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Horizons: State of the Game
Admin
Administrator RarePosts: 5,623
Artifact Entertainment released a long letter today that updates players on the current state of the game and their plans for the future. Here it is:
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Friends in Horizons: I've spent some time with our team here at Artifact Entertainment considering Horizons: Empire of Istaria, where the game is, where the game is going and how our loyal subscribers will benefit. Here's a short state of the game message and some plans for the future. What does Horizons already have? Eleven races: Humans, Fiends, Dwarves, Elves, Dragons, Half-Giants, Saris, Sslik, Gnomes, Dryads, and Satyrs. Two of these races, the Dryads and Satyrs, were freed through cooperative player actions over the past year. The Dragons have a special developmental path that leads to adulthood and flight through the Adult Rite of Passage. Extremely diverse looking characters: Horizons allows you to customize the appearance of your characters beyond any competing product. Not just the 11 dramatically different player races, but also the ability to customize your hairstyle, face, weight, height, and muscularity. Some races have customizable horns, a wide variety of fur, and Dragons have an awesome variety of color combinations. A unique multi-schooling system: players train their non-dragon characters in as many different schools as they wish to give their character the skills that they wish. Your character can continue to evolve after mastering any single school. There are 47 different schools to choose from and 65 different skills to master. You can also play as an adventurer and a crafter with the same character, or choose to pursue only adventure or crafting. Property ownership: buy land and develop it for your needs. If you want a house with additional storage, then buy some land and have one built. You can master the skills necessary to build the house yourself, or hire other players to build it for you. Choose from over 100 different structures, each with a purpose, with more being added. A world created through player action: players make, trade and sell the tools, weapons, armor, clothes, food, buildings, bridges, spells, potions, and equipment in the game. Gather what you need from the world, and build what you want. Your character can learn the skills needed to build and provision a store, or to build an entire community. New areas of the world are opened to character settlement through the construction of bridges or other large-scale player construction projects. A huge, beautiful, seamless world to explore: with over 300 square kilometers of meadows, swamps, tundra, glaciers, desert, mountains, oceans, forests, and islands Istaria is vast. Players have discovered and colonized many new islands and an entire continent since the game launched. Horizons has some of the most beautiful vistas of any online space, and the world is seamless, with no invisible boxes dividing up the world. There are over 300 different indigenous creatures inhabiting Istaria and the characters have learned many useful things to make from these creatures. A war against the forces of the Withered Aegis: the players have fought against the 27 different monsters belonging to over 80 different schools that the Withered Aegis has thrown against them. The Withered Aegis continually changes their strategy and tactics and enlist new allies in order to challenge the players and gain control over Istaria. Real-time changes to the world by staff: In several events we've changed the world dramatically and in real-time. We will continue to use this ability to run interesting and interactive live events. Another capability allows us to update simulation code without restarting the servers. Extremely flexible and powerful UI/chat system: the user interface can be customized to whatever your personal preference. You can resize, locate, and set opacity for all of your windows, including the render window. The hot keys allow you to map them to any action within the game. You can also remap all of your actions to any keystroke that you wish. What are we working on for Horizons today? The following are additions that are coming to Horizons between today and the end of January. In addition, we are constantly working on reported problems, improving performance, new quests, equipment, structures, events and land. Due to the move to the new offices, some of these have taken longer than we had originally planned. Blighted Equipment: in an effort to equip their forces with better equipment, the Withered Aegis have begun arming the Undead with blighted weapons, armor, scales, and other equipment. Players will be able to loot blighted equipment from the Withered Aegis forces and turn them against the enemy. Ancient Rite of Passage for Dragons: Adult Dragons will be able to begin the Ancient Rite of Passage and upon their completion of this difficult series of tasks, assume their most powerful form, the Ancient Dragon.=20 Dragon Claw slots: Dragons will be able to equip claws that can be techniqued. Dragon Lairs: Dragon plots will become available which allow the underground construction of player configured Dragon Lairs. Blight Anchors: these most recent invaders, sent by the Withered Aegis will continue to evolve and attempt different tactics to drive the Gifted from Istaria. New Crystals: Crystals will once again begin to be discovered in Istaria. These crystals will provide valuable powers to properly techniqued items. Racial Quests: New quests will be introduced which provide additional bonuses to the different races of Istaria. Vault Capacity Quests: the demand for larger vault storage has lead to additional methods of increasing how much a player can store in a vault. New Tutorials: the existing tutorial does not properly explain to the novice player how to play Horizons. We are building two new islands, one for Dragons, and one for Bipeds, which will do a better job of explaining the mechanics and the ideas of Horizons. These islands will be able to be visited at any time in order to review the lessons and to engage the content found there. What will we work on immediately after that? New Racial Structures: with Humans and Dragons having their architectural styles covered, we will continue to develop racial structures for the other races. Raising Schools to level 120: Players will be able to take their favorite school beyond the current cap of 100. Ancient Dragons will also be able to advance to new powers. We have already begun this work, and had expected to be able to be able to complete it by this time. However, the complexity of the task was not fully appreciated and we are going to take more time in order to do this well. Structure and Community Customization: We will be initiating systems that allow for the player built furniture, structural modifications and additional environmental modifications by players. And more: we are dedicated to growing and improving Horizons for the long-term and will constantly add new and more interesting experiences to the world. I'll keep this list as up to date as possible and keep you informed as we progress toward each milestone. For now, I hope that the entertainment and community that is Istaria meets and exceeds your expectations. Have a wonderful and safe holiday season - I'll see you in Istaria. Sincerely, David Bowman |
- MMORPG.COM Staff -
- MMORPG.COM Staff -
The dead know only one thing: it is better to be alive.
