the BEST RP bars in town on WoW while I was there and a lot of good people. There was a ball I went to, we had a grand time and even set up some events at the Location. Drunken Brawls, or hand to hand fist fights. We had a beauty contest, for the ladies of course =) They wore varying dresses and it was rather amusing. Some dinner stuff, a dinner sit down and chat stuff. People of that guild hosting it [which i was not a part of ] even had waiters and servers, and they were dressed in tuxedos.

Heck I found great RPer's just wandering around grouping too. Yes I went through my fair share of rotten apples to find the sweets, the sweets aren't that hard to find though.

Sigh...

I guess I was just really lucky, or very open to exploring and finding people to play with.

[velveeta]

Sigh...

I agree with some things, disagree with others. I really wonder how many truely tried to find folks to play with. It's just like Everquest or any of the other old games. You had to go out and be social to find people to play with. There are going to be total jerks out there, of course... but man there are some of the BEST RP bars in town on WoW while I was there and a lot of good people. There was a ball I went to, we had a grand time and even set up some events at the Location. Drunken Brawls, or hand to hand fist fights. We had a beauty contest, for the ladies of course =) They wore varying dresses and it was rather amusing. Some dinner stuff, a dinner sit down and chat stuff. People of that guild hosting it [which i was not a part of ] even had waiters and servers, and they were dressed in tuxedos.

Heck I found great RPer's just wandering around grouping too. Yes I went through my fair share of rotten apples to find the sweets, the sweets aren't that hard to find though.

Sigh...

I guess I was just really lucky, or very open to exploring and finding people to play with.

i think, chio, what is being said is that peeps in horizons don't wait for YOU to come socialize, at least on blight.
let me put it to you this way - it took less than 5 minutes for someone to welcome me to blight when i first logged in. when blight was shut down and i made a character on chaos, no one even bothered to speak to me. and i am not talking when i first logged in, i mean after i had introduced myself and asked for the courtesies expected from noobs. only after about 2 days of play did i finally talk to someone expatriated from blight. and that is in the same game!
the games i have enjoyed the most have always been friendly and accepting to those who showed themselves worthy of acceptance.

yes, in my experience, you have been very lucky......

[Vahrokh]

I guess I was just really lucky, or very open to exploring and finding people to play with

I compare the non RP server I played on (Unity) with the non RP servers I played on WoW.

Even then, I have a druid on a RP server and the first things I read on the chat after the create character intro ended were "STFU noob" and more.

I proceeded going Orgrimmar, where a group of RPers was litigating with a group of jerks with awful non RP names (visiblyerect, ipwnzyoo and more) making jokes of RP, mocking them that the GM would do them nothing anyway (which is true) and so on and on for 15 minutes. Will not log in there again.

[Chioxin]

Velveeta: I"m confused. You're saying from Blight to Chaos you had a worse experience? These game types are all about communities and circles though. Horizons has it's own.

Vah...

You were on a NON RP server!? .... you can't argue anymore that there's no RP in WoW... You don't know. =/ Try a "RP" server, and go check the forums to see where the RP hot spots are and exert yourself. Then tell me there's no RP.

Bah! ... *goes away*

[Vahrokh]

You were on a NON RP server!?

I have:

- 7 druids
- 2 shamans
- 1 priest
- 1 warrior
- 1 paladin
- 1 warlock
- 1 rogue

Some of them are on PvE RP servers, 1 on PvP RP server, some on PvP servers.

I have seen a bit of all, and for a lot of time, since my main has > 200 days /played but others have 40 days.

[Soars]

WoW just had way to many pre-pubescent teenie-boppers who all thought they were rock stars and should be treated like one.
No thanks WoW I prefer a more mature community. Not to say we won't have our own annoying members of the community, but at least they are few and far in between compared to WoW.

