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Horizons: Artifact Entertainment "Restructuring"
RJCox
Member Posts: 2,686
It seems that the folks over at Artifact Entertainment are shaking things up a bit:
June 16, 2004
Over the past 48 hours Artifact Entertainment has made a tough decision to restructure its workforce and streamline operations, therefore improving the company's overall financial health. While there were layoffs involved, staff responsible for supporting the company's principal product, Horizons, are very much on board and at work. Artifact Entertainment will continue to provide quality support to Horizons players.
We are actively helping those impacted by the reductions in staff in acquiring new employment. They have done excellent work and we wish for them to swiftly find other opportunities.
This restructuring has already significantly improved the company's situation. We're committed to the Horizons community and value the relationships we have with our loyal fans.
David Bowman
President - Artifact Entertainment
It hasn't been officially announced by Mr. Bowman anywhere who were the unlucky people affected by the "restructuring" but several of them have spoke up on their own in various places:
Kristen Demezza - "Shetani" World Master:
Jason Waldrom - World Administrator:
From Shetani:
Just to confirm, I am indeed leaving Artifact Entertainment.
As to any other speculations regarding other employees or the state of the company, I cannot say. I just wanted to confirm my personal piece of the rumors.
Thank you folks for the good times. I hope you'll all have many more.
Jason M - "Amon Gwareth" Former CSR:
From Jason Waldrom:
Well, I figure this might be as good a place as any, but I am no longer at AE either.
Shetani is a great person as are all the people that do, and have, worked at AE.
For those of you that may not be familiar with me, I was a World Administrator and handled the simulation and the servers that housed it.
Some of you may know me better by my toon's name: Suedomsa. I will continue to play with this character on Twilight, so if any of you see me, feel free to say 'Hi'.
As for the current state of AE and Horizons, the game is still up and people are still working there. I wish the best for them all.
_____________________________
Jason Waldrom
World Administrator
Horizons
And last, but certainly not least, Community Manager Gale:
From Amon Gwareth
Figured I'd add my two cents here.
First of all, I can confirm that I am no longer working for Artifact Entertainment. I also want to say that it has been one of the greatest experiences of my life to work there and I would do it again in a heartbeat.
I also want to say thanks to all of the players and that I'll miss you all. For those of you on the Life shard, good luck and take care!
Jason M "Amon Gwareth"
Former CSR, Artifact Entertainment
Rumors are flying all over the place as to exactly how many people have been let go, you can follow a couple of the main threads by clicking here and here.
Gale:
I can confirm the rumors, I am no longer working at Artifact, either.
It's been a blast and I thank everyone, even you trolls, for keeping things interesting :-)
Richard J. Cox
"There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust."
Comments
I hope this will not the beginning of the end of AE. Now as HZ is on the way to become a really better game.
Betatested:
AC2; Lords of Everquest; Horizons; Fung Wan Online; Wish; Saga of Ryzom.
Played:
EQ (retired); DAoC (retired); Horizons (semi retired); SWG (retired); Shadowbane (Retired); UO free shards (retired)
Attempt to test or play:
Darkfall; EQ2; Dark & Light.
Play My magic Tales
Play Rise of Immortals
Play Regno card game for free.
Premium membership available.
Also, Monkia Carlson, Director of Customer Service has also confirmed that she no longer works for AE.
For those of us who where in the HZ beta, she was instrumental in helping players with thier issues. She will be missed!
Most of the beta testers were trying to tell them that the game was not ready to be released. The game had some great features but several major problems. I decided not to purchase the game after the last beta event when it was apparent the lag would never be fixed.
Every mmorpg I have played had lag but, the lag in horizons was so bad you couldn't play.
No pvp
No flight for dragons(which they eventually released but, too late to bring me back)
Unbalanced game play
I went to the forums a few times after they went live and everybody was making the same complaints as during the beta.
They kept making statements like "it will be fixed when we go live"
Please don't release games until they are ready, I wont pay to beta test your game. They could have postponed a month or so, made some noticeable improvements and I would probably still be playing it.
There was some dedicated people there that tried to make it the best they could for their part. Now they have lost their jobs so that the management can squeeze every last penny out of their failure.
Not surprising, really. Any game that says that they will add all the content, and magically fix the lag at launch is just begging to fail.
Whoever did the music, and world design should be snapped up ASAP. For all it's shortcomings and failures, it had some of the best music I've heard in a game, and the world looked fantastic. Shame everything else turned out so piss poor.
they panic, so just hold them down
I could live like this
Im closing in; hate all around
I could be like this
Hearing them, them in my head
How could they be so sweet... sweet?
To be fair, horizons had many things going for it, but its a bare-bones product, barely there, and I feel it will never fulfill its potential now we have another downsize. Things were slow before, but comminication was picking up and it looked like the game could really do well and become a game I'd be willing to spend years on even if the progress did remain slow..
