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Sooo...is it worth looking at again?
OnyxBMW
Member Posts: 207
Hi all...Quick question, as the topic states, is horizons worth looking at again?
I bought horizons on the first day and was hit with how poorly the game was designed. Lag rampant, no quests to speak of, horribly boring grind, etc etc. Sooooo...the question is, is it worth looking at? how much has changed? Can I finally play the game with the infamous dragon and have fun at it? Your question here!
Thanks in advance
-Onyx
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Comments
I never played at launch I'm playing now, but from what I have heard it is a completely different game now. Not everything that was promised is in, and it still has some lag now and then, but I find it to be a very satisfying, graphically rich environment. And NOTHING like the game was described to me from people who dislike it. It has.....substance. Not perfect, but I have still yet to crash after over 3 weeks of playing.
And yes you can play Dragons! But the lairs aren't in yet, whatever that means
I'm still a relative n00b to the game. And I have about 5 active quests right now and I'm only level 11war/10cleric. I re-rolled a dark elf (I know theres only elfs, but mine looks like a dark elf with blue skin hehe) instead of the half giant I had. Also started a Dragon 
Thanks for the feedback...
Oh, do they still have that crappy I-Bill payment system or is it something I don't have to call up to cancel that double bills all the time or keeps billing past cancellation?
I've been here since January 2004. There's been bad times, there's been terrible times, but there's also been good times, and the good times are rolling more often in the last 4 to 6 months imo.
Never been double-billed, never heard of any guildmates or friends being double-billed either, but I do remember about a year ago there were half a dozen people complained on the forums about double-billing. Sounded like an isolated incident that affected maybe a dozen or so accounts judging by what was posted on the forums, but I don't have all the details. Certainly never heard anything about it since.
Game is always improving, expansions are free and included as part of the regular patching process instead of buying expansion packs like Sony and others offer. They don't seem to want to stop improving Horizons either, there's loads of additional stuff in the pipeline, too much to recount in a single post. I'd recommend checking the community site for more info - would give the addy but you've already found the forums so I reckon you've seen the community site too
No harm in giving it a go, free trial will get you sorted and if you like what you see then you can reactivate your old account
Yes, I have indeed seen the community site
Only thing left now to do is wonder if it's worth going back to, for a 7 day trial or for 14 bucks (or...whatever it was) for 30 days.
With all the changes I have heard that it has done, it makes you wonder why they havn't re-released yet...
Now, when you say expansion, do you mean BIIIIIIIIG patches or just sizeable like something in AC1 when they added the vessayan islands?
I mean big patches with drastically reformed content, including additional land masses, higher tiers of resources and monsters, various groups of worthwhile loot for adventurers, new formulas, new quests (I mean quests, not those annoying little kill tasks
) and much more besides 
Let's not forget all the minor (and in some cases, major) fixes that come with each patch too. We seem to get a patch once a month, which imo is a good thing since it demonstrates that the devs are continually working on the game. Roughly every 3 months we'll get a biggy, with a noticable amount of new content.
There's one thing we've not had introduced via patches yet, and that's new schools of any description. That's fine by me though since the game already has many adventure and craft schools, could even be argued that there's too many. I'm sortof expecting (but can't say for sure without any official confirmation from the devs) that dragons will have new schools opened up to them upon reaching ancient status. Notably the laircrafting school which should allow dragons to get a boost in certain stats over what dragon crafter/adventurer currently offers. This is all pure speculation, but there's been enough hints dropped to think that it might be a possibility. Someone else was also going on about the reward for ancient status and said they had good reason to believe that ancient dragons will be able to pick a new adventure school upon completion of the ARoP - for example Dragon Mage, Dragon Cleric, and so on, but I haven't even heard a hint from the devs to suggest that is in the slightest bit true.
My own suggestion is to give the 7 day trial a go before you reactivate your old account. That way if you decide the changes aren't for you, you've not lost anything. Don't bother with the download for the trial since you can just use your existing Horizons disks and patch a fresh install from those
Quick answer: the HZ of today is nothing like the HZ released at launch.
The client has been rewritten. Quests, lore, two new races, and a host of other things have been added or improved. The entire world has been upgraded, and continues to evolve for the better. Dragons are no longer gimped by passive hoard decay, have enhanced armor, spells, and hoard abilities. A new dragon tutorial island has been implemented (and biped variants are in the works) to help the growing numbers of new players learn the game.
I'd suggest you give the free trial a go and decide for yourself whether HZ is worth another look. The changes you see on the island of Lesser Aradoth will soon be spreading to the mainland.
Ibill and Ipay is the same people. Plus most smart people would never deal with a company not even listed on the BBB. But give it time I expect to see Ipay on BBB soon enough, it always takes time for a newly formed company to get listed on BBB. More so when it is already listed under Ibill.
Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.
Bruce Lee
Quick answer: the HZ of today is nothing like the HZ released at launch.
The client has been rewritten. Quests, lore, two new races, and a host of other things have been added or improved. The entire world has been upgraded, and continues to evolve for the better. Dragons are no longer gimped by passive hoard decay, have enhanced armor, spells, and hoard abilities. A new dragon tutorial island has been implemented (and biped variants are in the works) to help the growing numbers of new players learn the game.
I'd suggest you give the free trial a go and decide for yourself whether HZ is worth another look. The changes you see on the island of Lesser Aradoth will soon be spreading to the mainland.
