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Anyone remember when Horizons was originally going to be sandbox?
GIANT_WANG
Member Posts: 40
I was just thinking about this for some reason a few days ago and stumbled across the old map: images.google.com.au/imgres
They had the most awesome ideas for the different race types, like the underwater-dwelling Lamurians, Vampires, Giants, Angels, Demons and others that I can't recall right now...damn, and then they completely changed their game design from a kickass open-ended ffa world into a pve themepark mmo.
Anyone else follow this game long enough ago to remember?
Played and enjoyed: EQ1, DAoC, WoW
Played and disliked: Guild Wars, WAR
Currently playing: Nothing
Waiting for: Mortal Online
Comments
I guess I don't know. I pre-ordered the game because my GF asked me to. We played the first two months it was live.
I remember watching a video that talked about players building a fort like structure and having to defend it. The video never showed any pvp it (the fort) was attacked by npc's.
So that must have been earlier on and I just never read about it (open ended ffa..pvp.. that you mentioned).
I remember when it did launch watching elemental archers basicly afk level.. until they were nerfed pretty hard core.. looting maggots etc
Short version.. no but maybe it was before my time.
Yeah they changed their direction a year or a couple years before release. I think it was when EA or some other publishing company gave them extra funding.
Closest game to match what Horizons was going to be afaik was Trials of Ascension (but sadly that's been cancelled due to lack of funds...sad face)
Played and enjoyed: EQ1, DAoC, WoW
Played and disliked: Guild Wars, WAR
Currently playing: Nothing
Waiting for: Mortal Online
Yeah, it had a lot of potential... then it just kinda dropped off the face of the earth, and released out of nowhere with virtually zero of the originally planned features. Would actually give it a try now if it worked on Vista. Pretty bad when a game doesn't run on a major OS that's been out for over two years.
LOL well you are talking about Vista and nothing works properly on it anyway
And yea i was so hyped for the game, fist they dropped the underwater part then the divine faction system went away then everything else did too
Not true at all, and it's unfair that people still say that. It was true when it released, and for about a year after. But, Vista is a very stable OS now, and is very nice. I was an XP user for years, but I haven't been happier since switching to Vista Ultimate x64 and I would never go back to XP. The fact is that a LOT of people use Vista now, and a developer that refuses to make their product available on it is missing out on a larger customer base. The only thing I could ask for now would be for Windows 7 to release.
Yup I remember Horizons... played beta... LOVED the game. And then it just kinda fell apart.
I remember. I was following the game closely until it went into trainwreck mode. At that point, Horizons forever became an unfortunate footnote in my MMORPG experience. I think the game could have been a top contending MMORPG if it went live as intended in the earlier FAQs.
Here is a FAQ published in 2002.
---
I ask for so little. Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave.
I used to love the game but I can't seem to get back into it. It's hardly improved after all these years. They had a server merge, a few bug fixes, added more land to the world...nothing really amazing. I probably wouldn't have been able to tell that was a map of Istaria if it wasn't posted on the Istaria forums. Looks nothing like game now or at release aside from one city that has the same name. If only it had a sequel like everquest.
Make games you want to play.
http://www.youtube.com/user/RavikAztar
Yeah, I remember that. I chose the colors of my dragons scales to match the colors of ground clutter. Yes, the stealthy camo'd Dragon pouncing into PvP... Beta was decent, and all the problems were sure to be fixed with the release day 'Super Sekrit Sauce Build' that never ever did show.
Went back briefly a year or so ago, and while it was a much fixed game, it was also empty of other than max levels standing around reminiscing.
I remember the original vision for the game. It would have been VASTLY different from what was released. I spent 8 long and painful months in the game(I came in at launch), and it was NOT what it should have been. After Bowman backstabbed Dave, things went down hill. The rest as they say is history. I'm hoping Daves new game Alganon works out. It seems to have recaptured some of the old vision of the original, and expanded upon it. http://www.alganon.com/
ZZZZZzzzzzz.......ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz..
