Originally posted by Luth So, im kinda ready to log on to Chaos, though im from europe. But how is the diversity of equipment? In endgame, is there like one set of items you should wear because that is simply the best? Or is it dictaded by playstyle? for example, if I choose to play like a crazy offensive idiot, Would some end-game gear be better than others? or is it just one set everyone should wear at level cap?
Thanks in advance.
It's mostly dictated by playstyle, and also which class you play. The game allows players to adjust where they've invested their training points, so if you're not happy in role X, you can adjust your TPs so you can fit role Y. Or a combination of the two.
I can't comment on biped endgame armor, since all I've ever played is a dragon, so I'll stick with what I know. Endgame items for dragons depend on what you, as a player, want to do. The only thing that may be constant is the material used to fabricate the items your character wears. Certain types of dragon scales require only stone, while others are pure metal, and armor scales are both stone and metal. Added to that are the components used to enhance the dragon scales through techniques.
The endgame / high level gear a player wears is determined by what the player wants to be able to do, and what role they want to fill in a group.
So, game play involving something other than killing things and taking their stuff is not diversity, but making more things to kill and more stuff to take is?
Diversity is having a large range of different things to do when you log in. The poster you replied to did not imply that a game where you ONLY kill mobs and collect loot is more diverse than one where you mostly craft items.
What HZ always lacked was interesting playable content, beyond that designed for dragons or crafters.
Quest rewards: XP, money, item upgrades, unique items, reputation/faction, unique class based spells, or abilities...
Hunting areas: underground, over ground, dungeons, confined areas such as castles, ruins, islands, solo, duo, group, raid based...
Variety of monster: Not just mobs with different stats and skins. Animals: wolf, rat, spider, bat, snake, bear, reptile, lion, octopus, shark, barracuda, badger, beaver, centipede, hawk, eagle, crab, eel, humanoids; gnolls, goblins, orcs, ogres, trolls, dwarves, humans, pirates, brigands, bandits, occultists, snakemen, giants, faeries, centaurs, wyverns, griffons, animated creatures such as golums, rockpiles, orbs, elementals, undead, skeletons, zombies, ghouls, ghosts, shades, phantoms...
Loot through ALL levels: armor, weapons, tradeskill, quest objects, collectables, quest starters, cash, unique named items from named mobs, encounter based loot, quest only loot, rare items, spell or ability upgrades, class armor sets....
Encounters and events: Timed based; low level area by day, at night high level mobs or named's spawn. Triggered encounters, from one off fights to waves of mobs. Periodic events, an area with 2 or three factions warriing for control, launching assaults on each other, which you can participate in and effect the outcome of. Raid encounters, group encounters, story based arc story encounters.
Interactive in-game objects: Chests, to unlock, disarm; logs, books, rocks, bookcases, plates, cups, glass vials, scrolls; offering quests, or tasks, or completing them, or simply containing special loot or rewards, not to mention stories and lore.
Miscellaneous: Non combat pets, mounts, player titles, guild status titles...
When I played HZ it lacked most of that. From reading patch notes sinces then I've wave after wave of dragon content, tradeskill fixes and additions but very little adventure content.
Originally posted by Finduilas Diversity is having a large range of different things to do when you log in. . . . What HZ always lacked was interesting playable content, beyond that designed for dragons or crafters. . . . From reading patch notes sinces then I've wave after wave of dragon content, tradeskill fixes and additions but very little adventure content.
My question stands - game play involving something other than killing things and taking their stuff is not diversity, but making more things to kill and more stuff to take is?
Your answer would seem to be "Yes" - More places to kill things, more things to kill, and more stuff to get when you kill something is "diverse content"; anything for crafters or dragons is not.
As a matter of fact, I think more mobs, a loot overhaul, and more quest-based adventuring would be great. The game needs it and would benefit from it. That does not mean that stuff not realted to those goals has no value. That attitude is selfish and short-sighted. Horizons is not a game for pure adventurers and probably never will be; if that's what you want try DDO. I'm very happy with Horizons offering me a choice of more activities than just going out to kill things and take more of their stuff.
Originally posted by KlausW My question stands - game play involving something other than killing things and taking their stuff is not diversity, but making more things to kill and more stuff to take is? Your answer would seem to be "Yes" - More places to kill things, more things to kill, and more stuff to get when you kill something is "diverse content"; anything for crafters or dragons is not. As a matter of fact, I think more mobs, a loot overhaul, and more quest-based adventuring would be great. The game needs it and would benefit from it. That does not mean that stuff not realted to those goals has no value. That attitude is selfish and short-sighted. Horizons is not a game for pure adventurers and probably never will be; if that's what you want try DDO. I'm very happy with Horizons offering me a choice of more activities than just going out to kill things and take more of their stuff.
Huh?
Are you being deliberately obtuse?
Firstly, you have been playing HZ so long that you think that "adventure" content consists ONLY of killing stuff and looting gear. Just within the sphere of fighting type content there is a vast range of diverse content from game to game, much of it having NOTHING to do with killing and claiming loot.
Secondly. I did not say that "adventure" content equals diversity but crafting content, nor dragon related content does not. You seem to want to believe that is what I am saying.
Thirdly. Several existing games have a broad range of both adventure and crafting content. None, to my knowledge have dragon content, making HZ unique, but, as you well know, this alone was never enough to draw in a signifigant numbers of players to making HZ a financial success. HZ DOES indeed have a diverse amount of crafting content, possibly more than any other game, and in fact crafting content CAN equal diversity of game play. However, on it's own, crafting and dragon content, no matter how diverse within each field, does NOT equal diversity as a whole.
So pure crafters, lovers of building things, and players of dragons have played and stayed with HZ, but most of the rest have quit. HZ has proven that there simply is not a large enough market out there of pure mmo crafters; that for a game to succeed it needs MORE than the ability to play a dragon, MORE than a fully fleshed out crafting game.
So, to answer your question. NO. HZ does NOT have a diversity of content. Whilst no game has dragon content, 99.99% of the present player base seems prepared to accept that, in order to play a game WITH content. That is, they'd rather play a game WITH content, than a game with dragons.
And, whilst no game can come close to the level of detail that HZ can offer in terms of a crafting game, 99.99% of the player base also appears to prefer games with LESS rounded crafting, but with OTHER forms of content. Not only this but games will be released soon that signifantly outdo even HZ for their crafting game. Vanguard will have player build housing, cities, shops, markets, and a fully playable, fleshed out crafting sphere with the ability to play ONLY as a crafter and become a merchant prince. DnL, if it makes it, will have player built towns including castles that can be captured, defended, improved, destroyed.
Signifigantly however, these games will NOT rely solely on crafting to sell copies, they will be just ONE path. Too repeat:
Originally posted by Finduilas
Diversity is having a large range of different things to do when you log in.
I'll concede that I think of adventuring content as being 'killing things and taking their stuff'. Where you do it, what you use to do, what you get from doing it, how you get to the location you're doing it in, etc. are all interesting variables, but in the end, it's killing things and taking their stuff.
Now, I am in complete agreement with you that HZ is lacking in adventuring content. I want to see the war, myself. The event that began yesterday is the most war-centered one we've had in ages and I'm very glad to see it. The adventuring class quests were gutted in the server merge and still need to be redone. The loot tables are desperatly in need of overhaul and I personally would love to see the blighted equipment line tweaked into a more desirable form of dropped loot - preferably by addition of a cleansing process.
Thing is, even if all that came in today, I don't think it would be enough to qualify as 'diverse' under your definition, because I don't see some of your main items as being appropriate to Istaria. Correct me if I'm wrong, please, but it seems to me that a lot of your items can be summed up as "Dungeons". I know they're a staple of the fantasy adventure genre; they are just not really appropriate for the "war against the Withered Aegis" storyline in HZ. The war should be mass battles against undead legions, fortress sieges, battles to drive the enemy off your land. The standard fantasy dungeon really has no place in that environment. An underground fortress or necropolis that needs to be destroyed as part of the war effort or something like that would be an example of a 'dungeon' environment that was designed to be appropriate for the game world. If something like that does fit your idea of diversity, great! If not, then I don't think you'll ever be satisfied with what HZ offers.
Pets, furniture, doors - these are fluff. Fluff is good; I like fluff. Fluff isn't why you log in, though. As you say, you log in to do things.