Client has not been rewritten. They stated back some time ago they wanted to get a new engine and then rewrite the client into it. This has not happened and has long been forgotten. TulgAE hasn't the money to fully rewrite the client. That can take a very long time. Not to bring up they just don't have the developers to do it. Sheesh one goes on vacation one gets sick and they go to a complete stop. DB is forced to come on board and stop the complaining. That says a lot about the dev team.
Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.
Bruce Lee
It has not been forgotten. DB also stated that a complete client rewrite would take at least 1 year, probably much longer. At the current time their client development staff is split into two catagories:
1) Write new client (probably based on open source software)
2) Make the existing client not suck quite as bad.
They know the existing client sucks, and they also know that it will take a long long time to fully implement a new client. I'm not sure what you expect DOZer? They said they were working on a new client. Do you expect it to simply magically appear out of thing air? Do you know anything about programing? Apparently not, sadly.
Perhaps you should simply not speak about subjects you know nothing about.
EDIT: I LOVE the cyclops smiley LOL. It is cute:)
Making a new engine then porting all data to it would take a lot longer than one year. I was pointing out they have not done a rewrite like the other poster said. Moving a few crafting machines adding fluff and then one big patch that adds a little content is not a rewrite. Maybe you need to think before posting. Believe me when it comes to this game and DB I know exactly what I mean.
Also if you know so much exactly what source engine have they picked to start this new engine on? That is if you know the subject you speak of?
Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.
Bruce Lee
You know, every time they overhaul a part of the existing client (take the new client on Blight shard as an example, you know, the one I mentioned in the Fluke or Reality thread that you haven't been able to reply to since it's a good thing and not something you can deny or rebuke), folks like Tango and Smeglor get an opportunity to unhook, componentise and modularise yet another part of the client. With each part of the client receiving an overhaul to yield performance benefits in turn, it won't be long before the swap-out of the graphics rendering engine will be short and painless for Tulga developers.
The UI is ready to be transferred to a new graphics renderer. The model system is ready to be transferred (it does help that they used Granny 3D instead of Intrinsic Alchemy's own native format for skeletal animation). The asset loading/unloading is part of the current client performance improvements on blight, and has been rewritten to allow for the same swap-out principle. Next on the list is the audio system, which is perfectly reasonable in its current form but nice to know that it's getting a second look-at.
You get the picture. With each rewrite of parts of the existing client, the developers are paving the way to make it easier for the big few weeks where they swap out the old Intrinsic Alchemy engine and replace it with something much more substantial and capable.
You know, every time they overhaul a part of the existing client (take the new client on Blight shard as an example, you know, the one I mentioned in the Fluke or Reality thread that you haven't been able to reply to since it's a good thing and not something you can deny or rebuke), folks like Tango and Smeglor get an opportunity to unhook, componentise and modularise yet another part of the client. With each part of the client receiving an overhaul to yield performance benefits in turn, it won't be long before the swap-out of the graphics rendering engine will be short and painless for Tulga developers.
The UI is ready to be transferred to a new graphics renderer. The model system is ready to be transferred (it does help that they used Granny 3D instead of Intrinsic Alchemy's own native format for skeletal animation). The asset loading/unloading is part of the current client performance improvements on blight, and has been rewritten to allow for the same swap-out principle. Next on the list is the audio system, which is perfectly reasonable in its current form but nice to know that it's getting a second look-at.
You get the picture. With each rewrite of parts of the existing client, the developers are paving the way to make it easier for the big few weeks where they swap out the old Intrinsic Alchemy engine and replace it with something much more substantial and capable.
Please can you point all of us to a link that proves this or is it all stated in IRC? Which if they can't put it in writing we already learned a long time ago they can't be trusted by anything they blurt out in irc chat.
Still goes without saying it would take 1 to 2 years to make the new engine, make the tools for the new engine, port all the data and then have a alpha, beta testing phase. Or wait no they could just keep going with the paid beta they have now.
Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.
Bruce Lee
And what good would that do? If we posted a link, you'd just say you can't believe anything they say anyway, whether it is in irc or on the box or in the forums. Because that's what you always say when confronted with any kind of evidence: if it is in irc, you can't beleive it; if it's in forums, you can't believe it, etc.
Well here's some evidence: the new version of the client that's on blight DOES result in an improvement in fps. I have 2 identical computers, and created identical test characters on chaos and on blight, with all sttings identical, and saw improvements of +3 to +10 fps on blight, depending on where I tested.
A slow transformation and revision of the client is definitely a prudent way to go, and that is how they're doing it.
And what good would that do? If we posted a link, you'd just say you can't believe anything they say anyway, whether it is in irc or on the box or in the forums. Because that's what you always say when confronted with any kind of evidence: if it is in irc, you can't beleive it; if it's in forums, you can't believe it, etc.
Well here's some evidence: the new version of the client that's on blight DOES result in an improvement in fps. I have 2 identical computers, and created identical test characters on chaos and on blight, with all sttings identical, and saw improvements of +3 to +10 fps on blight, depending on where I tested.
A slow transformation and revision of the client is definitely a prudent way to go, and that is how they're doing it.
Wow great way to turn conversation away from what was said. So you can't prove it I guess. Just shows how the bull is always going with this game. Anything to get another sub.
Also a lot of people are still having issues with fps but that is a whole different conversation.
Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.
Bruce Lee
Doh! I forgot.....