IGN Interview with Rick Simmons and Jason Murdick

[Helious]

good interview,i thought VI came over well.....
Just hope that they sort Unity out sooner rather than later...the fact they can`easily expand existing server`s ` sort of implied we will end up on one of the US servers....also nothing about Vista that i noticed....that would go a large step to increase the flow of old players and new ones.

Lets be brutal here, this interview wasn't for us. The interview was entittled Horizons: Empire of Istaria Acquisition Interview and quite rightly as little of the interview as possible was about the past (roughly half the interview although i would like to have seen even less).

It's about new customers. The interview can be broken down into 3 parts (for me anyways)

a) were not the people who (and for legal reasons i choose my next words carefully) are precieved to have deliberatly stagnated the game and robbed customers. All those things you half remember reading about (or will read about if you research the game after reading this interview) can't happen again.

b) This is the game we have and these are the people we have/want playing the game.

c) Were not dead and were not dying anytime soon, so this is how we are going to go forward with the game, come join us!

Personally i'd have plugged the free trail as well but i'd absolutly shameless in that respect if i owned an mmorpg.

[Nanain]

TBH I never want to play on another Hz server NOT run by Vi...if they made a spare server next to the current ones, that'd be fine, but I don't trust companies who run games that are not their own, after the years of neglect from GN.

[Justa Mirage]

split banana treants!!! that could be a conf resource.....

I can see the "battle theme" that plays when you get near them...

"Peanut butter jelly time.... peanut butter jelly time..... "

[Salis]

Is this banana treant theme a way to introduce confectioner for dragons.
I can see the quests already before me:
Like slice up three banana treants, a Melon Treant, and 2 Vodka Elementals and you get one Banana Punch which you can consume. Boosts your strength, but lowers your focus.

Salis

[gopher65]

I really want a Dwarf speciel quest to kill a certain number of Gin and Tonic Elementals heh. And The Wedding Quest really should have had a "kill the Champagne Elemental to get drinks for the guests" subquest.

[Nisse]

Great, now you got that stuck in my head. I raise you one "ring ring ring banaphone!".

[Ivy]

no word of unity or the lost unity characters none, none at all

[Vahrokh]

no word of unity or the lost unity characters none, none at all

Yes, the silence was deafening.

[Ramaj]

Looks like Vi does want our subscriptions..... but do not seem to be bothered about our Unity characters.
"just create new character(s) on Order or Chaos": easily said, but we did spend 3 years or more creating and developing our characters on Earth/Ice/Wind and Unity.....
We put our hearts and souls into them, and now we are expected to just "drop" them?
We don't even know if Vi is still (or has been at all?) trying to get our characters back..... all our questions about this are not being answered....are just ignored.

[LaughingOtter]

Yes, it would have been good to see some news about Unity. However, one of the points Rick made was that VI is being very careful not to talk about anything too early, because in the past players have taken "we are hoping to..." as "we absolutely promise that...", and that's a situation VI doesn't want to be in.

I agree, a message saying "we're still working on it" would be good. But not getting an update doesn't mean you're being ignored or forgotten.

[Ramaj]

Considering what Unity players have been through in the last year we were able to play (which is itself some 10 months ago!), not getting the last updates nor events nor fixes nor answers to our pleas and questions etc. is it too much to ask for a little reassurance from Vi?
We too love the game! Many of us stayed, despite everything. And when Vi took over and revived the game, many of us turned up again, hoping that Vi could get the transfered DB and our characters back.
Vi did say that they cared for the Unity players, but, up till now, we have noticed very little of this....
Can you blame us if we are growing impatient? Asking for some reassurance that Vi is working/trying to revive (at the very least) our characters?
We'll give credit where credit is due (Vi has done a lot is a short time!), but we Unitarians are feeling "left out".......

[Romirez]

Great, now you got that stuck in my head. I raise you one "ring ring ring banaphone!".

watchign that had me giggling for a while.

[Vaz]

no word of unity or the lost unity characters none, none at all

http://community.istaria.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=16606

[Kulamata]

I strongly believe that if the Unity characters can be ported to existing shards that it will be done. In addition to the benefits mentioned in the link above, imagine how strong a signal it would send to the player base about Virtrium's commitment to the game and the players.

It would be nearly as powerful as the Blight Bolt from the Blue was.

[C`gan]

I know the Unityers are frustrated. There's not much I can say to it to calm the anxiety other than please be patient. I do think the terrain patch to Blight wasn't quite as expected, and suddenly all the plots and lairs going wonky may have taken up some of the staff's time in trying to chase down the coding that went stupid. But I honestly believe that Unity is neither gone nor forgotten. They may not have all the hands needed to be able to make sure it is 100% correct. Even the loss of one formula I think is something they're hoping to avoid. And the devs certainly don't want to put Unity all in, say it's ready to go, find out that 1/2 of you miss your vault space due to database conflicts with items, another 1/3 lost your coin, and the remainder are suddenly nude, broke, and have nothing but a level 0/0 starting out on Skalkaar because of only showing up as dragons, whether or not you're bipeds.

Now, even though it'd give you the ability to play, I think that sort of glitching would end up in a rollback and a major OOOPS e-mail and loss of credibility in your eyes, would it not?

Like Reed Richards said in the Fantastic Four, "I've got to be sure it's right and it's not right yet."

Now, back to your regularly scheduled chat about an interview with an interviewer without a clue.

[Wildesira]

Here they almost said it again this is the reason I first played Horizons;

"it's a complex world with a close-knit community of players who love to craft, build their plots and lairs, and take on the occasional Rock Golem or Vexor."

Once I discovered Crafting way back then, I wanted to do not much else. At the time I was not know for leveling adventurers :-) So when they changed the gathering sites and added more MOBs that had to be fought just to harvest resource, the fun went away. And if I read the interview correct then there will be more MOBs to have to fight

[Istaria CS]

I gave Rick a call and here's what he had to say - and I quote:

"I don't expect any of the Unity players to sign up until their previous characters are available - I know some have and that's appreciated - but I think most are going to wait and see. Why anybody would think we don't want all the Unity players signing up is beyond me. That's crazy talk. Unity players love to play Horizons - we want them in but it's just going to take time to get the technical stuff figured out. As soon as we have it working 100%, we'll make it happen. The last thing we need right now is to bring over characters and have their stats get messed up or inventory lost or have the wrong character moved over. That's a sure way to show everyone that we don't care about Unity players. We'll do it once and we'll do it right."

I think he misunderstood my question, when I said that someone was asking "how come we have not done anything for Unity players" - but I think you all get the idea that it's a priority and they're working on it.

Horizons CS

[Ivy]

thanks for reacting

[Fidri]

Thanks for the sign of life Horizons CS and Rick. I didn't think you had forgotten about us, but it sure was a bit quiet, and the answer in the interview to the question of another shard for Europeans stated nothing about Unity.
Though I do have an active subscription on Chaos, it's really only to fill the gap ;-)

Keep up the good work!

[Rhialto]

I also found the unity remark not very uplifting.

Since I decided I would only play again if I get Rhialto transfered with vault, it seems the wait will be long.

I cant understand it really for it only is about 40-50 unity accounts/players. So why dont they do it by hand? 2 players a day.... in one month all unity is transfered and happy!
With so low amount of people to transfer, manual procedures are much more effective and efficient!

I hope the devs will rad and contemplate this simple and effective idea!

ps. I did not even have a plot!