I think you underestimate the appeal of dragons and of being a dedicated crafter. Dragons are a seperate game, and people are responding to it. Dragons make up 34% of all characters created (as of the last numbers I saw), and playing a dragon is one of the big draws that is bringing in new players. If you are right that HZ does not have the adventure content to draw a sustanable player base, then it must be the crafter and dragon content that are bringing all the new people in.
Vanguard looks interesting, alright. Then again, so did Wish. I'm not going to get excited about it, though; assuming it actually ships, by the second day of live, 3/4 of the people now raving about it are going to be screaming about how dumb the devs are and how it's a piece of crap that never should have left beta.
Originally posted by Deva-state Looking for an honest review, not a fanboi interpretation. Can someone please tell me what they like and hate about the game? Myself, like many others, played this game years ago and would like to give it another chance.
My husband and I were part of the beta and played live 6mths thereafter. We've recently returned to Horizons. Our first thought was to keep an open mind and take it one day at a time. Which is very difficult to do, because as time goes by more stumbling blocks are are added in ones way to annoy a player. Such as; not well thought out reworks, incomplete reworks, general term "bugs".
The more/longer one plays, the buggier the client gets. Such as; the backspace key no longer works as a delete key in the tell chatbox, game crashes, system freezes, losing the AI. Yes, there are work arounds, annoying work arounds; such as; deleting inflated files, saving the uncorrupted AI file somewhere else, rebooting etc. Think we've found about every glitch there is in the client after 3 months of gameplay. The last glitch which we don't look forward to is reinstalling Horizons. By the way, we've found it's best to do a reboot every 10 portals and/or 3 to 4 hours of gameplay. (which is dependent upon system memory)
At first, it was great. Some changes have happened such as; New Trismus is being reworked. Added A new quest and a few new trainer npc's at different locations.
What people don't tell you is.....
The old "New Towns" such as; New Brommels, etc..are outdated and just kept around for old timesake. I've heard that, Yes, in time, the "New Towns" will be reworked into something like mid level areas or special quest areas. But keeping inline with their track record, might be a couple of years down the road. Until then, the other "New Towns" are worthless unless one wants to be alone and there are no other places to locate Tier 1 resources.
Hint: in the other "New Towns" (doesn't seem to happen in New Trismus) there is a bug if one recalls to the bind shrine and return to T1 resource, the player can't see any of the old resources. The player can see only newly spawned nodes.
New Trismus is a great starter town. Everything is basically at ones fingertips. A few jogs here and there but thats about it. I've found nothing to direct people to explore the other lands such as; Kion and Sslanis (since these lands have been sort of designated as the next stage (area) for leveling/crafting) I can't stress enough these two towns have SORT OF been designated. The reason I state "sort of" is because this is when a player first encounters the trophy hunter npc's. By then, it's really late in the game to be starting in Kion and Sslanis because there are a few quests that one can do starting at level 5 or so. Plus by then, a player will have encountered trophies from New Trismus monster drops and have no idea where to go or what to do with them. The trophy hunters require items from specific monsters. These item tasks are level specific (monsters normally are WAY over a characters level to kill) We've found the trophy hunter tasks are best used when adventure multi-classing and have to restart at level 1, 10 or 20.
As for the quests, on the most part, I've been able to collect quests that were WAY WAY over my character's head. Such as; sending me out into level 80/100 areas and at that time, my character was only level 20. These areas used to be like mid 30ish at best.
Yeap, you guessed it. Horizon's monsters as a whole have been doubled if not tripled in level. (with exception to a few areas) From what I have experienced as a player, the quests weren't brought in line with the increase to monster levels.
Now let's talk a little about crafting, resources. We feel Horizons is approximately 80% crafter base game and 20% adventure base game.
So far, there are a few crafts that level up smoothly, time consuming but smooth. There are a few crafts that are absolutely insane, not only time consuming but absolutely not implemented well at all with all the changes in progress.. Changes being; moving "stuff" (npc's, resources, objects, etc..) around that are necessary to advance.
Obviously, the game is in a constant state of rework change with a lot of content that needs to be reworked and added. I'm sure they are working diligently. Knowing their track record, wouldn't count on it for another 3yrs.
Think I read somewhere their rework plan is a 5 year plan.
Until Horizons is totally revamped, it's Very buggy (game crashes and/or memory leaks that cause system freeze) and lag. Grind till ya cry and slit your wrists from either boredom and/or frustration.
This is a kind of game I wouldn't recommend to anyone as a main staple.
The reason we play this game: no freaking idea, obviously we are just filling in time waiting and are online game addicts.
Originally posted by Deva-state Looking for an honest review, not a fanboi interpretation. Can someone please tell me what they like and hate about the game? Myself, like many others, played this game years ago and would like to give it another chance.
having never played THIS game before, i gave the two week trial a go, a few weeks back.
graphics - disappointing, average at best
current game guides/information - looks like they just updated the forums, so those were fairly empty. not a lot in way of guides. the best answer i found about where to get clay (for alchemy) was "it looks the same as the ground, you just have to know where to find it". wow.
quests/missions/maps - i see how you can make a mark on a map and annotate it. but unless you scroll back to that portion of the map, you can't select it and have an arrow point to it, or otherwise lead you to it. same for quest npcs. there's this quest guy which the text only refers to as the "seneschal". well, you can't do a search for seneschal, you have to search by his name. pretty aggravating having to try and pay a lot of attention to where in this big city that i've been to once, this one quest guy is located.
pvp - seems to be non existent
character creation/leveling - looks like there's a world of choices for what you can be/do in the game. but that's just not enough to make me want to stick around and pay to play. on a free server, i would say this game is EXCELLENT. something i have to pay for, i'm afraid i'll pass.
whomever stated that you need to get to a high level to appreciate the game or whatever, um... if a game isn't fun in the first hour i've played, then that game just isn't fun. no reason to grind for 30-100 levels in order to GET to the fun, it should be fun, easy to understand/learn, well documented, from the moment i've installed said game.
wasn't for me, i gave it a fair shake and it just came up lacking. the biggest breaker for me, i think, was the poor graphics combined with having to pay to play.
i have a lot of patience with grinding, i remember uo back in the day and changing from grandmaster in one skill/set and switching that toon to different grandmasteries.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
I have been a extreme mmorpg'er for over 10 yrs now. I am currently at the end of a two week free trial period that they have offered to the general public. I can say that I won't be staying to continue to play. Over all the game takes one heck of a machine to run. I have a medicore set up 1.7+ AMD, 512mg ram and 256mg ati radeon graphics card, and have performed every tweak, configuration I could possibley find to get it to run smooth and failed. In and around structures, towns the framerates dip into the single digits for some serious stop and go action. It's very memory intense, with leaks to boot. The crafting system is pretty good. Although, one spends a great majority their time running and teleporting from place to place to speak with trainers for their cafting quests, instead of actively doing whatever skill you are fond of. After awhile of this, it gives you a feeling they are trying to milk all the time they can out of your subscription. A person just can't go mine and get mining experience. You need to specialize and be sure you are in that school while doing the deed in order to benefit and get experience. In my opinion at this point the game is suffering a real lack of players. (Can't imagine what the lag would be like with more active players.) Tech support: Seems to be real people doing what they can to help resolve issues. Although I am sure it's out of a manual. The game isn't for the lighthearted. There is a lot to it and little to no information about it with the exception of a couple community forums/websites. Instead of putting up a any type of general game guide, they have a Newbie Assistance chat channel. So you may or may not be out of luck if you have a question about anything. Another downfall id the weblauncher. Starting out a person don't know there is a launcher in the games file folder. The game takes you to their website where you have to have .neti installed and actually launches from your account. The information required to sign up for an account is very questionable. Never have I had to give such complete information along with required telephone numbers for an online game. If you read through the disclaimer (which most pass right up) it clearly states that they can and will use your personal information as they see fit and will share it with their affiliates. Whomever that may be *shrug* All I can suggest is that before you go and purchase anytime for this game. is to try the trial period, experience it for yourself and see if the enjoyment outweighs any problems it may carry with it for you.
I have been a subscriber to Horizons for over two years, but am a tester on the shard Blight. From the time I joined there has been the addition of the training island for Bi-peds (Spirit Isle), then once you progress from there to New Trismus, a whole range of new mage and cleric quests with more actually being implemented, we are currently debugging them now before they go to live.
