Big disapointment!

Lai'Ahna

I feel I was scammed by the devs of this game. The reason is that I and others believed what they had promised durring beta. I spent on subscription for 2 years even. Thinking they would get it all fixed up.

When they did the complete overhaul and changed the game. They ruined it for me. I hated having to craft or to depend on crafters entirely for gear. The game was all about grind.  I finaly gave up on it.

I was very disapointed that it took foreeeever to build. In game community died as well when all the good crafters walked away.

Gindace

Story of an MMO. Horizons has been blacklisted for a long time anyway.



This is trend they seem to follow now. So much hype, so many promises...and then the company forces it out hoping to make their quick money and then fix it later.

green13

Good concept - bad implementation.

Horizons had some very promising game elements but the folk in charge weren't able to turn out the full package. Considering:

• their attempts to fix problems seems to have made them worse;
• the length of time the game has languished in its clearly less than perfect state;
• the now very outdated graphics;
• the plethora of new MMOs set to hit the shelves in 2007,

I can't see Horizons ever pulling itself out of its hole.

Lai'Ahna

I agree with you. Not only was Horizons a lemon, so were so many that came out or didn't get going that were supposed to in 06'. Makes me think that 06' was the worse year ever for mmorpg's.

Sazazel

You know a game is kinda sad when the only good thing they can think of to advertise to get new players is....



"Well hey you can play a dragon......"

Cernan

I gave up on Horizons in 2001 when David Allen left.  His original concept was what drew me into the game.  I tried to follow up but what I saw was a pale shadow of his dream.  The graphics had completely changed, half the character races were dropped, and pvp was completely dropped.  The game no longer had any faction based action.  There was no good or evil.  Several of my coworkers were following Horizons as well.  When this new version finally came out, we all were highly disappointed.  Now reading up on all these issues that have been plagued the community.....I'm just glad I never tried to pickup the game.  So sad.....

JohnnyMotrin

My wife just bought me this game for Christmas. I'm glad there are sites like these where I can come and do my research. I would have been pissed if I downloaded the game and created an account, then got scammed like some of you did. Now I need to take advantage of the free trials to see which game I will get to exchange with this one.

green13

Originally posted by Lai'Ahna

I agree with you. Not only was Horizons a lemon, so were so many that came out or didn't get going that were supposed to in 06'. Makes me think that 06' was the worse year ever for mmorpg's.

I think you're spot on there. Even putting aside Dark and Light's release, 2006 was pretty dismal. But the past few years have been generally disappointing for MMOs. I'm looking at the list of games here and in the last couple of years World of Warcraft and Guild Wars (which isn't really an MMO) have been the only really well produced games (though like many I loathed WoW's endgame). EQII wasn't awful, but it really didn't live up to my expectations. And I was sooooo disappointed when Dragon Empires was cancelled

Looking at the mmorpg.com awards - it's all WoW and Eve. The market hasn't seen any new serious contenders since WoW launched in 04.

But 2007 is looking very good and I think the major reason Blizzard has delayed releasing the BC expansion is to compete with all the new games due out then. If they'd released 6 months ago when they'd originally planned, players would have seen most of what the expansion has to offer and and all would have been ripe for the picking by any of these new games. I don't think it's a coincidence that BC will be released at around the same time as Vanguard - which if it delivers on its promises could very well be the answer for all the folk disappointed with Horizons and DnL.

pdq2004

And you would think that if a company was REALLY trying to encourage folks to subscribe, they would not require a credit card to just do a "free" trial. Geesh.

Zorvan

Originally posted by Lai'Ahna

I agree with you. Not only was Horizons a lemon, so were so many that came out or didn't get going that were supposed to in 06'. Makes me think that 06' was the worse year ever for mmorpg's.

I have a profound belief that the voodoo witchdoctors that SOE hired for SWG "subscription enhancement" purposes cast a hex way beyond his abilities (as SOE was too cheap to hire a properly qualified professional), thus affecting all surrounding game developers with various levels of incompetance this year.

Menkure

Originally posted by pdq2004


And you would think that if a company was REALLY trying to encourage folks to subscribe, they would not require a credit card to just do a "free" trial. Geesh.

A credit card for a free trial is very much the norm..  Lets face it, you don't want people creating free trials like mad every time they get a chance.. you WANT a way to give everyone at least one chance at a free trial, and make sure they don't take advantage of it by taking multiple free trials..  am I correct?



Horizons did require you to enter your credit card info for the free trial.  They did state that you would not be billed before the 14 day free trial was up, and if you didn't want to be billed, just cancel your sub before the 14 days were over.  While it might not have been the best way of doing things, this was not entirely Tulga's fault, as that is the way their system was set up with PayByTouch (And PayByTouch had to have the billing system set up a certain way for them to bill people.)