I remember the original vision for the game. It would have been VASTLY different from what was released. I spent 8 long and painful months in the game(I came in at launch), and it was NOT what it should have been. After Bowman backstabbed Dave, things went down hill. The rest as they say is history. I'm hoping Daves new game Alganon works out. It seems to have recaptured some of the old vision of the original, and expanded upon it. http://www.alganon.com/
Oh so it is back again. It had died for a while there.
Emissary of Istaria
I heard bits and pieces of it. Sounded like a really awesome idea for an MMO. Too bad the number of companies trying to make something unique these days can be counted on one hand.
Darkfall Travelogues!
That sums up the game perfectly. The original vision of the game was rather abitious and sounded great on paper. After a number of financial problems and publisher/developer changes? the game was mutilated into some lifeless shell of an mmo.
I was excited about this game until I actually played it. It still had some great concepts, but it was sooo boring.
I remember the original HZ too. What still gets me is that idea's like that draw huge numbers of waiting fans, and when they fail (almost always due to lack of funding for such ambitious goals) the major developers never notice the interest. HZ lost almost all of their rabid following when it became clear it was tossing the sandbox out. The fans faded back into the shadows, still waiting. And none of the big producers know they are out there.
Once upon a time....
Would love to see this game redeveloped with some love and attention to detail. When I first heard about the game, I envisioned Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic Online. Nothing like that has even been attempted as far as I know. Biggest disappointment of my gaming career.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Yep, then David Bowman took over, and destroyed it. I was so hyped about this game, and ended up never even buying it until I won a 3 month period from a contest right before they sold it to that horrible company.
Hey, ive heard quite a bit of this game in threads like "biggest flop in history" and blah blah and i didnt know this game was horizons until i actually downloaded the game and was looking through the website. Recently ive been hearing alot about this game thorugh reviews saying the game has changed and stuff and im thinking about giving it a shot Now I'm just curious about things before i actually start playing the game, is the owner who supposedly destroyed the game still in charge? is the game even worth it, i mean going from this thread it seems like the game is done.
The fight between David Bowman and the other "idea" dev was the beginning of the end for Horizions.
My wife and I played it a bit, but it was "meh" and just did not live up to all the hype.
Bummer.....the concept of the game was great, but the delivery.......ugh.
Yes, when Bowman backstabbed Dave, that was pretty much the end of the original games promise. Horizons as it launched had VERY little in common with the vision that Dave originally had. Poor design, endless issues(client/server) and a company that never did seem to know what it was doing. Horizons since then has passed from company to company, each time losing more of the player base. The current group seems to have their hearts in the right place, but time has passed the game by. The graphics are painfully outdated, and the player base has decreased to the point that the game is pretty much a ghost town. But I do wish them all the best.
I must say that I'm looking forward to Daves new game Alganon(check the game list). It seems to have recaptured some of his original vision.
I agree, the graphics are generated from an older engine - but when you consider that WoW's "Chaos Engine" and Istaria's "Intrisic Alchemy" engine were released at about the same time; it's just a matter of assets and art direction, not a deficiency in the engine. (IA can actually do things with refraction and light sourcing that WoW cannot do - yet)
Fortunately there is so much more to a game than the pixels; the world, the players, the concepts... It's sort of like saying White Wolf's "Vampire" RPG sucks because the book came out ten years ago.
Regarding the player base - since the release of the Vista client and the content expansion, there's actually a lot of people online each evening - including several of my friends who are both new and returning Istarians and are very happy. Now, granted, the servers aren't even remotely 'full', but there are certainly plenty of people to play with. Given this and the changes to the leveling path that Virtrium has done, players are channeled into the same areas to aleviate the 'ghost town' feel... It's far better than it was 1.5 years ago.
The thing that brings players into Istaria and keeps people playing for longer than most MMOs have been around (or comming back every year or so) are the crafting, housing, race/class systems, and the world - which are either unavailable or just simply not this quality in other MMOs.
And I also agree that David Allen's 'Alganon' looks very interesting and I look forward to my beta invite.