[velveeta]

Velveeta: I"m confused. You're saying from Blight to Chaos you had a worse experience? These game types are all about communities and circles though. Horizons has it's own.

not worse, just different. enb spoiled me, i guess......everyone was totally friendly and eager to meet noobs, like blight.
on chaos, there were so many other peeps and they were obviously very busy with their guilds and friends and stuff.
in no way do i mean to imply that chaos folk are rude or inconsiderate, merely that chaos is not blight, and i prefer blight.
so much so that blight is really the only shard i would prefer to play in.
but that is just me, and anyone reading this SHOULD NOT read into it that chaos is not the shard for them - it is merely not the shard for me......

[Chioxin]

not worse, just different. enb spoiled me, i guess......everyone was totally friendly and eager to meet noobs, like blight.
on chaos, there were so many other peeps and they were obviously very busy with their guilds and friends and stuff.
in no way do i mean to imply that chaos folk are rude or inconsiderate, merely that chaos is not blight, and i prefer blight.
so much so that blight is really the only shard i would prefer to play in.
but that is just me, and anyone reading this SHOULD NOT read into it that chaos is not the shard for them - it is merely not the shard for me......

That makes sense, that's what I thought. Sorry I didn't mean "Worse" really just that this was the experience had. I think that's normal in MMO's though. The fewer people the tighter the community because they need people to survive and to have fun. Blight is far fewer than Chaos... Horizons is far fewer than WoW.

Even on our HZ servers though, we have our tight groups =) *Still trying to work his way into them.*

Cool beans though. I hope I got it =)

[j-Xiti]

Ryzom allows (allowed? Not sure if it is still around) multiclassing to an even greater degree than HZ does. That game had some of the more unique gameplay I've seen in an MMOG. Unfortunately something didn't quite click for me in that game. I kinda wish it had, cause it is a neat game in many ways.

I felt the same way. I had the free Island installed for about a year, but it never quite got me hooked. It just felt to familiar - just like Everquest or World of warcraft, or any other Massive Multiplayer Onliner. The lore to Ryzom is great , and the world imaginative (A giant tree planet). But, it just felt "been there, done that"

Horizons has a lot of potenial, but I really think it needs more. I has to do something VERY drastic to get the palyerbase back.

GuildWars is completely successful without a subscriber base (free play), and I still wonder how they do it. It really is a good game, too. I love how the story arcs as you progress through the game...you see and feel the world change as you feel as though you really apart of a real live world.

With the events that Horizons had (i wasn't there then) that freed certain races or clear Blighted areas - that was cool too.

[j-Xiti]

i made a character on chaos, no one even bothered to speak to me. and i am not talking when i first logged in, i mean after i had introduced myself and asked for the courtesies expected from noobs. .

I experienced the same thing on Order, which was very weired because two-three years ago that was not the case. I met my guild on Order and now I am the only one left. Recently, I saw a Gnome named Mutey Martin....and yes, he was mute. Didn't talk, just "nodded" and "pointed" or "shrugged" It was very weird.

[Nakaru Nitepaw]

I hang onto horizons because it to me is the Marvel of what MMOs should be. Till today the only other online games i know of which allow the player to fly, is Anarchy Online with it's Yalmaha's. The only other games that allow you to own land is SWG and Vanguard (Both making it difficult i might add). Thats not a lot of games. Of course some of the most popular games can have a very mature understanding community. I play EQ2 most the time, on Antonia Bayle (RP server) and i love the people there.

There was a quick time i played WoW. I don't play it anymore because theres so many better games. I remember one time i found a way to see the terrain from above as if i was flying. I got to see just how unpretty that game was. Sure it looks nice from ground level, but from above you can see all the splices in the terrain. It's desert over here and grass over there. That is why you cannot fly in WoW. To prevent you from seeing all the shortcuts the Devs took.

Since EQ2 is a bunch of small zones that connect together, if you try to fly around your not gonna get far. Just using the feather fall ability reveals whats over those mountains at the edge of the map. Horizons is different, being a seamless world with practically no zoning. The only drawback in the design is the choice in textures used for the terrain and trees. I've made a small attempt in fixing this on my client but stopped after redoing the grass because I prefer to play the game then to rebuild it.

