And then there was one... RIP Shadowbane

[Deth]

It is pre-blackout Horizons. The Lead Designer, I think that is his job, is David Allen the Designer of Horizons, well again pre-blackout. But there is still enough lore from pre-blackout still in game that pre and post blackout Horizons is very similar. One just was Pvp oriented the other PvE oriente.

[zakram]

It is actually rather rare, at least from what I have seen, for a published MMORPG to die off. Most games destined for the zapper die in development. Even old games are still running like Everqust, ultima Online, and older yet, The Realm Online.

[Vahrokh]

We almost have a working Vista fix, new updates and the Labyrinth are coming.. new players are appearing = new subscriptions. Which part actually hints doom for Horizons?

As I stated "recently" (was it 2-3 years ago??), Horizons is an unique case of a game defying the basic 101 of economy and logic, it got dragons so it has to be magic!
Designed by a clueless (DA), CEOed by a shady other, given away to some anonymous "corpse MMOs" money squeezers and then back up to proper owners.
Bugged beyond hope, economy borked since years, unable to render more than 10 characters in the first days, now outdated in so many features.
Just flawed, taken as example of rampant early 2000 vaporware, with obvious basic design issues, bugs, lack of true 3D server simulation.
Unable to run on anything past an early 2000 operating system, created with no end real game and not even instances.
A big, barren land where mobs spawn once you are in the middle of them, with horrible water effects.
A capital with zero activity as it was too laggy to stay in it, grey blobs in place of mobs / players till you touch them.
A never ending grind with little to no quests, and the quests would give as accurate hints as "he lives somewhere in the south of the planet".
Servers crashing, merging, players moved across servers in a never ending spiral of downsizing and pain at losing friends.


And still, it lives. Against ANY logic. Against ANY prevision. Against any common sense in business.
Istaria lives.

Long life Istaria!

[AmonGwareth]

As I stated "recently" (was it 2-3 years ago??), Horizons is an unique case of a game defying the basic 101 of economy and logic, it got dragons so it has to be magic!
Designed by a clueless (DA), CEOed by a shady other, given away to some anonymous "corpse MMOs" money squeezers and then back up to proper owners.
Bugged beyond hope, economy borked since years, unable to render more than 10 characters in the first days, now outdated in so many features.
Just flawed, taken as example of rampant early 2000 vaporware, with obvious basic design issues, bugs, lack of true 3D server simulation.
Unable to run on anything past an early 2000 operating system, created with no end real game and not even instances.
A big, barren land where mobs spawn once you are in the middle of them, with horrible water effects.
A capital with zero activity as it was too laggy to stay in it, grey blobs in place of mobs / players till you touch them.
A never ending grind with little to no quests, and the quests would give as accurate hints as "he lives somewhere in the south of the planet".
Servers crashing, merging, players moved across servers in a never ending spiral of downsizing and pain at losing friends.


And still, it lives. Against ANY logic. Against ANY prevision. Against any common sense in business.
Istaria lives.

Long life Istaria!

It has never been as bad as you describe.

Oh and lets look at what it does have that was unique at the time.

1. Dragons
2. Deep crafting system
3. Contiguous world (at a time when most were zoned)
4. Multclassing
5. At launch truly live player-driven world-altering events (even today thats rare company)
6. Player owned land (not just an instanced house)
7. Actual non-human races (not just a human with a skin tint or a furred face)

and more...

[LOVWYRM]

Very nice and poetic description, Vahrokh
Made me smile and sigh

Relax Amon, do not be so gravely.
Vah was talking about the past (uhh-most of the time) -
before you and all the others of this great team came-
to assure our future

[Vlisson]

Dead-sayed live longer, actually I expected that you know this Vlisson and your doom posts are kinda annoying.

? i dont understand your attack

but i wish you a good day

[Silverblaze]

As I stated "recently" (was it 2-3 years ago??), Horizons is an unique case of a game defying the basic 101 of economy and logic, it got dragons so it has to be magic!
Designed by a clueless (DA), CEOed by a shady other, given away to some anonymous "corpse MMOs" money squeezers and then back up to proper owners.
Bugged beyond hope, economy borked since years, unable to render more than 10 characters in the first days, now outdated in so many features.
Just flawed, taken as example of rampant early 2000 vaporware, with obvious basic design issues, bugs, lack of true 3D server simulation.
Unable to run on anything past an early 2000 operating system, created with no end real game and not even instances.
A big, barren land where mobs spawn once you are in the middle of them, with horrible water effects.
A capital with zero activity as it was too laggy to stay in it, grey blobs in place of mobs / players till you touch them.
A never ending grind with little to no quests, and the quests would give as accurate hints as "he lives somewhere in the south of the planet".
Servers crashing, merging, players moved across servers in a never ending spiral of downsizing and pain at losing friends.


