It has been nearly 2 months since Artifact Entertainment unleashed their highly anticipated fantasy MMORPG "Horizons".  It features the most advanced crafting system ever created, many races and classes and so many features gamers are demanding today. 

But how does it all measure up?  Well, our own Richard "Kunou" Duffek has been playing this game since it launched and has completed his own in depth review of this blockbuster MMORPG. 

Click here to check it out!

"It features the most advanced crafting system ever created."

I belive crafting system in A Tale in the Desert is much more advanced than the one in Horizons.

I've been betatesting Horizons and then playing it a month or so in retail and sure, Horizon's crafting is somewhat interesting but in reality it doesn't bring anything that exceptionaly new to the market. If the promised item customization was implemented as it was promised by the devs, then it could be said that it has something new and advanced, but as it is right now, crafting in Horizons is infact as boring and tedious as it was in any game so far (and I've been playing crafting characters in UO, AC, DAoC and SWG).

It really boils down to gathering raw materials for hours just to make the next batch of bronze swords and then destroy the lot of them in order to get some experience that would allow you to get to next level, where you can start gathering next tier of materials. That of course takes even longer to accomplish (hours and hours of clicking on iron ore nodes for example) and then you can start mass production of iron swords or some other useless item and deconstruction of those for even slower further advancement in your crafting class.

You can certanly add techs to the items you make, but there is really very little chance you will actually sell any of those, coz the market is already dominated by couple of insanely high-level powergaming crafters and you just can't find a buyer in the world where no item decays or gets lost when someone dies.

I think all in all the review of Horizons is pretty much dead on. I think the only real issue that should of been changed since this review is brand new here is the way characters run. When I first started playing, my human did in fact run like a cheerleader or some sort of Russian soldier trying to get to the vodka store before closing, but as of about 2 maybe 3 weeks ago that has been fixed.

I am currently playing and will keep playing - it is a good game, but they still have alot of work to do. Memory leaks are out of control and cause major lag if you've been on for a while. Just this past weekend I had been on so long that the game crashed on me with an error message stating that I was out of memory and with a gig of ram my system has more than enough to go around.

Customer service is simply not there and they have no desire to keep thier paying user base informed. If you do play and have any trouble or if you are wondering about that bug that's keep you from something you wanna do - well, hurry up and wait. The message boards are nothing short of a flame fest with both pro and con supporters going at each other.

Player housing is a great idea and being able to buy a plot of land to call your own really is cool, but as of this post there is no need for them. Houses are more or less a status symbol, showing off a person's ability to craft or thier wealth by paying others to do the job for them. Once built your house is noting more than eye candy. There are no furnishings, pictures to decorate, or anything else that can be added. Even something such as putting up walls to protect your home is impossiable as the walls don't align correctly so you cannot place them. Will this sort of thing change? Who knows.

Crafting to me leaves ALOT to be desired and I mean alot! Basically when you start you choose 1 or the 3 main crafting classes: Blacksmith, Scholar, or an outfitter. As a blacksmith you focus on making weapons and tools, as an outfitter armors and backpacks and as a scholar mainly spells and jewelry. The problem is, since everyone can start as a blacksmith or change over any time the need to supply low end weapons is basically not there. Why would anyone pay me to make something that they can make in minutes? They wouldnt and so money at the very start is hard to come by. Not untill higher levels of crafting does the population start to fade out and less and less people are crafting. The crafting system should be specialized than generic (yes there are branches you can specialize into such as weaponcraft, but its simply a blacksmith who gains skill makeing weapons faster and everything else slower or not at all) - Only way I can put it is it's a damn shame I'll have put this game up long before they make weapons and armor look different. So for me I'll be just another cookie-cutter wearing fool.

Classes are way way way (I cannot stress that enough - WAY) overpowered. Not all but alot! I think a level 50 character killing level 80's is a bit out of control when other level 50 characters struggle to solo a level 55 critter. Personally it doesnt bother me because there is no PVP so who cares, but they will loose alot of players who reach the top long before they should of. Two months to reach level 120 (max level for some classes) is insane and I'm not talking about power players either.