Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted

Gone?  Maybe. Horizons has come a long long way and it is still around. I have been playing since release, and it was the first MMO I ever played.  I still have an active subscription but my play time has been less and less.  It just doesnt have the numbers it needs to keep going. They say the same people own it and its not, we were all there when the bankruptcy hit, when the sellings took place. And now the current people running the show do not communicate with us and give us no reason for hope if only we have a few more days to play.

There is alot of potential for this game, if only they would add more content and advertise.  People dont know this game exsists!  And these new managers need to fix the billing issues.  That above all else. We dont need pissed off former players making it worse for new people that might have more enjoyment out of the game than they did. Everyone is different and different things tickle people's fancy.

But having seen the game go through alot in the past, it just needs a pick me up. The lag is gone, sudden crashing is gone, and I dont have a super duper uber pc either.

We just need a better company I think. And money of course.  Id hate to see my first love die, and I hope it never comes to that.

1. The game has no more development. The people running it have no clue how to do work on the servers.

2. No potential if they pulled the test server and have no clue how to update game.

3.  Major billing issues still going on.

4. Because they aren't doing the work on the servers each week the right way there has been major lag on the servers which takes a good day to correct itself.

5. Older systems runs HZ better than new hardware. The game has always been this way.

6. You are lucky to see 30+ people on a server now a days and more are quitting each day.

nothing beats the advertising that Blizzard has spent on WoW

But HZ has always been in the back burner of just about every MMO players minds. Unfortunately bad experiences from beginning to now have given HZ a bad rap and bad word of mouth advertising all of which was earned.

Tulga made critical mistakes in believing that adding more grind was a viable substitute for content. There is nothing fun at all about dragging a cargo disc around and filling silos. The adventuring system isn't even worth mentiong because there is no content to support multiclassing. Even so I'm sorry but having 6 or 7 adventure classes under your belt or having all crafting classes at 100 is completely silly. A flaw to allowing unlimited multiclassing which was used as well to substitute for real genuine content.

All of which has proven that this model failed and is not a viable model to build an MMO upon. There are some good ideas in it but its overshadowed by many crappy ones.

Originally posted by Hadesprime

...Tulga made critical mistakes in believing that adding more grind was a viable substitute for content. There is nothing fun at all about dragging a cargo disc around and filling silos. The adventuring system isn't even worth mentiong because there is no content to support multiclassing. Even so I'm sorry but having 6 or 7 adventure classes under your belt or having all crafting classes at 100 is completely silly. A flaw to allowing unlimited multiclassing which was used as well to substitute for real genuine content.

All of which has proven that this model failed and is not a viable model to build an MMO upon. There are some good ideas in it but its overshadowed by many crappy ones.

you cant blame Tulga for AEs design - and they tried with content by adding events, and some well(ish) known author to write more quests, as well as adding more mobs / resources with the aim of adding tier 6 (master) crafting to supplement the needed raise of level cap to 120

however, I liked AE's original design (however gimped it was from David Allen's concept) - multiclassing being a major part of that. It provided longeivity to a char, making them endlessly adaptive and upgradeable - it is a feature i would like to see again in the future. True though that there needed to be more content for 200+ rated uber bipeds (and even the 130+ ones) but with (excluding dragons) 29 potential adventure classes (possible adventure rating of 380 with all maxxed) the gamer was never really "done with their char"

true that crafting could be a drag (literally), but it did provide an enourmous time sink, and many enjoyed it (albeit in small doses for most of them). 19 biped crafting classes provided more than enough options for the dedicated crafter to keep going for years just to max 1/2 of them - and importantly created serverwide interdependence and relationships since 95%+ of items used / equipped were character made. creating barriers (time and persistence) to mastering a craft is important for a game's economy - though i think the disks were too slow, and resources often too far from portals or should have crafting stations nearby to reduce tedium / frustration

what for Horizons now? well i think that for most people the game is well and truley dead since the fraudulent billing and EI interactive / Pixel Magic debacle. I would love to play it again on a consolidated server (with a decent population) or start afresh with everyone a noob. but i certainly won't with EI / PM in charge. Better still would be for PM to sell off the game world* and the classing / crafting system to another company who can address some issues regarding crafting, content (especially for high level), and plot ownership (unused accounts should lose their plots after 4-6 month period expires for active users to be able to purchase) as well as re-engineer it to run as smooth as todays gamers expect...

Dangit:

The original server code was written to make heavy use of the ram. And at the time was hitting against the 2GB (or maybe 4GB) ram limit that MBs and OS had at the time. To make use of more ram than that, the server code has to be rewritten. The server uses a lot of memory.. 15MB per character 1.5 per other entity. An Entity is anything the player interacts with. Monster, resource node, machine etc. (I believe those numbers are correct) Then you have all the memory taken up by other aspects.