And still, it lives. Against ANY logic. Against ANY prevision. Against any common sense in business.
Istaria lives.

Long life Istaria!

I think I missed the positive part of this post.

Nope there it is.

"Long Live Istaria!"

I'll agree with that part.

[Sigvard]

A never ending grind with little to no quests, and the quests would give as accurate hints as "he lives somewhere in the south of the planet".

Gotta love those quests! Especially when you forget where the quest-giver was hiding after hunting down the quest mob. Hours of amusement!
'tis a good excuse to explore the world though! So many buildings, ruuiiins, spiders guaaaahfdghds. :'D *fangirl'd*

[Rayth]

It has never been as bad as you describe.

Oh and lets look at what it does have that was unique at the time.

1. Dragons
2. Deep crafting system
3. Contiguous world (at a time when most were zoned)
4. Multclassing
5. At launch truly live player-driven world-altering events (even today thats rare company)
6. Player owned land (not just an instanced house)
7. Actual non-human races (not just a human with a skin tint or a furred face)

and more...

All good points. The multi-classing is kind of genius and am surprised it's not more utilized in other games. However some of what he said was accurate as well. Mentioning the lack of instances was kind of weird because it really didn't come into play until, what, 2 or 3 years after your game was released?

However.

There is little in the way of an endgame. A lot of the endgame ended when community projects were finished. The adventure mechanics are way too simplistic or non-existant. The group interface is flawed on many levels. The unitframes are flawed. You have player build artificats that the last time I checked did nothing. The player housing, while kind of cool, isn't very spacious and the last time I looked you really couldn't decorate the interior. There is also a lot of lag.

I am a little disappointed because some of the most fun I had in this game were community project driven. It helped build the community in ways that I haven't seen in another game since. Beyond grinding, there really doesn't feel like there's a reason to log on now.

This wasn't an attempt to dump on the game. I've actually had more fun with this game then any other MMO, short of maybe UO. I guess I am just disappointed that this game never lived up to it's potential. This game is so untapped in many ways, it's amazing.

[AmonGwareth]

All good points. The multi-classing is kind of genius and am surprised it's not more utilized in other games. However some of what he said was accurate as well. Mentioning the lack of instances was kind of weird because it really didn't come into play until, what, 2 or 3 years after your game was released?

Yes, what he said was correct. But some folks have a tendency to focus solely on the negative. I was trying to point out some of the positives that were clearly the bigger drawing points of the game.

Maybe it is the word "instance" that is confusing. Think zones instead perhaps. Zoned worlds were common in 2003 and before. Horizons was one of the early ones to not have zones.

[Amerelium]

I think Hz/Ist we be around for a long time, looking back at what we've endured so far.

In the end, the only ones left will be Keith Richards and three cockroaches, and they will be playing Istaria...

[awdz]

i never thought of myself as a cockroach before...

[Vahrokh]

Originally Posted by AmonGwareth
It has never been as bad as you describe

I pasted the hot Tazoon.com arguments of the time.

They don't coincide on my opinion about the game and, as you might read in the last lines, I love both the game and the developers, expecially those who stayed and fought against the impossible *winks*.

Offtopic: Speaking of Tazoon.com I know sometimes he still lurks here, so HI DangItNotAChance! I learned English by reading and writing in your forum.

Maybe it is the word "instance" that is confusing. Think zones instead perhaps. Zoned worlds were common in 2003 and before. Horizons was one of the early ones to not have zones.

Since I have been a C++ developer myself I am always been very interested on the technologies that support the games. Expecially in the case of Istaria, it's obsolete in some aspects but very meaty in its key and unique features.
I can understand why so few competitors would dare to implement multiple race rulesets (ie dragons and non dragons) or dynamic terrain (it's full of win, if only we had it used more) or player free form housing, because if they asked me to implement them I'd want to be paid like an Arabian Oil trader.