I started playing on Chaos, within 6 months I was on Blight, and havent looked back. Yes there are still memory leaks but there is a new build currently being tested on Blight.
As for crafting, a few people have said they get sent here there and everywhere, cant say that is really an issue considering there are trainers in nearly every major city and most settlement portals can take you straight to resources.
Also noticed one message saying there isnt a great range of monsters, enter the blighted zones and see all the new undead dragons, blight hounds, rock haulers, a new master dragon that is working for the WA and is one tough monster....for lower levels venture into the Vandus Marsh to the Deadpool for a challenge.
War is coming to Istaria, the new Harro Deadlands has a fortification that players must build while being defended from Withered Aegis that are coming for a blight anchor.
There is a wide range of content to this game, but for some of the previous posters, you obviously are mind set so it best if you just go on your merry way and allow those of us who can see the beneficial changes starting to outweigh what negatives there have been in the past be given a chance to attract a new array of players who may just see the game for what it is becoming!!
The good: Fairly decent community Very large gameworld to run around and look at Combat animations are all right Dragon animations are top notch Genteel and pleasant time-waster Inoffensive game that would probably cater to most gamers Casual gamers are supported well Game caters to a certain patient type as opposed to the lowest common denominator (hi WoW!)
The bad/negative Company has no funds/staff for big improvements. What improvements there are are usually cosmetic or minor bandaiding. I was in beta and I read all sorts of grand designs for this game, few of which ever saw light of day, yet you get accused of making personal attacks by myopic cult-members when these home truths are pointed out.
Yes, this game has a high fanboi/cult-member quotient. Not as anal as A Tale in the Desert's, but pretty intense nonetheless. Objectivity is very much a hit or miss affair if seeking straight and honest answers about things.
Official forums get like 10-20 new posts in a 24 hour period. That's pathetic for an official forum of a fairly well-known MMORPG. Maybe that tells you where the game is as of mid 2006. So much for "lively discussion".
World rendering takes forever, even on a good system and a good connection. The worst of any MMORPG I've seen. It sometimes feels like you're testing the game still, rather than playing a game that's been around in retail for 2+ years now.
Takes a while to log in to the game and to log out, especially if you've loaded a lot of different places. Slowest log-in on any MMORPG I've played.
Landscapes are extremely generic. Most of it is green rolling grassland...seriously
Biped (non-dragon) animations aren't as fluid as they could be
Armour and weapons are awfully simple and plain in design and appearance
Illogicalities abound. Blacksmiths make wooden items, confectioners make food, outfitters make metal and leather armour, shearing sheep gives you material that's actually found in a species of hibiscus
Advancing in levels, either as a crafter or an adventurer, is a grind, and while not as bad as some games, it's pretty generic still. You *do* fight the same stuff over and over again, and you *do* farm/mine the same stuff at the same place over and over again.
The crafting system looks and feels like 3D bookkeeping at times. MS Excel with graphics.
Despite the general friendly and welcoming community, humans do play this game and you do encounter the odd idiot.
---
Still, I'm playing it, mainly as I'm waiting for other things to come along. My wife has played it non-stop since beta.
Yep, you want a fair and honest opinion, you can't do better than someone who left the game two years ago and just started playing again in the last three weeks...
I just checked the stats on the community forum - in fact, there have been 40 posts in the last 24 hours. Yeah, that's pretty low, but if you're going to slam the community for something, at least get your facts straight.
Not enough people to do more than cosmetic or bandaid fixes? Sure, both the technology side & the content side need more headcount. However, bug fixes, client improvements, new content, and events have never stopped happening.
Fanboi/cult members? OK... If you like the game and are having fun, you're a cult member. Riiight... Better watch out - you're married to one... In all seriousness, though, how can you be so disrespectful towards your own wife? You insult her friends, disparage the game and anyone that likes it (including her), and generally comport yourself, both in-game and on the forums, no better than an drunkard dancing on a dinner table while wearing a lampshade. I was in Beta too, I've known Merri since the game went live, and no, we have not always agreed or gotten along. I know very well she has her own issues and criticisms of the game -just as I do - but she is a respected, well-liked, and thoughtful member of the community; she deserves better than these... antics.
The OP asked for honest reviews - not a slam-fest that reads like it came from Fox News.
Oh yes, I almost guarantee you I probably have the amount of posts made on the community forums wrong. I'll concede that. Nonethless, they are awfully low for a game's official site.
Thought I'd post this just to deflect the inevitable victory dance I'm going to be confronted with when someone posts true figures.
Because I'm sure you'd like to trip me up on the one iddy-biddy thing I may have gotten wrong as opposed to deal with the many I have gotten right.
I've played horizons for 2 years now, and I have been a vocal critic of many parts of the game so I'll give my best opinion of it.
There are some great parts to horizons. I like the crafting system and went from primarily adventure to moderate in both fields. I do wish there was more diversity in the crafting (better tricking for armour its very limited right now). I absolutely love the horizons community and the plot building system. To own a piece of land, and be able to build whatever you want on it, to help others or just yourself, is just amazing. You can change the world with your plot, you can develop a big hub for traffic, or can have a community for your guild it is what sets horizons apart. I like that there are dragons, but I also dislike it at the same time. To be honest there are some major dragon nuts, they are obessive and only want more and more power, but there are some genuinely great people too, and they make the game very enjoyable to play with dragons and bipeds mixing. The events in game (generally) bring the community together, we fight and work as a team to accomplish the goals, we can set up huge trains of dragon haulers to fly over walls of mobs that separate biped teams working on a goal, we use staging areas to help accomplish goals, it ends up being a lot of fun. I also enjoy the adventure system, some mobs are all the same like golems, but its expected. For anyone that is just ranting in here, I do wonder if they've fought against event creatures, and the higher end WA mobs. They are down right deadly, and not just generic drones you can slaughter. Their loot is lacking but it isn't horrible (it has improved vastly in 2 years and is about to go another big overhaul)
What don't I like about horizons? A few things as well, I am very vocal in a lot of areas. The client... sucks. Its horrible and shouldn't even have ever made release. It is the worst client of any game I've ever played. It crashes, it builds up memory, it has major loading problems. If you are to play hz you have to get around this. There are ways to make the client run faster and all the typical mmo players do it wrong. To be fair to Tulga, the client has taken massive steps in the last 6 months alone, major improvements are noted but it always breaks something else. You will notice complaints of major porting lag, that seemed to come when they fixed the dvps system, but the porting build up is gone again... BUT and always a but with horizons client... Loading times are the pits now, somehow 1-2s ports with almost everything loaded is 30s now. I have no doubt it will get better but if you play horizons, you gotta live with it.
Slow development is a major problem. A while back we had a revamp of t1 areas. Its still going on, they redid lesser aradoth (beautifully I might add) but need to fill in quests still and adjust a lot of spawn areas (some are just crazy). The problem is they have moved on to another project while feedback comes in , and the new trismus training island has taken another 4 or 5 months to do, so that island just rots with broken things for ages and ages. They are pretty good about fixing broken things, but when it comes to stuff like this expect to wait a while.
There is some major grinding in horizons (but I haven't played any game there isn't). Once upon a time there were quests for all adventure trainers (craft still have them but its often not worth while), but those are long gone so you just grind up in levels. Thats not to say you don't have objectives while you grind, you need components for your next armour set, you need trophies, coin, etc. It kinda disguises it but the grinding is there, crafting and adventure its all the same. There are a good number of quests however in the game. There are a lot of quests actually, but its just not that easy to know where to look for them. One major problem is there is no real way to find out what to do and how, you end up having people tell you/ask you, did you do this or that yet?
There are some other minor annoyances, my biggest two problems is MAJOR problems like combat balances, and revamps taking so long nothing gets done, and the horrible client we are forced to play with.