From my own experience what I have found is you need 3 Servers with at least 2.0GHz Xeons, 4GB ram 60GB hard drives. And a database raid server with about 80GB.

That would be able to support about 150 people with enough monsters and resource spawning to keep some people happy. But your map size would be about the size of Lesser Aradoth.**

Increase your land size and you will be adding another server. Otherwise performance becomes too erratic

*below is highlights from a quick list put together by fCo_Pancho on a different forum. he admits it is niether comprehensive nor reliable, but it gives us a general idea of what else is out there. The numbers are in square mile units.

• UO's original gameworld 2
• AC2 was 25
• City of Heroes 50
• Dark Age of Camelot's original map was 54
• Anarchy Online 200
• World of Warcraft 300
• Roma Victor 350
• Asheron's Call 500
• Matrix Online 500
• Star Wars Galaxies had 8 planets of 100
• Dark and Light 15,000
• Horizons 15,000  
• World War II Online 350,000

**Lesser Aradoth is only a small part of the Horizons world, probably <5% of the total land mass when all is considered

 

 

[quote]
you cant blame Tulga for AEs design - and they tried with content by adding events, and some well(ish) known author to write more quests, as well as adding more mobs / resources with the aim of adding tier 6 (master) crafting to supplement the needed raise of level cap to 120
[/quote]

You do realize right that Tulga was AE renamed correct ? AE was left in bankruptcy while Bowman used cover man Chris T to create Tulga. All employee's including Bowman himself simply got a paycheck with a different corporate name on it. Eventua.lly Chris T was shuffled out and never heard from again.

As far as design well Tier 6 never made it nor did the level cap raise. Tulga was not even close to getting tier 6 in game let alone raising the level cap


[quote]

however, I liked AE's original design (however gimped it was from David Allen's concept) - multiclassing being a major part of that. It provided longeivity to a char, making them endlessly adaptive and upgradeable - it is a feature i would like to see again in the future. True though that there needed to be more content for 200+ rated uber bipeds (and even the 130+ ones) but with (excluding dragons) 29 potential adventure classes (possible adventure rating of 380 with all maxxed) the gamer was never really "done with their char"

]/quote]

multiclassing was nice but became and is now the games crutch. There are very few in the gaming world that will bother raising class after class to max level. After the third class it became a .... well I do not have anything else to do so might as well raise another class to 100. Most people when they got to this stage quit. It was partially responsible for the AE bankruptcy to Tulga shuffle and its eventual demise as well. I dare say being able to level all classes to 100 to be a complete waste of time and went far beyond customizing your character falling into the absurdly absurd :P . Other games with alternative advancement have shown there are much better ways to customize a character and I believe the MMO world will build on that model and not the failed one in horizons.

 

[quote]

true at crafting could be a drag (literally), but it did provide an enourmous time sink, and many enjoyed it (albeit in small doses for most of them). 19 biped crafting classes provided more than enough options for the dedicated crafter to keep going for years just to max 1/2 of them - and importantly created serverwide interdependence and relationships since 95%+ of items used / equipped were character made. creating barriers (time and persistence) to mastering a craft is important for a game's economy - though i think
the disks were too slow, and resources often too far from portals or should have crafting stations nearby to reduce tedium / frustration

[/quote]

 

umm there was no interdependancy and hasent been since 2 months afrer the games release. We saw at the 6 month release that people did not multiclass a crafter because it was fun but rather so they could make everything themselves. The crafter juggernaut quickly became the demise of the games economy and subsequentloy its population. Im sorry but no where in real life or even the various electronic ones can you be NOR should you be jack of all trades master at everything. It destroys a games economies and removes the very interdependancies you say where there but clearly were not. Now multiclassing a crafting class isnt a bad idea.l But there should have been limits to it.

[quote]

what for Horizons now? well i think that for most people the game is well and truley dead since the fraudulent billing and EI interactive / Pixel Magic debacle.

[/quote]

game was dying before PME/EII got it. Sure the folks at Gin Horizons mainly Ophelea insist the subscriber base was growing at a rapid rate I just dont believe it for a second. Imperical observations showed that though trial account conversations were high that those people did not stick around for very long. This is supported in the fact that Horizons in the many months leading up the sale was staying at consistent numbers during primetime. For example Chaos never ever went past the 400 visible online point. It steadily rose to a point close to it but could never break it. Which counters the assertion that the playerbase was growing hard. Not only that but Im sure Baker would have never parted with the game at the bargain bin basement price he gave it to PME for. He woul.d have had concrete numbers to show to a perspective buyer that the games subscriber base was growing and he could have commanded a better price for it than he did. In fact he could have probably found a more credible buyer for it and not one that uses front page to produce their main website.

