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Any news on a life line?
Emmerdale
Member Posts: 2
I havent heard anything, anyone have any news?
Comments
No, this game is finished.
One of the most endearing games I've ever played. Such great potential in some very innovative mechanics...all ruined by having the wrong people in charge at the wrong time.
And now, the crooks that own it make it even worse.
Take some pictures of places you like for memories' sake, that's about all you can do.
No one can really understand the silence from the current owners.
The State of Montana AG declined to pursue leagal action against them due to the low dollar amount of their on-line theft.
What a feather in their cap!
There have been some estimates done that about 50% of the current player base ( around maybe 150 players now ) are playing for free as there is no billing of accounts now.
So the game is running at a loss, and what we can't figure out is - why is it still running at all?
Back in January, when the Chaos server was down for nearly a week, I was informed by a person who used to be involved with Tulga that PME/EI had not paid the hosting costs for the game since the sale. The information was as follows, paraphrased:
1) PME/EI had not paid Limelight one cent.
2) David Bowman had received several complaints/calls about PME/EI not paying the server hosting bills.
3) PME/EI was completely in default, but since Limelight is "a utility to an MMO they can't just remove service without a great deal of expense". (quoted verbatim)
When I asked for further clarification on this and a few things, including why Unitas had not been set up, he told me: "Why is Unity not made yet? When you don't pay server bills, you aren't allowed physical access to the server, so right now.. it will never come up. There is simply no way they can touch the server anymore."
This explains why Blight was taken offline, and with such short notice. EI apparently tried to access the server remotely and replace the blight database with the Unity one. They failed to take into consideration several issues, like the fact that Blight was a test server and was running a completely revamped server database and server code than what the Unity (Europe) server had. This compatibility made certain that they could never incorporate the Unity database over to Blight and thus get Unity running.
The other factor that came into play was that the server hardware running Blight was about half that running the normal servers. To think that they were gonna even try and use that server to host Unity, the lag and problems would have been really bad because of this.
It again shows the incompetence that PME/EI is capable of.
But back to the topic at hand, which is why Limelight (the server and hosting provider) is still allowing the servers to continue online. I'm certain that there are some business politics between Chris T. Baker (the investor who bought Horizons after AE went under, and funded Tulga), Limelight, and PME/EI. No details of the relationship between the three have come out since EI was able to get Chaos back online.
Now, about the Chaos server and EI getting it back online.. It came very quickly after I broke the news that EI had not been paying the hosting bill with Limelight. In fact, it came within 24 hours after the news ran rampant through the community.
I found out later from someone involved in one of the overseas investigations into EI regarding the credit card fraud allogations that PME/EI was trying to bring on new investors into their company in order to get more funding. I suppose that, if that is true, it would make sense that those investors would probably be scared away at the news that EI had not paid Baker or Limelight one cent and the game was wracking up quite a large bill.
I suppose some quick work was made between Baker, Limelight, and PME/EI to get the Chaos server up online. They even enlisted the help of Jeff Gully, who is the server technician who worked for Tulga at Limelight. Jeff was one of the 3 Tulga employees that were "hired" after the sale, but after a few bounced paychecks Jeff soon left and, by my information, had to take EI to legal litigation to get the money that was due to him. Before Chaos went down in January, Jeff had to go in once more and assist PME/EI to get the server back online. Considering the work involved actual physical labor at the server end, and could not be done remotely, PME/EI had to have Jeff's help. I suspect Jeff had the money for his services paid upfront, and made sure the check cleared or had the cash in hand before he started the work. Either way, he said after that, that he would never help PME/EI ever again.
So it is very significant that Jeff helped PME/EI in Jan to get Chaos back online. PME/EI was probably extremely desperate to get Chaos back online, and stomp out the 'rumor' that they had not been paying Limelight or Baker. Hence why the big news posting singing praise to Jeff and Limelight for getting the server back online. (can you say smokescreen?)