I like the game, but I also swear at it too, but I always come back
Originally posted by Ulujain The good: Fairly decent community Very large gameworld to run around and look at Combat animations are all right Dragon animations are top notch Genteel and pleasant time-waster Inoffensive game that would probably cater to most gamers Casual gamers are supported well Game caters to a certain patient type as opposed to the lowest common denominator (hi WoW!) The bad/negative Company has no funds/staff for big improvements. What improvements there are are usually cosmetic or minor bandaiding. I was in beta and I read all sorts of grand designs for this game, few of which ever saw light of day, yet you get accused of making personal attacks by myopic cult-members when these home truths are pointed out. Yes, this game has a high fanboi/cult-member quotient. Not as anal as A Tale in the Desert's, but pretty intense nonetheless. Objectivity is very much a hit or miss affair if seeking straight and honest answers about things. Official forums get like 10-20 new posts in a 24 hour period. That's pathetic for an official forum of a fairly well-known MMORPG. Maybe that tells you where the game is as of mid 2006. So much for "lively discussion". World rendering takes forever, even on a good system and a good connection. The worst of any MMORPG I've seen. It sometimes feels like you're testing the game still, rather than playing a game that's been around in retail for 2+ years now. Takes a while to log in to the game and to log out, especially if you've loaded a lot of different places. Slowest log-in on any MMORPG I've played. Landscapes are extremely generic. Most of it is green rolling grassland...seriously Biped (non-dragon) animations aren't as fluid as they could be Armour and weapons are awfully simple and plain in design and appearance Illogicalities abound. Blacksmiths make wooden items, confectioners make food, outfitters make metal and leather armour, shearing sheep gives you material that's actually found in a species of hibiscus Advancing in levels, either as a crafter or an adventurer, is a grind, and while not as bad as some games, it's pretty generic still. You *do* fight the same stuff over and over again, and you *do* farm/mine the same stuff at the same place over and over again. The crafting system looks and feels like 3D bookkeeping at times. MS Excel with graphics. Despite the general friendly and welcoming community, humans do play this game and you do encounter the odd idiot. --- Still, I'm playing it, mainly as I'm waiting for other things to come along. My wife has played it non-stop since beta.
Just for giggles...
I came back to Horizons after taking a long time off, oh, about 6 months ago. Now since I still play it, and I still enjoy it, I suppose that Ulujain and his wife Xyntress will dismiss my opinions of that as a "fan". But on the hope that others who are able to have a more open mind when evaluating the opinions of others will read this thread, I thought I would respond.
The first thing to note is that this thread was first begun nearly 6 months ago now. Much changes in ANY MMORPG in 6 months, and much has in Horizons. The second thing to note is that ultimately what you are reading are the opinions of only a very small handful of players. The true testimate of how Horizons is doing is how many new players (or returning ones) try the game and stay. In the past two months the rate of conversion from "trial" to "paid subscriptions" is at a rate unheard of in the industry in general. But I will let those things speak for themselves for those willing to do some reasearch. What I would like to address is a counter opinion to Ulujain's post above.
In "The Good" sections of his post... Fairly decent community translates to a community unequaled in any MMORPG anywhere. You will not find a development staff that is as active in the community as the staff at Tulga is. They are seen not just on the live servers (and you know who they are when they do), but in IRC chat, on the forums and in emails alike.
If you want to become involved in the game itself, as a member of the community you can. Very soon Tulga will be releasing a public quest editor where you can design and create quests that, upon approval, will be in game. To my knowledge the only other game that such a feature is available presently is The Saga of Ryzom, and even The Ryzom Ring is still in beta.
This is the only game I have ever played where developers respond to nearly every single suggestion made on their forums. EVERY one is responded to by someone, even if that someone is just an experienced player who says "We've talked about this and here is why it won't work."
I'm not one who really is into a game for graphics, animations, that sort of thing, so I won't speak to those points of the game. I know when I am not good at evaluating something and when I am, and in this case I'm not. In my opinion I think Horizons is one of the most beautiful MMO's I've ever seen and some of the things I see still leave me in awe. But as I said, I'm easily awed.
You won't find an MMO that is more casual player friendly, I don't think. I can log in for half an hour and actuallly make progress in either adventurer or crafter. And have had great people to talk to while doing it. On the other hand, it is rather repetative at times. *cough* Lairshaper *cough* But it is NO WHERE near the slow torturous grind of Everquest or anything produced by SOE, in my opinion.
Now for the bad:
I would like to know how Ulujain knows Tulga's financial situation well enough to know that the "company has no funds/staff for big improvements." On what do you base this? Are you even aware of the size of their staff? Tulga is a privately owned company, and thus does not have to share its financial assets, so far as I know. I beg to differ greatly that what improvements have happened are "cosmetic or minor bandaiding". I was in beta as well, and every game goes from a huge list of dreams to a shorter list of realities. The fact of the matter is that the developers of Horizons still have dreams. Look at what they are talking about bringing with the expansion. Look at how much has, in fact, changed about the game, and is still changing. New authors coming in to write quests, a complete revamping of the tutorial and new player experience, rebuilding and reevaluating the game from the ground up one tier at a time. And at the same time majorly repairing a class which wasn't what they wanted it to be (confectioner) into something dynamic and needed in the community? Yeah.. sorry, that's more than "cosmetic" in my book. I compare that to what I see changing in DAoC, or heck, even EQ2 at this point (a much newer game), and the "expansions" that both those companies have put out since release. If those are my options, I'll pick "cosmetic", thank you very much. This staff does a hell of a lot more with a hell of a lot less than companies many times over their size.
Just as a note, no one is objective when sharing their opinions about something. The very definition of the words don't match.
Official forums have been getting 150 or more new posts a day, but Ulujain has already admitted he was wrong about that, so I won't worry much about that point. (Besides, I'm getting long winded.:P)
World rendering and loading doesn't take long for me at all. I consistently get 40 or more FPS while in game, and only require moments to load and unload the game. Not even long enough to go to the bathroom. I think that depends a lot on your graphics card and system. And it is something they are still working on, more than I can say for other games out there.
Not sure what you mean by the landscapes comment, because the more you add to the landspace (such as trees, hedges, shrubbery, etc), the longer it is going to take to load. So make up your mind. You either want to buy a game that is dazzling graphically and renders every single blade of grass and snowflake (and thus the system to run it on), or you want something graphically simple that doesn't require the latest and greatest technology just to open. There is a wide variety of landscapes as you travel through the world, though they do fit in general into the category of "grasslands, tundra, desert, etc" without much in the way of "flora and fauna" to dress them up.
I just had to laugh at the illogicalities portion of "The bad". What DO you expect a confectioner to make other than food of some sort? Outfitters are supposed to make what, exactly, that is useful as a trade?
Anyway... I've gotten way long winded here. And I'm sure that at this point Ulujain is going to come back here and insult me as one of the "odd idiots" of the community because I disagree with him. I wanted to post, however, to give my opinion because that is what the original poster asked for.
Originally posted by Ulujain Why don't you tell people here that you and David Bowman have had lunch/dinner together? Someone who actually has visited the company, and personally met the crew, can give straight and objective answers?
Sure! My wife and I took a couple days vacation and visited the office. Two other players drove in from California the same day. We met the team, went to lunch, hung out at the office, went out with David & several members of the team to see 'V for Vendetta', and then the next night had a very nice dinner at this great little Italian place. We also went yarn shopping and took in some of the local culture. If you're ever in Phoenix, take the time to hit the Fry Bread House on North 7th.
There. Full disclosure. Happy?
Originally posted by Ulujain Why do they keep firing and laying off people then? They can't be all inept and/or lazy workers they've let go. They have no money.
They had a round of layoffs during the bankruptcy. Almost two years ago. They just let four people go, and hired three. That's not "keep firing and laying people off". Much larger businesses do the same thing all the time - ask anyone in the aerospace or defense industries. They just bought three months worth of advertising in Dragon and Dungeon magazines - two full pages in each. That takes a bit of coin, as does contracting GI.net to handle community management. So does sending people to E3. Since the game is close to profitability, but still operating at a loss, the only explanation is that they do indeed have a fair amount of operating capital.
As for the rest...
I stand by it, except to say that it is possible that I was given incorrect information about someone who was attacking a new player mercilessly for having the temerity to ask for help in the Marketplace channel. I had never seen the attacker before, and asked around to see if anyone had any information about this person. At that time, I was told "That's Merri's husband". Post the names of your characters and if I was informed incorrectly, I shall apologize and retract that statement.
It's obvious you love Merri very much; otherwise your response would not have been so full of outrage. Merri, I'm sorry if my comments angered or offended you. They were not made to score points in a petty argument. They were serious and made after much deliberation.