What Horizons needed was to get away from Bowman and Tulga/AE. Unfortunately the game went from the frying pan to the fire with PME/EII.

The game might settle into true niche status if someone else gets ahold of it and addresses content, class issues and performance problems. But I see no one with the money the resources nor the time to really do that. Horizons right now is a crap load of work for any small entity to take on and I just do not see a larger more skilled entity even bothering with what is now old tech and a piece of software with a oil tanker load of problems.

Originally posted by Hadesprime

You do realize right that Tulga was AE renamed correct ? AE was left in bankruptcy while Bowman used cover man Chris T to create Tulga. All employee's including Bowman himself simply got a paycheck with a different corporate name on it. Eventua.lly Chris T was shuffled out and never heard from again.

it doesnt surprise me in the least that a rename and restructuring occured because of the mis-management at AE

As far as design well Tier 6 never made it nor did the level cap raise. Tulga was not even close to getting tier 6 in game let alone raising the level cap

i was fully aware of the fact it never made it, but the possibility of tier 6 craft and level 120 classes seemed to disappear after the sale to EI whereas Tulga at least had some developers to make it a possibility (there were master forms and tier 6 wood and stone resources at least)

multiclassing was nice but became and is now the games crutch. There are very few in the gaming world that will bother raising class after class to max level. After the third class it became a .... well I do not have anything else to do so might as well raise another class to 100. Most people when they got to this stage quit.

yes some quit - but they many more would have quit earlier after they maxed the 1st class without the possibility of multiclassing - so in that case the design was good as it added longeivity to the game for many

It was partially responsible for the AE bankruptcy to Tulga shuffle and its eventual demise as well.

really? i would say that it was everything to do with game performance, failure to deliver on what was promised, poor reviews, hate campaigns, David Allen versus James Jones & David Bowman and the subsequent complete redisign failing to deliver on the concept, and all the other baggage, the competition from other games and low subscriber base, and absolutely nothing to do with multiclassing

I dare say being able to level all classes to 100 to be a complete waste of time and went far beyond customizing your character falling into the absurdly absurd :P . Other games with alternative advancement have shown there are much better ways to customize a character and I believe the MMO world will build on that model and not the failed one in horizons.

i'm pretty sure levelling all classes to 100 would be absurd, but some players clearly found levelling 10 of them or so (about 1/3) to be of benefit

umm there was no interdependancy and hasent been since 2 months afrer the games release. We saw at the 6 month release that people did not multiclass a crafter because it was fun but rather so they could make everything themselves. The crafter juggernaut quickly became the demise of the games economy and subsequentloy its population. Im sorry but no where in real life or even the various electronic ones can you be NOR should you be jack of all trades master at everything. It destroys a games economies and removes the very interdependancies you say where there but clearly were not. Now multiclassing a crafting class isnt a bad idea.l But there should have been limits to it.

yes and no - i seriously doubt there were many bipeds who could make all their armour needs, all their weapons, jewelry, cargo equiptment, spells, ambrosia, potions, dyes, tools, and meet their needs for masonry, weaving, enchanting, carpentry and fitting. So even long time uber-peds relied on freinds for some of their needs. Because of the techniquing, most wanted bespoke armours, weps, jewelry and spells to their specification so this leads to creating freindships with those with the skills needed to make the bespoke gear . This lead to sense of communities severly lacking in other games. Although small bands could be entirely self-sufficient, good crafters were in still in demand...

 

game was dying before PME/EII got it. Sure the folks at Gin Horizons mainly Ophelea insist the subscriber base was growing at a rapid rate I just dont believe it for a second. Imperical observations showed that though trial account conversations were high that those people did not stick around for very long. This is supported in the fact that Horizons in the many months leading up the sale was staying at consistent numbers during primetime. For example Chaos never ever went past the 400 visible online point. It steadily rose to a point close to it but could never break it. Which counters the assertion that the playerbase was growing hard. Not only that but Im sure Baker would have never parted with the game at the bargain bin basement price he gave it to PME for. He woul.d have had concrete numbers to show to a perspective buyer that the games subscriber base was growing and he could have commanded a better price for it than he did. In fact he could have probably found a more credible buyer for it and not one that uses front page to produce their main website.

agreed

What Horizons needed was to get away from Bowman and Tulga/AE. Unfortunately the game went from the frying pan to the fire with PME/EII.

agreed

The game might settle into true niche status if someone else gets ahold of it and addresses content, class issues and performance problems. But I see no one with the money the resources nor the time to really do that. Horizons right now is a crap load of work for any small entity to take on and I just do not see a larger more skilled entity even bothering with what is now old tech and a piece of software with a oil tanker load of problems.

unfortunately agreed