About instancing: I found out that there's a third answer to "do you have instancing in this game?".

I played EvE Online, another game of old. They did not bother with instancing because they wanted for players to be able and intrude in each other's "quests" (it's an hard core PvP game).

They are using a very primordial yet effective alternative, something that imho can be implemented in Istaria with little effort (expecially compared to the effort needed to implement proper instancing).

They just teleport the players in a random empty location and spawn NPCs around them in a fixed pattern (ignoring the collidable structures for now, even if Istaria can do that as it's done on the client when you walk in any town).

Basically, it'd be possible to create a far reaching tall, huge mountain a la ARoP, the mountain top would have a "carved map" made by several identical
"boxes" / closed areas, each with a teleport arrival structure.

The players would approach what looks like a normal teleport in front of say a static scenery made castle.
The teleport would pick a random number and teleport the players on the tall mountain in the "room" assigned to that number.

Unless players pick the same random number, they should see their own private dungeon "like" they got an instance.


Improvements:

- store the random number in the group linked list so that all the people in the same group will go in the same arrival teleporter over the mountain.

- have the server maintain a list of "used" numbers (or use an hash table), so players are *granted* a private dungeon.

- to avoid dungeon camp harassing and content uber-farming, players can only get a different random number every N hours (a la instance cooldown).


I know all of the above looks daunting but it's stuff doable by a lone programmer + 1/2 content writers with some weeks of work.

[AmonGwareth]

I played EvE Online, another game of old. They did not bother with instancing because they wanted for players to be able and intrude in each other's "quests" (it's an hard core PvP game).

They are using a very primordial yet effective alternative, something that imho can be implemented in Istaria with little effort (expecially compared to the effort needed to implement proper instancing).

They just teleport the players in a random empty location and spawn NPCs around them in a fixed pattern (ignoring the collidable structures for now, even if Istaria can do that as it's done on the client when you walk in any town).

Actually you can quite easily say that Eve Online is a zoned world. Because you ALWAYS see a loading screen when switching between star systems and from space into a space station. Those are zones. That is, they are separately loaded processes.

Before recent updates (in 2008) their servers couldn't support more than a couple hundred players in a single star system at a time.

[Rayth]

Yes, what he said was correct. But some folks have a tendency to focus solely on the negative. I was trying to point out some of the positives that were clearly the bigger drawing points of the game.

Maybe it is the word "instance" that is confusing. Think zones instead perhaps. Zoned worlds were common in 2003 and before. Horizons was one of the early ones to not have zones.

In his/her context with the mention end-game and "not even instances", I was thinking seperate instances of the same content for an individual or group. Not seemless moving from one zone to another. I dont think many people want loading screens, so I don't think he would complain about the lack of zoning.

I think that continues to cause confusion in your later post, as there are not instances in Eve because they encourage the MMO portion for all content. When you enter a zone, all players are represented. Instances remove the MMO portion of the game for popular content, for good or ill.

[Dakoren Ironhand]

Actually you can quite easily say that Eve Online is a zoned world. Because you ALWAYS see a loading screen when switching between star systems and from space into a space station. Those are zones. That is, they are separately loaded processes.

Before recent updates (in 2008) their servers couldn't support more than a couple hundred players in a single star system at a time.

What about going to one of the following places in Horizons from the main land;

• Rift
• Spirit Isle
• Skalkaar
• Training Islands
• ...

You do get a loading screen at that time as well, so Horizons does has zones, just not as much.

One thing that still amazes me is the way the worldcache works, so many small files. That takes a huge load of work for the harddisk. As far as I recall having one large file except of loads of small one works better due to access times.

[Deth]

I think the difference is in Horizons you could fly to any of these "zones" if not blocked by a red wall. Where as in Eve you can only get there by porting. So it is more of the mote point of zones vs zoning I think.

[Veruliyam]

I think Hz/Ist we be around for a long time, looking back at what we've endured so far.

In the end, the only ones left will be Keith Richards and three cockroaches, and they will be playing Istaria...

...and they will eat Twinkies.

[velveeta]

and drink diet coke with splenda......

[Takora Drakan]

You forget the bananas, bananas will be there even when the universum explodes again.