Yes, Svayviti, that's how the math works for me too. And actually, the announcement on the community page about GI.net adds 4 people. So its one dev and 4 community managers/service people.
Originally posted by Orlena Just for giggles...I came back to Horizons after taking a long time off, oh, about 6 months ago. Now since I still play it, and I still enjoy it, I suppose that Ulujain and his wife Xyntress will dismiss my opinions of that as a "fan".
Thanks for the evasive non-answers, Klaus. The fact remains you still are a swell enough guy to drag my wife into something simply because you can't handle what someone says about your favourite pastime.
That's right, Klaus - you got on your high horse and acted in a manner unbecoming of a grown man over a video game.
You showed yourself in your true colours, and i'm afraid you can't take that back.
Oh yes, thanks for reporting me to the mods here too. I kind of figured that you'd do that.
Originally posted by Ulujain Oh yes, thanks for reporting me to the mods here too. I kind of figured that you'd do that.
As a matter of fact, I didn't report you. Feel free to check with the mods.
Thanks for the message in-game tonight; I was in fact misinformed as to the identity of the person I saw being abusive to a new player in MP channel. My sincere apologies for the mistaken accusation.
The game, oops correction, the atmosphere stinks. Because there is no game. New folks may be sucked into this depressing atmosphere by some used car salesman marketing, but will soon realize there is no game. Just a bunch of addicts running around building their 20th plot.
A gaming world is only as exciting as its players. Horizons lost that excitement a long time ago and now is just a bunch of old drunks sitting around an empty bar, justifying their addiction. Its as simple as that.
Buy a set of Lincoln Logs and avoid the lag, bugs, broken promises, and misery of Horizons.
Put up a post on the community forum once in a while to let us know how you're doing. Alladania wanted me to thank you for that suit of ironsilk padded armor; she's gotten a lot of good use out of it and wanted you to know how much she likes it.
Comments
It's mostly dictated by playstyle, and also which class you play. The game allows players to adjust where they've invested their training points, so if you're not happy in role X, you can adjust your TPs so you can fit role Y. Or a combination of the two.
I can't comment on biped endgame armor, since all I've ever played is a dragon, so I'll stick with what I know. Endgame items for dragons depend on what you, as a player, want to do. The only thing that may be constant is the material used to fabricate the items your character wears. Certain types of dragon scales require only stone, while others are pure metal, and armor scales are both stone and metal. Added to that are the components used to enhance the dragon scales through techniques.
The endgame / high level gear a player wears is determined by what the player wants to be able to do, and what role they want to fill in a group.
Diversity is having a large range of different things to do when you log in. The poster you replied to did not imply that a game where you ONLY kill mobs and collect loot is more diverse than one where you mostly craft items.
What HZ always lacked was interesting playable content, beyond that designed for dragons or crafters.
I consider adventure content to be:
Quest type: delivery, escort, collect, kill X mobs, chain quests, with multiparts, lore based, triggered events, storyline, exploration, outdoor, indoor/underground, dungeon based...
Quest rewards: XP, money, item upgrades, unique items, reputation/faction, unique class based spells, or abilities...
Hunting areas: underground, over ground, dungeons, confined areas such as castles, ruins, islands, solo, duo, group, raid based...
Variety of monster: Not just mobs with different stats and skins. Animals: wolf, rat, spider, bat, snake, bear, reptile, lion, octopus, shark, barracuda, badger, beaver, centipede, hawk, eagle, crab, eel, humanoids; gnolls, goblins, orcs, ogres, trolls, dwarves, humans, pirates, brigands, bandits, occultists, snakemen, giants, faeries, centaurs, wyverns, griffons, animated creatures such as golums, rockpiles, orbs, elementals, undead, skeletons, zombies, ghouls, ghosts, shades, phantoms...
Loot through ALL levels: armor, weapons, tradeskill, quest objects, collectables, quest starters, cash, unique named items from named mobs, encounter based loot, quest only loot, rare items, spell or ability upgrades, class armor sets....
Encounters and events: Timed based; low level area by day, at night high level mobs or named's spawn. Triggered encounters, from one off fights to waves of mobs. Periodic events, an area with 2 or three factions warriing for control, launching assaults on each other, which you can participate in and effect the outcome of. Raid encounters, group encounters, story based arc story encounters.
Interactive in-game objects: Chests, to unlock, disarm; logs, books, rocks, bookcases, plates, cups, glass vials, scrolls; offering quests, or tasks, or completing them, or simply containing special loot or rewards, not to mention stories and lore.
Miscellaneous: Non combat pets, mounts, player titles, guild status titles...
When I played HZ it lacked most of that. From reading patch notes sinces then I've wave after wave of dragon content, tradeskill fixes and additions but very little adventure content.
My question stands - game play involving something other than killing things and taking their stuff is not diversity, but making more things to kill and more stuff to take is?
Your answer would seem to be "Yes" - More places to kill things, more things to kill, and more stuff to get when you kill something is "diverse content"; anything for crafters or dragons is not.
As a matter of fact, I think more mobs, a loot overhaul, and more quest-based adventuring would be great. The game needs it and would benefit from it. That does not mean that stuff not realted to those goals has no value. That attitude is selfish and short-sighted. Horizons is not a game for pure adventurers and probably never will be; if that's what you want try DDO. I'm very happy with Horizons offering me a choice of more activities than just going out to kill things and take more of their stuff.
Guildleader, Mithril Council, Chaos
Huh?
Are you being deliberately obtuse?
Firstly, you have been playing HZ so long that you think that "adventure" content consists ONLY of killing stuff and looting gear. Just within the sphere of fighting type content there is a vast range of diverse content from game to game, much of it having NOTHING to do with killing and claiming loot.
Secondly. I did not say that "adventure" content equals diversity but crafting content, nor dragon related content does not. You seem to want to believe that is what I am saying.
Thirdly. Several existing games have a broad range of both adventure and crafting content. None, to my knowledge have dragon content, making HZ unique, but, as you well know, this alone was never enough to draw in a signifigant numbers of players to making HZ a financial success. HZ DOES indeed have a diverse amount of crafting content, possibly more than any other game, and in fact crafting content CAN equal diversity of game play. However, on it's own, crafting and dragon content, no matter how diverse within each field, does NOT equal diversity as a whole.
So pure crafters, lovers of building things, and players of dragons have played and stayed with HZ, but most of the rest have quit. HZ has proven that there simply is not a large enough market out there of pure mmo crafters; that for a game to succeed it needs MORE than the ability to play a dragon, MORE than a fully fleshed out crafting game.
So, to answer your question. NO. HZ does NOT have a diversity of content. Whilst no game has dragon content, 99.99% of the present player base seems prepared to accept that, in order to play a game WITH content. That is, they'd rather play a game WITH content, than a game with dragons.
And, whilst no game can come close to the level of detail that HZ can offer in terms of a crafting game, 99.99% of the player base also appears to prefer games with LESS rounded crafting, but with OTHER forms of content. Not only this but games will be released soon that signifantly outdo even HZ for their crafting game. Vanguard will have player build housing, cities, shops, markets, and a fully playable, fleshed out crafting sphere with the ability to play ONLY as a crafter and become a merchant prince. DnL, if it makes it, will have player built towns including castles that can be captured, defended, improved, destroyed.
Signifigantly however, these games will NOT rely solely on crafting to sell copies, they will be just ONE path. Too repeat:
Originally posted by Finduilas
Diversity is having a large range of different things to do when you log in.
Horizons fails that test.
I'll concede that I think of adventuring content as being 'killing things and taking their stuff'. Where you do it, what you use to do, what you get from doing it, how you get to the location you're doing it in, etc. are all interesting variables, but in the end, it's killing things and taking their stuff.
Now, I am in complete agreement with you that HZ is lacking in adventuring content. I want to see the war, myself. The event that began yesterday is the most war-centered one we've had in ages and I'm very glad to see it. The adventuring class quests were gutted in the server merge and still need to be redone. The loot tables are desperatly in need of overhaul and I personally would love to see the blighted equipment line tweaked into a more desirable form of dropped loot - preferably by addition of a cleansing process.
