Took another look

Alright, aside from all the DM stuff, I was bored, read the article, so I reloaded Horizons just to have a look around. I played the game last year from May 2004 to Aug 2004. I had a level 30 something Knight of Creation and a level 30 something Ranger.

So I loaded it up. Log on was the same as it was last year. Took a awhile to log in. Once I was in I went to the creation area. Now for those of you who never played, I must say that the character choices are fantastic. Humans and elves are pretty bland but the Dragons, Cat guys, Lizard guys, and Dryads make up for it. I made an Elf and went right in. The tutorial was brief but I skipped it anyway. Took me a little while to remember the interface but was soon back on track. The interface is nice. You can put it together however you like but it can get cluttered it you overdo it.

I made it past the class area and right off the starter island to NB with no lag problems. I ran into the town and looked around, everything was more or less the same. There where more people on then I thought and actually struck up a conversation and was in a guild within about 10 minutes of getting there. Nice! The crowd seems pretty nice. After running Guild Wars for the past month, I needed a mature break. So I run through to Level 5 chatting away and noticed the wizard guys who gave out task are missing So I look around town and didnt find anyone giving out task. Wierd, I thought I read they added more quest (kill task whatever) not take them away. No problem, I can grind with the best of them. I logged off at that point for sleep.

I get back on and deside to "stress" the game. You see Horizons had/has a memory issue. I portaled to Tazoon. A place that, in the past, could bring any PC to its knees. Well no real problem this time. Was a bit choppy especially when NPC's popped up. I had been noticing that some NPCs created a lag or a place  holder still. Just the ones wearing plate armor though. At least that I noticed. I ported to about 3 other locations with no problems. In the past a trip to Tazoon was an automatic reboot. So all was well for now. I went to grind a bit, hit 2 more levels and desided to head into town. Then it hit me. Another player ran by me and FPS went down to a slide show. By the time I hit town I could hardly move. Reboot time

Ok so the memory issue is not fixed but it is better. For whatever thats worth. I'm running on a different PC that has some muscle so it could be that also.

So whats changed that Ive noticed so far?

*Quest guys are gone from the starter town. Strange decission. maybe Im wrong on this(?) I thought it was easier to that sort of thing in the past. A guildy informed me they are in other towns now.

*Still a few people playing, its no WoW or Guild Wars size crowd but enough friendly talkitive people are on to get along.

*Landscapes are still very nice. Very clean colorful graphics. Looks good, Dragons are awesome. Its worth trying out just to see the dragon city and a few player dragons flying overhead.

*Still laggy at times. The longer you play the worse it gets although not near as bad as it was it does not stand up to the current generation of games. You are gonna need to reboot frequently.

*after playing WoW the world does feel a bit "empty" Im not referring to the mobs, but the towns and cities. There are only a few NPCs standing around. Sorta feels like running around in a game that "not on yet".

*Combat was more or less the same. I see a new feature to assign skill points but skills and stances are still the same. I made a Scout and I gotta say that "Long Shot" is really really a LONG shot lol. Brother, you take mobs down long before they get ot you.

So there you go. Just my views so far. Not bad, if you have some time to burn, load it up, you may like it.  Long term, not sure if the technical hassels will make it worth it. 2 or 3 years ago this would have been a ground breaking game. Now...well just about everything out there does it better with the exception of land ownership and custom building houses.