But now, they have even less staff and have lost great employees like Tango, who was at least partly responsible for what is probably the best UI in a game of this genre. Also hes done much more.
So I dont know how it can succeed and I feel I may have to start looking for another online home.
But my characters on horizons are Krald, a level 100 gnome ranger who is also a high level armourer and fitter, and Lerona a level 85 dryad conjurer. So quite some time invested, and it seems within a few months perhaps all will be left are memories.. or maybe they can survive and slowly improve the product.. we can only hope.
The product itself is still probably going to be sufficient for a casual gamer or a more serious one for a few months though.
-------------------------------------------
Krald - Ranger in Horizons (retired)
Kildritch - Defiler in EQ2 (retired)
Kirinta - Warrior in WoW.
I doubt the game is going to survive the new wave of MMORPG's. In fact, I am somewhat surprised it has been running as long as it has.
The lag is quite atrocious, the gameplay is extremely unbalanced, the graphics often repetitive, ... Indeed the game had some cool ideas, which is why I started playing it when it was released, but they should have worked intensively on it at least another six months and should made better use of their beta.
AC (retired); EQ (retired); DAoC (retired); Horizons (retired); EQII (retired); CoH (retired); AC II (tested); Lineage II (beta); Neocron (tested); Saga of Ryzom (beta); SWG (retired)...
I spoke with Bowman directly about problems I was having with lag, and other things, as did plenty of other people. Hell, the devs were all pretty accessable during beta. Guess they should have put more work into the game, instead of hanging out in chat all night
Add to that the fact that the game was languishing in development for sometime, the publishers were forced to push it out the door, regardless of it's readyness. And much like Shadowbane, which suffered from many of the same problems, it's not doing so hot.
The biggest kick in the balls about games like Horizons, or Shadowbane tanking is that publishers see that, and think hey, those EQ clone games did pretty good, but all these games that try to be innovative fail, so let's make more EQ clones... YAY!
That makes it that much harder for an indie dev team to find a publisher for a game that tries to do something different. And we're all stuck playing AOL^H^H^H EQ version 6.0.
And there was little to no rejoicing.
-------
They panic, so just hold them down
I could live like this
I'm closing in; hate all around
I could be like this
Hearing them, them in my head
How could they be so sweet... sweet?
*cries*
This game had so much potential.. and is pretty ok in its current state but the future was what I was most looking forward to, and now the hope of that promise being fulfilled and us having an excellent game is fading drastically.
I heard Jeremy Statz is gone also, hes done some good works recently.
So sigh.. I love this game, and I will subscribe another month just to see if a miracle can save this game and to complete a few objectives I still wish to meet in game.
But please, we need some company to rush in an save AE!
I dont want this whole project to go to waste and all our time, our great community to dissolve into just memories. The people who play this game are great and but the community is slowly dissolving following this news, I fear I will never find a community that is as welcoming and friendly and just great to spend time with ever again.
Perhaps I am being a bit melodramatic, but this hurts
-------------------------------------------
Krald - Ranger in Horizons (retired)
Kildritch - Defiler in EQ2 (retired)
Kirinta - Warrior in WoW.
The best thing Artifact Entertainment couple have done is cut back.
Unfortunately, they are cutting back on all the wrong people. The ones responsible for the miserable product should be the first to go, not the ones responsible for the satisfaction of the customers, but Artifact has truly been moving in this direction since well before Dave Allen 'left'.
It is another case of the management being too powerful for their britches, and not competent enough to provide at least a working product. The other most obvious case is SOE.
I won't go back to either until their current management teams are completely wiped clean, and replaced with better people. They are directly responsible for the condition of their respective products, and should be held accountable as a result.
__________________________
"For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
Half the problem is people will stay with a game that they are paying for, hoping that things will get better. If the games a broke down POS, stop paying for it. The only way we'll ever see a change in the quality of titles being released is to stop paying for crap, haping it'll get better. Until that happens publishers know damn well people will buy the game and put up with just about anything, so they will continue to release games in a buggy, incomplete state, promising to patch things in later.
The other half of the problems is split between devs setting up unrealistic goals, and the publishers being money grubbing asshats that will put an IOU in an empty box and try to sell it.
-------
They panic, so just hold them down
I could live like this
I'm closing in; hate all around
I could be like this
Hearing them, them in my head
How could they be so sweet... sweet?
- m o n t h i g o s -
My opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of MMORPG.com
After reading about the backstabbing that went on there against the guy who came up with the original concept, I have no love for anything that goes on at AE. Screw Horizons. That bowman character ought to be shot...
I hate to use comparisons but I guess I will in this instance. It's like the driver
of a car shooting out the tires because the note on the car is too high thinking
they can do without them. Go figure. . .
I notice management didn't take any hits to their employment or possibly reduce
their almighty pay. . .