Thing is, even if all that came in today, I don't think it would be enough to qualify as 'diverse' under your definition, because I don't see some of your main items as being appropriate to Istaria. Correct me if I'm wrong, please, but it seems to me that a lot of your items can be summed up as "Dungeons". I know they're a staple of the fantasy adventure genre; they are just not really appropriate for the "war against the Withered Aegis" storyline in HZ. The war should be mass battles against undead legions, fortress sieges, battles to drive the enemy off your land. The standard fantasy dungeon really has no place in that environment. An underground fortress or necropolis that needs to be destroyed as part of the war effort or something like that would be an example of a 'dungeon' environment that was designed to be appropriate for the game world. If something like that does fit your idea of diversity, great! If not, then I don't think you'll ever be satisfied with what HZ offers.
Pets, furniture, doors - these are fluff. Fluff is good; I like fluff. Fluff isn't why you log in, though. As you say, you log in to do things.
I think you underestimate the appeal of dragons and of being a dedicated crafter. Dragons are a seperate game, and people are responding to it. Dragons make up 34% of all characters created (as of the last numbers I saw), and playing a dragon is one of the big draws that is bringing in new players. If you are right that HZ does not have the adventure content to draw a sustanable player base, then it must be the crafter and dragon content that are bringing all the new people in.
Vanguard looks interesting, alright. Then again, so did Wish. I'm not going to get excited about it, though; assuming it actually ships, by the second day of live, 3/4 of the people now raving about it are going to be screaming about how dumb the devs are and how it's a piece of crap that never should have left beta.
Guildleader, Mithril Council, Chaos
My husband and I were part of the beta and played live 6mths thereafter. We've recently returned to Horizons. Our first thought was to keep an open mind and take it one day at a time. Which is very difficult to do, because as time goes by more stumbling blocks are are added in ones way to annoy a player. Such as; not well thought out reworks, incomplete reworks, general term "bugs".
The more/longer one plays, the buggier the client gets. Such as; the backspace key no longer works as a delete key in the tell chatbox, game crashes, system freezes, losing the AI. Yes, there are work arounds, annoying work arounds; such as; deleting inflated files, saving the uncorrupted AI file somewhere else, rebooting etc. Think we've found about every glitch there is in the client after 3 months of gameplay. The last glitch which we don't look forward to is reinstalling Horizons. By the way, we've found it's best to do a reboot every 10 portals and/or 3 to 4 hours of gameplay. (which is dependent upon system memory)
At first, it was great. Some changes have happened such as; New Trismus is being reworked. Added A new quest and a few new trainer npc's at different locations.
What people don't tell you is.....
The old "New Towns" such as; New Brommels, etc..are outdated and just kept around for old timesake. I've heard that, Yes, in time, the "New Towns" will be reworked into something like mid level areas or special quest areas. But keeping inline with their track record, might be a couple of years down the road. Until then, the other "New Towns" are worthless unless one wants to be alone and there are no other places to locate Tier 1 resources.
Hint: in the other "New Towns" (doesn't seem to happen in New Trismus) there is a bug if one recalls to the bind shrine and return to T1 resource, the player can't see any of the old resources. The player can see only newly spawned nodes.
New Trismus is a great starter town. Everything is basically at ones fingertips. A few jogs here and there but thats about it. I've found nothing to direct people to explore the other lands such as; Kion and Sslanis (since these lands have been sort of designated as the next stage (area) for leveling/crafting) I can't stress enough these two towns have SORT OF been designated. The reason I state "sort of" is because this is when a player first encounters the trophy hunter npc's. By then, it's really late in the game to be starting in Kion and Sslanis because there are a few quests that one can do starting at level 5 or so. Plus by then, a player will have encountered trophies from New Trismus monster drops and have no idea where to go or what to do with them. The trophy hunters require items from specific monsters. These item tasks are level specific (monsters normally are WAY over a characters level to kill) We've found the trophy hunter tasks are best used when adventure multi-classing and have to restart at level 1, 10 or 20.
As for the quests, on the most part, I've been able to collect quests that were WAY WAY over my character's head. Such as; sending me out into level 80/100 areas and at that time, my character was only level 20. These areas used to be like mid 30ish at best.
Yeap, you guessed it. Horizon's monsters as a whole have been doubled if not tripled in level. (with exception to a few areas) From what I have experienced as a player, the quests weren't brought in line with the increase to monster levels.
Now let's talk a little about crafting, resources. We feel Horizons is approximately 80% crafter base game and 20% adventure base game.
So far, there are a few crafts that level up smoothly, time consuming but smooth. There are a few crafts that are absolutely insane, not only time consuming but absolutely not implemented well at all with all the changes in progress.. Changes being; moving "stuff" (npc's, resources, objects, etc..) around that are necessary to advance.
Obviously, the game is in a constant state of rework change with a lot of content that needs to be reworked and added. I'm sure they are working diligently. Knowing their track record, wouldn't count on it for another 3yrs.
Think I read somewhere their rework plan is a 5 year plan.
Until Horizons is totally revamped, it's Very buggy (game crashes and/or memory leaks that cause system freeze) and lag. Grind till ya cry and slit your wrists from either boredom and/or frustration.
This is a kind of game I wouldn't recommend to anyone as a main staple.
The reason we play this game: no freaking idea, obviously we are just filling in time waiting and are online game addicts.
having never played THIS game before, i gave the two week trial a go, a few weeks back.
graphics - disappointing, average at best
current game guides/information - looks like they just updated the forums, so those were fairly empty. not a lot in way of guides. the best answer i found about where to get clay (for alchemy) was "it looks the same as the ground, you just have to know where to find it". wow.
quests/missions/maps - i see how you can make a mark on a map and annotate it. but unless you scroll back to that portion of the map, you can't select it and have an arrow point to it, or otherwise lead you to it. same for quest npcs. there's this quest guy which the text only refers to as the "seneschal". well, you can't do a search for seneschal, you have to search by his name. pretty aggravating having to try and pay a lot of attention to where in this big city that i've been to once, this one quest guy is located.
pvp - seems to be non existent
character creation/leveling - looks like there's a world of choices for what you can be/do in the game. but that's just not enough to make me want to stick around and pay to play. on a free server, i would say this game is EXCELLENT. something i have to pay for, i'm afraid i'll pass.
whomever stated that you need to get to a high level to appreciate the game or whatever, um... if a game isn't fun in the first hour i've played, then that game just isn't fun. no reason to grind for 30-100 levels in order to GET to the fun, it should be fun, easy to understand/learn, well documented, from the moment i've installed said game.
wasn't for me, i gave it a fair shake and it just came up lacking. the biggest breaker for me, i think, was the poor graphics combined with having to pay to play.
i have a lot of patience with grinding, i remember uo back in the day and changing from grandmaster in one skill/set and switching that toon to different grandmasteries.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
I have been a extreme mmorpg'er for over 10 yrs now. I am currently at the end of a two week free trial period that they have offered to the general public. I can say that I won't be staying to continue to play. Over all the game takes one heck of a machine to run. I have a medicore set up 1.7+ AMD, 512mg ram and 256mg ati radeon graphics card, and have performed every tweak, configuration I could possibley find to get it to run smooth and failed. In and around structures, towns the framerates dip into the single digits for some serious stop and go action. It's very memory intense, with leaks to boot.
The crafting system is pretty good. Although, one spends a great majority their time running and teleporting from place to place to speak with trainers for their cafting quests, instead of actively doing whatever skill you are fond of. After awhile of this, it gives you a feeling they are trying to milk all the time they can out of your subscription. A person just can't go mine and get mining experience. You need to specialize and be sure you are in that school while doing the deed in order to benefit and get experience.
In my opinion at this point the game is suffering a real lack of players. (Can't imagine what the lag would be like with more active players.)
Tech support: Seems to be real people doing what they can to help resolve issues. Although I am sure it's out of a manual.
The game isn't for the lighthearted. There is a lot to it and little to no information about it with the exception of a couple community forums/websites. Instead of putting up a any type of general game guide, they have a Newbie Assistance chat channel. So you may or may not be out of luck if you have a question about anything.
Another downfall id the weblauncher. Starting out a person don't know there is a launcher in the games file folder. The game takes you to their website where you have to have .neti installed and actually launches from your account.