Vanguard comes pretty close to what horizons is, except for some things it lacks. And some things the devs had to race the clock with, and throw things in at the last minute do to budget issues. Microsoft really ripped sigil a new one. I'm surprised they even made it this far. It's a good game, it just sorta brought in a lot of the WoW kiddies and fanatics, which are the prime reason i left WoW.

[Corvinus]

I prefer London to Manchester
can not fly in WoW ? , its called a flightmaster from one place to another
I prefer Chelsea to Arsenal and I happen to like my Audi

[Lunhilde]

Flight as transport from pt A to B is different than flight anywhere you feel like going. It's still a mess in the MMO world due to the Z axis and agro ranges, but eh.

Anyway I still spend most of my time on EQ2 also (LDL) but I still love HZ and log in whenever the guild drama drops down to a dull roar in Norrath..

[Nakaru Nitepaw]

Quite right. EQ2 and WoW don't have real flight like in horizons and vanguard. You basically ride a mount thats preprogrammed with a destination. Like a transport train. If you have realworld flight it means to actually be in control of where your going. If you fly high enough you can see all the problems with WoW and EQ2 from above. Since EQ2 uses cube mapping for it's sky you may even fly through a flat platform of fake clouds if you go high enough. XD

[Chioxin]

You guys know Burning Crusade put "real flight" as you call it into WoW right? I even have a dragon =P Zip around from one spot to another! Don't use the "A to B" transportation anymore.

[Lunhilde]

Me no care. But just in general some of the EQ terrain looks fishy even from the ground, like the difference between looking at the side of a mountain from a distance in Lavastorm, and looking at the side of a mountain from a sitance in chiconis. Maybe its just the landscape squares blend better in HZ, but the sides of mountains (like the central volcanoes in Lavastorm) look checkered. HZ landscape is still the prettiest out there, from sky to ground, its just our models that need more work..

[Magnir]

You guys know Burning Crusade put "real flight" as you call it into WoW right? I even have a dragon =P Zip around from one spot to another! Don't use the "A to B" transportation anymore.

"real" flight only in Outland... still can't do it on Azaroth.

[Chioxin]

Yes, but it's there =P SO NYAH! =P

[Nanain]

One of the reasons WoW players got a bad rep in the MMO world is that when it came out, a lot of ppl who had never played any MMOs before started playing.
So you had the old school MMO players, used to some form of player etiquette from other games, and then you had the new ppl who hadn't got a clue, and figured the old players were being elitist, when they pointed out player etiquette.

[Chioxin]

Quite right. EQ2 and WoW don't have real flight like in horizons and vanguard. You basically ride a mount thats preprogrammed with a destination. Like a transport train. If you have realworld flight it means to actually be in control of where your going. If you fly high enough you can see all the problems with WoW and EQ2 from above. Since EQ2 uses cube mapping for it's sky you may even fly through a flat platform of fake clouds if you go high enough. XD

There was a quick time i played WoW. I don't play it anymore because theres so many better games. I remember one time i found a way to see the terrain from above as if i was flying. I got to see just how unpretty that game was. Sure it looks nice from ground level, but from above you can see all the splices in the terrain. It's desert over here and grass over there. That is why you cannot fly in WoW. To prevent you from seeing all the shortcuts the Devs took.

I'd like to point out that the things you point out as "problems" are not problems if you were never meant to be there in the first place. Games and making things cool in games is all about playing tricks to make it appear right. You just found a magician trick, not a problem. Go build some levels =) Read some unreal editor tutorials and "how to's" and you'll find lots of neat tricks on how things are done. There are pros and cons to how those things were done, and reasons developers chose one way over the other.

Again though, it's a design choice, not a problem...

However, if you were meant to fly up there, then yes it's a problem =P But I don't know EQ2 at all and from post I'm assuming you don't have in game means to fly that high.