Comments
Seems desperate, AC2 style
too little too late... I wonder if they will fix the make one billion simple craft items quests
Same crap that he has been saying for the last 6+ months... Almost all of this was due out within weeks of the game releasing... that was a year ago.
As a matter of fact, this same list has been used over and over for the past 6 months...
Man, this games needs to die, AE has done nothing to do right by it's players, unless you like to be lied to..
West (Ioo)
http://www.GuildScribe.com
http://www.AbleGamer.com
West (Ioo)
Game plain Pathetic.. This is perfect example on how a corporation can destroy a good game in a matter of weeks. This was suppose to be a completely different game alltogether, this was suppose to be a game that would take gaming into next century. Instead we have a "Horizons" , a pathetic and utterly Bad clone of any other dieng game out there (AC2 comes to mind). That lame State of the Game ,, full of lies and repeats every month just the confirmation of weakness and exploitation of gamers who are foolish enough to play.
Feel
and 
at the same time.
Too bad every character will still look exactly the same, but with different tints. Gee, all the same armor for each level....weak.
Just because every car has similar features doesn't mean that Ferraris are copies of Model Ts. Progress requires failure and refining.
Sounds like next desparate sales pitch.
.
----------------------------
Justin Joseph
-MMORPG.COM Co-Founder-
justinjoseph@mmorpg.com
-Nemesis Studios CEIO-
justinjoseph@nemesisstudios.com
There is an art of which every man should be a master the art of reflection. If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all?
William Hart Coleridge
Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.
Bruce Lee
For some reason, DB's statement just reminded me of these two comics. LOL!!
http://www.gucomics.com/archives/view.php?cdate=20041123
http://www.gucomics.com/archives/view.php?cdate=20041126
Too funny!!
Xander
Xander
Must .... let... this...game.....die
I played it on release and then tried it again 6 months later. Both times it sucked and I think the second time was probably the worst. AE should treat this game like a sick horse. Shoot it.
Yes, it's Hype. The message was send as a mass Email to current subscribers (like myself)
However, on the plus side, if anything there's anything good I can say about HZ is that
so far it has more game 'depth' then many of the MMORPG's on the market currently.
There is an art of which every man should be a master the art of reflection. If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all?
William Hart Coleridge
Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.
Bruce Lee
Hard to be vaporware where there's a "product".
...... kinda.
There is an art of which every man should be a master the art of reflection. If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all?
William Hart Coleridge
Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.
Bruce Lee
Oh there's at least 3000 players in the US.. no idea about Europe. Which yes, in MMORPG terms is nothing... but..
as for the double billing, you can't really blame AE for that since none of the billing is done by them.
though, that would accout for the resent billing provider switch.
Can you prove that number? Or are you just going to keep pulling numbers out of your hat? I know the 100k loss they show in filed papers can't really show these numbers. More so when you know double billing and billing canceled accounts are going on.
By the way AE has to send in the forms with who gets charged. So yes the signup happens on AE site and is transfered to biller by AE. Get the fact jack.
There is an art of which every man should be a master the art of reflection. If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all?
William Hart Coleridge
Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.
Bruce Lee
Well not hard facts... However, logically, yes.
I just checked the offical boards and there's 2,186 subscribed.. tack on a few more because not everyone cares about the boards, and there you go.
though.. I can't seem to find the 3000 post.... so I would like to change my answer to perhaps about 2500 people playing.. hehe
You would get a better number if you login to game take a sort of all players currently playing. Best time would be around the primetime for game, normally this is around 11:00 pm est then maybe add 5% to the total you get for anon players. Then do 20% of this number and you should be close to how many are currently playing. But there are other options you may need to do like adding any bots and or people that play but work for AE.
Either way getting numbers from a forum is not even getting close to who plays game. Heck I have an account there and even have a total of 4 accounts which I know I am not only one that has done that. So like I said your way of getting numbers is just wrong. Now if only people that has an account to play game could post there well you may have something there. But nope anyone can join.
There is an art of which every man should be a master the art of reflection. If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all?
William Hart Coleridge
Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.
Bruce Lee
Well either way, we can agree that there's not a lot of people playing..
There is an art of which every man should be a master the art of reflection. If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all?
William Hart Coleridge
Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.
Bruce Lee
I think he does agree... But there are some more newbies in the newbie zones, and there's been quite a few players that have left to come back again.. at least for a little while.
Horizons is the game that everyone WANTS to like.. but really can't due to all the issues.
my Wife likes it.. so well.. you know how that goes.. LOL 
I'm still in the game because A) I have a higher level character that I've spent WAY to much time on to just give up. and
There is an art of which every man should be a master the art of reflection. If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all?
William Hart Coleridge
Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.
Bruce Lee
I never stated the game was good.
However, there are real newbies in the newbie towns, not just alts. No one still askes how to do something, or how somthing works.. or gets fustrated becuase the tutorial doesn't reflect the current state of the game if they arn't new to the game. Are there a lot? no idea, but at least there are some. As for the IRC, I just tend to ignore that, too many people yelling for something that I'm suprised the Devs in channel just havn't told everyone to shut the F&%(k up.
I liked the BETA version of HZ, not this current retail which is mostly a shadow of what the game COULD be. Personally I think that's a lot of the reason some people are still hanging on.. we know what HZ COULD be.. but that's the keyword.. Could.. Guess we'll know on the 15th.
I like the depth of the game play in HZ over just about any other MMORPG out there. Though, it looks like WISH might have what I'm looking for in a game.