Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted

Here is an (incomplete) history of Horizons - anything that YOU think should be added, or is inaccurate or incomplete - plz add below so i can edit it in...

1998

Artifact Entertainment (AE) website launched from Dave Allen’s home

Nov 1999

David Allen hires James Jones to generate investment for AE’s ambitious project with 14 player races, and an enormous, seamless game world.

Early 2001

Still no decision made on game engine

June 2001

Decision to use unreal engine finally made

July 2001

David Allen leaves as CEO after a long running feud with James Jones (DA’s storey told here). Horizons goes into communication blackout. (Story can be found here (scroll down till you find it) since it has been blocked from archive)

Aug 2001

Unreal engine dumped, various others evaluated. Decision to start writing a new engine using Intrinsic Alchemy as a base

Oct 2001

1^st round of layoffs

May 2002

Horizons seen at E3 2002 – blackout over as previews appear on gaming sites and screenies released.

Jan 2003

Distribution deal agreed with Infogames.

May-Nov 2003

Closed beta – serious issues with lag and server and client crashes also not fixed by OB

Dec 2003

Horizons launched in Europe (5^th), with US servers going live a few days later (9^th) with widespread and serious performance issues

Jan 2004

David Bowman becomes the sole project leader for Horizons as James Jones steps aside into a different project

Feb 2004

2^nd round of layoffs

June 2004

3^rd round of layoffs

July 2004

Verio launches legal suit against AE for 1.8 million in unpaid contracts. James Jones leaves AE. AE files for bankruptcy protection.

Sep 2004

Consolidation of the US servers in order to cut down on hosting fees. Announcement of prospective sale of AE’s assets to Tulga

Oct 2004

The 3 European shards consolidated into 1 (unity)

Jan 2005

AE’s assets sold to Tulga Games (David Bowman is both the new corporation's Statutory Agent and the sole manager) AE is bankrupt and the debts are written off.

Nov 2005

Peter S. Beagle (author of ‘The Last Unicorn’) signs on to provide story support.

Late 2005

The Dragon Ancient Rite of Passage is completed

Jan 2006

PvP added at spire

Early 2006

Tulga look for a purchaser for Horizons

May 2006

‘Settlements’ expansion announced to include more racial housing and new monsters. Speculation over a new engine for Horizons.

July 2006

EI Interactive buys Horizons from Tulga - since none of the development team was hired by the new owners, it seems remote that they could possibly maintain the game, let alone continue patching and adding content

August 1^st 2006

EI Interactive changes the billing system of Horizons. The new system is setup through an insecure network and many subscribers complain of multiple billing

August 5^th 2006

EI Interactive places strict moderation rules on the community forums. All posts and topics are to be read by a moderator before being approved

August 15^th 2006

EI Interactive suggest that the billing situation is resolved

August 2006

EI Interactive suspends new member registration on the forums

Nov 2006

Pixel Magic Corporation announces their acquisition of EI interactive, fooling no-one with the name change 

Dec 2006

Pixel Magic announce that the Blight (test) shard is to be shut down with no character transfers with the exception of one guild to enable the European Unity server to have a new US server 'Unitas'   **Edit: EII/PM even got this wrong since no such guild ever existed**

Jan 2007

Chaos sever crashes - rumours of more unpaid bills...

Feb 2007

Chaos back up …

Q1 2007

Erroneous billing still reportedly persisting

Q2 2007

game still chugging along with billing 'unattended' - blight and unity taken offline (blight purportedly to provide a home for unity players to be called 'unitas' - which never happened)

July 18th 2007

Vitrium LLC aquires Horizons. Details of the change of ownership from Pixel Magic Corp. / EI Interactive publicly unknown at this time... Vitrium is headed by former Tulga CTO Rick Simmons and many of the developers from the former (Tulga) development team. Dave Bowman, due to commitments with Certain Affinity, will not be involved except as a consultant on design

Mid August 2007

Blight server is back up and running, and Istarian citizens experience the long forgotten 'patching' phenomena as well as discover that there is some customer service. New billing system under development and discussion to include multiple subscriptions on a single account, allowing players to stack subscriptions or services to their account, such as multiple plots, concurrent logins, consignment slots or character slots. Unity characters still unaccessable (with Unity gone) with Vitrium undecided as to how and where to 'rez' the European nomads, some of whome have re-started from scratch on Chaos and Order servers since their main characters are in limbo.

Sep 2007 New secure fee schedule implemented, PayPal based

You know, I read about this game for YEARS and even tried it when it came out...

Needless to say, let it go. Just Let It Go. It's sad to say that, I know, but honestly, wipe the data from every single server, burn the physical servers themselves, and salute it one more time. Not trolling or anything, but just saying, this game has LONG outlasted it's usefulness...

Let It go.

nice trolling justfinch and godpuppet... i assume from your posts you want me to add:-

Early 2004

JustFinch and godpuppet try the game and dont like it