The information required to sign up for an account is very questionable. Never have I had to give such complete information along with required telephone numbers for an online game. If you read through the disclaimer (which most pass right up) it clearly states that they can and will use your personal information as they see fit and will share it with their affiliates. Whomever that may be *shrug* All I can suggest is that before you go and purchase anytime for this game. is to try the trial period, experience it for yourself and see if the enjoyment outweighs any problems it may carry with it for you.
I've found the in-game community is solid and helpful.
I've found the tech/CS support to be outstanding when using the MIRC Channel on one computer while playing on the other computer.
I have been a subscriber to Horizons for over two years, but am a tester on the shard Blight. From the time I joined there has been the addition of the training island for Bi-peds (Spirit Isle), then once you progress from there to New Trismus, a whole range of new mage and cleric quests with more actually being implemented, we are currently debugging them now before they go to live.
I started playing on Chaos, within 6 months I was on Blight, and havent looked back. Yes there are still memory leaks but there is a new build currently being tested on Blight.
As for crafting, a few people have said they get sent here there and everywhere, cant say that is really an issue considering there are trainers in nearly every major city and most settlement portals can take you straight to resources.
Also noticed one message saying there isnt a great range of monsters, enter the blighted zones and see all the new undead dragons, blight hounds, rock haulers, a new master dragon that is working for the WA and is one tough monster....for lower levels venture into the Vandus Marsh to the Deadpool for a challenge.
War is coming to Istaria, the new Harro Deadlands has a fortification that players must build while being defended from Withered Aegis that are coming for a blight anchor.
There is a wide range of content to this game, but for some of the previous posters, you obviously are mind set so it best if you just go on your merry way and allow those of us who can see the beneficial changes starting to outweigh what negatives there have been in the past be given a chance to attract a new array of players who may just see the game for what it is becoming!!
The good:
Fairly decent community
Very large gameworld to run around and look at
Combat animations are all right
Dragon animations are top notch
Genteel and pleasant time-waster
Inoffensive game that would probably cater to most gamers
Casual gamers are supported well
Game caters to a certain patient type as opposed to the lowest common denominator (hi WoW!)
The bad/negative
Company has no funds/staff for big improvements. What improvements there are are usually cosmetic or minor bandaiding. I was in beta and I read all sorts of grand designs for this game, few of which ever saw light of day, yet you get accused of making personal attacks by myopic cult-members when these home truths are pointed out.
Yes, this game has a high fanboi/cult-member quotient. Not as anal as A Tale in the Desert's, but pretty intense nonetheless. Objectivity is very much a hit or miss affair if seeking straight and honest answers about things.
Official forums get like 10-20 new posts in a 24 hour period. That's pathetic for an official forum of a fairly well-known MMORPG. Maybe that tells you where the game is as of mid 2006. So much for "lively discussion".
World rendering takes forever, even on a good system and a good connection. The worst of any MMORPG I've seen. It sometimes feels like you're testing the game still, rather than playing a game that's been around in retail for 2+ years now.
Takes a while to log in to the game and to log out, especially if you've loaded a lot of different places. Slowest log-in on any MMORPG I've played.
Landscapes are extremely generic. Most of it is green rolling grassland...seriously
Biped (non-dragon) animations aren't as fluid as they could be
Armour and weapons are awfully simple and plain in design and appearance
Illogicalities abound. Blacksmiths make wooden items, confectioners make food, outfitters make metal and leather armour, shearing sheep gives you material that's actually found in a species of hibiscus
Advancing in levels, either as a crafter or an adventurer, is a grind, and while not as bad as some games, it's pretty generic still. You *do* fight the same stuff over and over again, and you *do* farm/mine the same stuff at the same place over and over again.
The crafting system looks and feels like 3D bookkeeping at times. MS Excel with graphics.
Despite the general friendly and welcoming community, humans do play this game and you do encounter the odd idiot.
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Still, I'm playing it, mainly as I'm waiting for other things to come along. My wife has played it non-stop since beta.
Yep, you want a fair and honest opinion, you can't do better than someone who left the game two years ago and just started playing again in the last three weeks...
I just checked the stats on the community forum - in fact, there have been 40 posts in the last 24 hours. Yeah, that's pretty low, but if you're going to slam the community for something, at least get your facts straight.
Not enough people to do more than cosmetic or bandaid fixes? Sure, both the technology side & the content side need more headcount. However, bug fixes, client improvements, new content, and events have never stopped happening.
Fanboi/cult members? OK... If you like the game and are having fun, you're a cult member. Riiight... Better watch out - you're married to one... In all seriousness, though, how can you be so disrespectful towards your own wife? You insult her friends, disparage the game and anyone that likes it (including her), and generally comport yourself, both in-game and on the forums, no better than an drunkard dancing on a dinner table while wearing a lampshade. I was in Beta too, I've known Merri since the game went live, and no, we have not always agreed or gotten along. I know very well she has her own issues and criticisms of the game -just as I do - but she is a respected, well-liked, and thoughtful member of the community; she deserves better than these... antics.
The OP asked for honest reviews - not a slam-fest that reads like it came from Fox News.
Guildleader, Mithril Council, Chaos
Edit: double post.
Oh yes, I almost guarantee you I probably have the amount of posts made on the community forums wrong. I'll concede that. Nonethless, they are awfully low for a game's official site.
Thought I'd post this just to deflect the inevitable victory dance I'm going to be confronted with when someone posts true figures.
Because I'm sure you'd like to trip me up on the one iddy-biddy thing I may have gotten wrong as opposed to deal with the many I have gotten right.
I've played horizons for 2 years now, and I have been a vocal critic of many parts of the game so I'll give my best opinion of it.
There are some great parts to horizons.
I like the crafting system and went from primarily adventure to moderate in both fields. I do wish there was more diversity in the crafting (better tricking for armour its very limited right now). I absolutely love the horizons community and the plot building system. To own a piece of land, and be able to build whatever you want on it, to help others or just yourself, is just amazing. You can change the world with your plot, you can develop a big hub for traffic, or can have a community for your guild it is what sets horizons apart.
I like that there are dragons, but I also dislike it at the same time. To be honest there are some major dragon nuts, they are obessive and only want more and more power, but there are some genuinely great people too, and they make the game very enjoyable to play with dragons and bipeds mixing.
The events in game (generally) bring the community together, we fight and work as a team to accomplish the goals, we can set up huge trains of dragon haulers to fly over walls of mobs that separate biped teams working on a goal, we use staging areas to help accomplish goals, it ends up being a lot of fun.
I also enjoy the adventure system, some mobs are all the same like golems, but its expected. For anyone that is just ranting in here, I do wonder if they've fought against event creatures, and the higher end WA mobs. They are down right deadly, and not just generic drones you can slaughter. Their loot is lacking but it isn't horrible (it has improved vastly in 2 years and is about to go another big overhaul)
What don't I like about horizons? A few things as well, I am very vocal in a lot of areas.
The client... sucks. Its horrible and shouldn't even have ever made release. It is the worst client of any game I've ever played. It crashes, it builds up memory, it has major loading problems. If you are to play hz you have to get around this. There are ways to make the client run faster and all the typical mmo players do it wrong.
To be fair to Tulga, the client has taken massive steps in the last 6 months alone, major improvements are noted but it always breaks something else. You will notice complaints of major porting lag, that seemed to come when they fixed the dvps system, but the porting build up is gone again... BUT and always a but with horizons client... Loading times are the pits now, somehow 1-2s ports with almost everything loaded is 30s now. I have no doubt it will get better but if you play horizons, you gotta live with it.
Slow development is a major problem. A while back we had a revamp of t1 areas. Its still going on, they redid lesser aradoth (beautifully I might add) but need to fill in quests still and adjust a lot of spawn areas (some are just crazy). The problem is they have moved on to another project while feedback comes in , and the new trismus training island has taken another 4 or 5 months to do, so that island just rots with broken things for ages and ages. They are pretty good about fixing broken things, but when it comes to stuff like this expect to wait a while.
There is some major grinding in horizons (but I haven't played any game there isn't). Once upon a time there were quests for all adventure trainers (craft still have them but its often not worth while), but those are long gone so you just grind up in levels. Thats not to say you don't have objectives while you grind, you need components for your next armour set, you need trophies, coin, etc. It kinda disguises it but the grinding is there, crafting and adventure its all the same. There are a good number of quests however in the game. There are a lot of quests actually, but its just not that easy to know where to look for them. One major problem is there is no real way to find out what to do and how, you end up having people tell you/ask you, did you do this or that yet?