The problem now herein lies that when EI Interactive took over Horizons, they majorly busted the billing process.  Many people who tried signing up for the 14 day free trial were billed the moment the account was created.  What was worse, was that character creation was broken, and you could not create new characters on the servers.  (Many people still complain that the character creation is still b0rked.. EI/PME says differently though)



With character creation broken, what's the use signing up for a 14 day free trial (Which you automatically get billed for the moment you sign up) if you can't create any new characters on the server and play?



-Menkure

green13

I've played just about free trial that's been available and all but a few have required credit cards. Which for me was only a problem with Neocron 2. My card was rejected, a problem that was being reported on the Neocron forums by lots of people trying to access the free trial.

So I contacted my bank and discovered ClicktoPay (who do Neocron 2's billing) had tried to make an unauthorised cash advance charge on my card and my bank automatically rejects cash advance charges below a certain amount.

Even after I forwarded the bank records to the Neocron 2 devs and ClicktoPay they just kept denying it.

So when players report any kind of billing issues in these forums, I take those seriously and don't go near those games.

Menkure

*Nods*  Wise move..



Yeah, the Neocron2 billing stuff pales in comparison to the billing snafu with Horizons and EI Interactive.



I won't say that there weren't any billing issues before Horizons was sold to EI..  Artifact Entertainment (And later Tulga) had their own issues with double billing..



What seperates the two were AE/Tulga's openness about those issues, and their willingness to fix those issues (And do so as quickly as possible).  On the official boards, whenever someone came on and posted.. it didn't matter how bad of a flame the post was..  one of the worldmasters, and even Amon (one of the lead developers) would always respond and try and solve the issue.





EI Interactive has done the complete opposite. 

• Their account and subscription management pages are broken, leaving it so players cannot add or change any subscriptions.  In their last press release regarding billing, EI Interactive stated to call PayByTouch through their 1-800 number to manage their subscriptions.
• PayByTouch's 1-800 number is inaccessable to those players living in Europe and Australia, and those players living there cannot get in touch with PBT to change their account data
• BayByTouch tells players they CANNOT REACTIVATE CLOSED ACCOUNTS. THEY CAN ONLY CANCEL ACTIVE SUBSCRIPTIONS.  With the account management pages broken, this means if an account is closed, it cannot be reopened until EI Interactive fixes their subscription management pages.  EI has made no public announcement regarding this to their players, and have closed numerous threads started by concerned players worried about loosing 3 years of work on their characters.
• EI INTERACTIVE tells people to private message them on the forums, but with forum registration closed and disabled, how can you if you don't have a forum account?
• EI INTERACTIVE tells people to email them, but emails bounce with "No such address exists"
• They tell you to open up a trouble ticket through their support site, but no trouble tickets have been answered since the sale
• You can't call EI INTERACTIVE.. no public phone numbers are available, and the old ones have been disconnected.  One leads to Dr. Rask's voicemail, but he has never responded to any messages left on it  (as those who left messages have reported on various forums)
• Many are still being billed directly by EI INTERACTIVE INC, and PayByTouch denies any involvement with those charges and referrs you to "take it up with the merchant"..   (And this is next to impossible, please re-read the above reasons as to why)
  
  
• EVEN THOUGH EI HAS PUBLICALLY STATED THAT EVERYONE WHO WAS BILLED ERRONEOUSLY  WERE GIVEN A REFUND AND FULLY COMPHENSATED, MANY WHO WERE BILLED MULTIPLE TIMES WERE NOT GIVEN ANY KIND OF REFUND.  THOSE WHO WERE REFUNDED WERE ONLY REFUNDED THE COST OF THE SUBSCRIPTION.  TO THIS DATE, THERE HAS BEEN NO REPORTS OF EI COMPHENSATING THOSE WHO INCURRED BANK CHARGES FOR OVERDRAFTS CAUSED BY EI'S BILLING SYSTEM

I strongly advise against signing up for a Horizons Account under EI/Pixel Magic Entertainment, until they put a stop to the erroneous billing and fix the account management page, and they can provide existing and new customers a secure system to change, edit, and modify their account subscriptions, cancel their accounts, and provide proper customer service if problems arise.



-Menkure

Lai'Ahna

Originally posted by pdq2004


And you would think that if a company was REALLY trying to encourage folks to subscribe, they would not require a credit card to just do a "free" trial. Geesh.

The reason is simple. Have you ever tried to unsubscribe from Horizons? It was a nightmare for many. That is how they make sure to get some of everyones money that does use the 30 day free trial.

green13

I did have trouble unsubscribing to Horizons when I played it briefly, years ago - but they responded very quickly to my email and sorted it out.

Sounds the tone has very much changed.

I'll throw this link up again.

http://www.consumer.gov/econsumer/

I think these are the best people to lodge a complaint with. The government consumer protection agencies who have access to this database will almost never investigate individual complaints, but if they get enough complaints about the same business then they can make life uncomfortable for them.