If all of that is true, it speaks of desperation on EI's part. However, they could have tried threatening Baker by saying the sale had been jeopardized from the very beginning. Several Ex-Tulga employees made some pretty damning comments regarding EI Interactive right after the sale. A lot of community members lamblasted those people, believing blindly that EI was their saviors. That was obviously wishful thinking (a pipe dream) on their part, and in truth the ex-Tulga employees actually knew who they were dealing with and were in essence right. Still, PME/EI could argue that Tulga sabotaged the sale and thus they are not at fault for not paying Baker, but that Baker is in fact at fault and responsible for EI's losses and thus in breech of contract of his own sale.
I can even be used as an example in the above scenario, as 'proof' to such a claim. I am privy to a lot of sensitive information that others don't have, and I could have only gotten that info from people close to the companies and who are familiar with the sale. This is even though I have no real relationship with Tulga, Baker, Bowman, or anyone associated with Horizons. I was merely a player, just like anyone else. The only advantage I had was that I was quite prominent in the community before the sale, and also that I was quite screwed over by the billing fiasco and started up one of the investigations into EI. The information I received was forwarded to law enforcement to assist them in their investigation, and was not in any way used maliciously to hurt or sabotage the companies, people, the sale of Horizons, or the game and its community.
But it still gives EI some possible leverage in negotiations, and I'm pretty sure they have tried using this to their advantage.
Going back to one of the original notes of information that was given to me back in January, my friend told me that Limelight is a utility to an MMO and "they can't just remove service without a great deal of expense".
That has me wondering just what kind of problems and expense they would have if they pulled the plug on Horizons. I would think it wouldn't cost them one dime to walk over to the server and just pull the plug. If PME/EI isn't paying the bills, then they have every right not to provide service. I'm thinking that if they tried to do that, PME/EI would try taking Limelight to court, and I suspect legal litigation (which costs a pretty penny) is what they were most concerned about. Lawyers are not cheep, and even if Limelight is in the right, if EI still takes it to court, it will cost them.
After Chaos came back up, I suspect the reason they did help PME/EI was cause PME/EI were able to negotiate an agreement with them. The hosting bill was way too high to just up and pay off, however that does not mean PME/EI didn't get Limelight and Baker to agree to a settlement and/or down-payment, possibly with the promise of future payments in the future.
As it is right now, word around the community is that there are maybe 100 people playing Horizons, and of those people maybe 50 of them are paying PME/EI for an active sub. I know that Tulga had a deal with Limelight for their hosting which was a "rent-to-own" for the server hardware, and that Tulga was only a month or two from paying it off and then taking ownership of the servers... this would have reduced the hosting costs significantly, and then Tulga would have only had to pay bandwith and rack rental. It's possible PME/EI paid off the rest of that bill, and now own the server hardware. With the low number of players and low server pops, the bandwidth costs are probably nominal at best. Who knows if PME/EI is paying that and making good on their agreements and promises, or if Limelight is just sucking it in, knowing that the costs of fighting it would be more expensive in the long run?
-Menkure
"Why wouldn't Baker give EI/PMI more time? It isn't costing him anything anymore. The main reason he dumped HZ on them was to avoid paying Tulga every month. Now that that's done, why shouldn't he sit and wait and hope (foolishly) that he'll actually get some of that money back?" -Smeglor
http://vnboards.ign.com/horizons_general_board/b5252/102951398/p1/?12
Smeglor has a point.. and if it's true that there aren't that many players (and thus, bandwidth usage is pretty miniscule), then it could keep going still for quite a while.
I'm not going to give any kind of guess as to how long HZ will remain up and running.. the times I've tried to guess I've been proven wrong (although they did take Blight offline when I said they would pull the plug on the servers, but that was just one server and not all of them).
So, your guess is as good as mine?
-Menkure
Menkure has always been good at keeping us updated on the VN forum!
Be cool to people, and try and stay cool that way you never have to regret making someone feel bad. Don't take what ya got granted because some people never get to feel happy. We get to play these great MMOs and surf a good site. Be thankful for what ya got and next time ya feel down imagine a fat sea otter waddling with a pillow and a night cap. Bam! smiles!