There are some other minor annoyances, my biggest two problems is MAJOR problems like combat balances, and revamps taking so long nothing gets done, and the horrible client we are forced to play with.
I like the game, but I also swear at it too, but I always come back
I came back to Horizons after taking a long time off, oh, about 6 months ago. Now since I still play it, and I still enjoy it, I suppose that Ulujain and his wife Xyntress will dismiss my opinions of that as a "fan". But on the hope that others who are able to have a more open mind when evaluating the opinions of others will read this thread, I thought I would respond.
The first thing to note is that this thread was first begun nearly 6 months ago now. Much changes in ANY MMORPG in 6 months, and much has in Horizons. The second thing to note is that ultimately what you are reading are the opinions of only a very small handful of players. The true testimate of how Horizons is doing is how many new players (or returning ones) try the game and stay. In the past two months the rate of conversion from "trial" to "paid subscriptions" is at a rate unheard of in the industry in general. But I will let those things speak for themselves for those willing to do some reasearch. What I would like to address is a counter opinion to Ulujain's post above.
In "The Good" sections of his post...
Fairly decent community translates to a community unequaled in any MMORPG anywhere. You will not find a development staff that is as active in the community as the staff at Tulga is. They are seen not just on the live servers (and you know who they are when they do), but in IRC chat, on the forums and in emails alike.
If you want to become involved in the game itself, as a member of the community you can. Very soon Tulga will be releasing a public quest editor where you can design and create quests that, upon approval, will be in game. To my knowledge the only other game that such a feature is available presently is The Saga of Ryzom, and even The Ryzom Ring is still in beta.
This is the only game I have ever played where developers respond to nearly every single suggestion made on their forums. EVERY one is responded to by someone, even if that someone is just an experienced player who says "We've talked about this and here is why it won't work."
I'm not one who really is into a game for graphics, animations, that sort of thing, so I won't speak to those points of the game. I know when I am not good at evaluating something and when I am, and in this case I'm not. In my opinion I think Horizons is one of the most beautiful MMO's I've ever seen and some of the things I see still leave me in awe. But as I said, I'm easily awed.
You won't find an MMO that is more casual player friendly, I don't think. I can log in for half an hour and actuallly make progress in either adventurer or crafter. And have had great people to talk to while doing it.
Now for the bad:
I would like to know how Ulujain knows Tulga's financial situation well enough to know that the "company has no funds/staff for big improvements." On what do you base this? Are you even aware of the size of their staff? Tulga is a privately owned company, and thus does not have to share its financial assets, so far as I know. I beg to differ greatly that what improvements have happened are "cosmetic or minor bandaiding". I was in beta as well, and every game goes from a huge list of dreams to a shorter list of realities. The fact of the matter is that the developers of Horizons still have dreams. Look at what they are talking about bringing with the expansion. Look at how much has, in fact, changed about the game, and is still changing. New authors coming in to write quests, a complete revamping of the tutorial and new player experience, rebuilding and reevaluating the game from the ground up one tier at a time. And at the same time majorly repairing a class which wasn't what they wanted it to be (confectioner) into something dynamic and needed in the community? Yeah.. sorry, that's more than "cosmetic" in my book. I compare that to what I see changing in DAoC, or heck, even EQ2 at this point (a much newer game), and the "expansions" that both those companies have put out since release. If those are my options, I'll pick "cosmetic", thank you very much. This staff does a hell of a lot more with a hell of a lot less than companies many times over their size.
Just as a note, no one is objective when sharing their opinions about something. The very definition of the words don't match.
Official forums have been getting 150 or more new posts a day, but Ulujain has already admitted he was wrong about that, so I won't worry much about that point. (Besides, I'm getting long winded.:P)
World rendering and loading doesn't take long for me at all. I consistently get 40 or more FPS while in game, and only require moments to load and unload the game. Not even long enough to go to the bathroom.
Not sure what you mean by the landscapes comment, because the more you add to the landspace (such as trees, hedges, shrubbery, etc), the longer it is going to take to load. So make up your mind. You either want to buy a game that is dazzling graphically and renders every single blade of grass and snowflake (and thus the system to run it on), or you want something graphically simple that doesn't require the latest and greatest technology just to open. There is a wide variety of landscapes as you travel through the world, though they do fit in general into the category of "grasslands, tundra, desert, etc" without much in the way of "flora and fauna" to dress them up.
I just had to laugh at the illogicalities portion of "The bad". What DO you expect a confectioner to make other than food of some sort? Outfitters are supposed to make what, exactly, that is useful as a trade?
Anyway... I've gotten way long winded here. And I'm sure that at this point Ulujain is going to come back here and insult me as one of the "odd idiots" of the community because I disagree with him. I wanted to post, however, to give my opinion because that is what the original poster asked for.
Thanks for reading this far with me.
Sure! My wife and I took a couple days vacation and visited the office. Two other players drove in from California the same day. We met the team, went to lunch, hung out at the office, went out with David & several members of the team to see 'V for Vendetta', and then the next night had a very nice dinner at this great little Italian place. We also went yarn shopping and took in some of the local culture. If you're ever in Phoenix, take the time to hit the Fry Bread House on North 7th.
There. Full disclosure. Happy?
They had a round of layoffs during the bankruptcy. Almost two years ago. They just let four people go, and hired three. That's not "keep firing and laying people off". Much larger businesses do the same thing all the time - ask anyone in the aerospace or defense industries. They just bought three months worth of advertising in Dragon and Dungeon magazines - two full pages in each. That takes a bit of coin, as does contracting GI.net to handle community management. So does sending people to E3. Since the game is close to profitability, but still operating at a loss, the only explanation is that they do indeed have a fair amount of operating capital.
As for the rest...
I stand by it, except to say that it is possible that I was given incorrect information about someone who was attacking a new player mercilessly for having the temerity to ask for help in the Marketplace channel. I had never seen the attacker before, and asked around to see if anyone had any information about this person. At that time, I was told "That's Merri's husband". Post the names of your characters and if I was informed incorrectly, I shall apologize and retract that statement.
It's obvious you love Merri very much; otherwise your response would not have been so full of outrage. Merri, I'm sorry if my comments angered or offended you. They were not made to score points in a petty argument. They were serious and made after much deliberation.
You can believe that or not, as you choose.
Guildleader, Mithril Council, Chaos
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm fairly new to Horizons.
So to my understanding 4 people have left Tulga recently, 2 of which were actually devs.
Tulga is hiring 3 more devs this June, and recently contracted out PR and Community management to GI.net
So that is a net gain of one dev, and maybe a CM or two right?
Ulujain and his wife who?
Whatever.
Thanks for the evasive non-answers, Klaus. The fact remains you still are a swell enough guy to drag my wife into something simply because you can't handle what someone says about your favourite pastime.
That's right, Klaus - you got on your high horse and acted in a manner unbecoming of a grown man over a video game.
You showed yourself in your true colours, and i'm afraid you can't take that back.
Oh yes, thanks for reporting me to the mods here too. I kind of figured that you'd do that.
As a matter of fact, I didn't report you. Feel free to check with the mods.
Thanks for the message in-game tonight; I was in fact misinformed as to the identity of the person I saw being abusive to a new player in MP channel. My sincere apologies for the mistaken accusation.
Guildleader, Mithril Council, Chaos
The content of your message didn't bother me, your deliver needs some work.
The game, oops correction, the atmosphere stinks. Because there is no game. New folks may be sucked into this depressing atmosphere by some used car salesman marketing, but will soon realize there is no game. Just a bunch of addicts running around building their 20th plot.
A gaming world is only as exciting as its players. Horizons lost that excitement a long time ago and now is just a bunch of old drunks sitting around an empty bar, justifying their addiction. Its as simple as that.
Buy a set of Lincoln Logs and avoid the lag, bugs, broken promises, and misery of Horizons.
NimKhazad
Heya Nim, good to hear from you. :-)
Put up a post on the community forum once in a while to let us know how you're doing. Alladania wanted me to thank you for that suit of ironsilk padded armor; she's gotten a lot of good use out of it and wanted you to know how much she likes it.
Stay in touch....
Guildleader, Mithril Council, Chaos