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Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted News - Sold: What The Deal Means
Posted by Dana Massey on Jul 21, 2006 | 33 comments in our forums
Horizons - as was announced last night - has been sold to EI Interactive. Today, MMORPG.com spoke to EI Interactive owner Ed Andercheck and Tulga Games CEO David Bowman to find out what this means for the game, its fans and the people who built it.
| Ed Andercheck’s EI Interactive has purchased Horizons and, as of last Friday, the deal means that nearly everyone who worked for Tulga Games is out of a job.
“I’m a gamer and I saw a mature and exciting group of people,” explained Andercheck of why his company decided to purchase Horizons. He added that the culture of the community, the game’s rich potential for storytelling and the way players can grow the world all made Horizons an extremely attractive product for him. Andercheck added that his company has no plans to radically alter the course Tulga Games had laid out and hopes to stay true to the spirit of Horizons. |
You can read the full report here.
Bye Bye Bowman :)
I hope you never tarnish our genre again. I think i'll be playing this game a bit as soon as his involvement is completely over.
I think Tulga would find it easier to sell their engine if they fired Bowman as well. [MODERATOR: No personal attacks.]
This is a very strange deal, and for it to stand a chance to be at all viable there must be something else going on that is not being made public.
Put a stake in it already and let it die.
I enjoyed Horizions when I played it and if it weren't for all the original management issues that dampened it's launch, it would have been successful. It's too late to try and revive the game now, it has a negative image and suffers from a low playerbase which is a game killer for a MMOG to me.
It sounds like a raw deal that benefited the original owners of Horizons only, while the devs and other workers are getting hosed. Horizons is better off without owners like that. I am interested to see if EI Interactive can make Horizons into a better game.
Right now I see the following wrong with the game:
Very outdated graphics
Poor billing system
No phone support
Looks as though the game is Windows based
No destroyable cities.I mean why build a little town and not destroy it? I mean what is there to do after you grind to death to build it?
How about a reason to craft. i mean you grind all that time for what? to sell to whom?
No real endgame at all.
blight attacks set off by the developers, its not AI controlled right. so everything is predictable.
The game was made to be a kick ass pvping game by design. instead it was turned into a marshmallow joke that no one really cared for. I mean what really is there that is worth paying a fee for?
The games mechanics are garbage and would need a total overhaul. Even still the game will never recover. Its better to build something competitive to go along with such a nice crafting system.
to sell to whom?
Exactly.
I love crafting and Horizons was the best, but I don't craft just to say to myself, "Good job working on those crafting skills for the last 4 months to become a master craftsman". If there is no one to trade with and nothing to trade for, what is the point?
Andercheck added that his company has no plans to radically alter the course Tulga Games had laid out and hopes to stay true to the spirit of Horizons.[/quote]
Ok, if they want to stay true to the spirit of Horizons and not radically alter it's course, then go back to the ORIGINAL Horizons...you know, the Horizons that was supposed to have Angel PC's vs Demon PC's, lots of PvP, that insect race that's impervious to pain, smaller races able to mount and ride larger races etc.
THAT'S the Horizons I was interested in. They radically altered it into the form we see today, and it's nothing like the original idea. So how about radically altering it back to what it was originally gonna be? After the fiasco that is Dark and Light, and considering that Dark and Light was my last hope in a mmorpg after Horizons was radically altered, I need this! We all need this!
You did read the part about evaluating the possibility of a race war server, right?
Ooh no I didn't. Race war server is a good start.
But it's only a start, since the current Horizons still doesn't even resemble the beloved Horizons I used to read about years ago, when it was still in it's planning stages.
"We'll see", as usual, but it's the first time in a very long time that the game could have a real future.
Also note that He Who Shall Not Be Named is in fact staying on.
The bad publicity this game has can prove a boon if the devs can turn it around, the "Ugly Duckling" principle at work.
However, from what people say about this game, that is a big "IF". I honestly don't know if EI has the knowhow and/or resources to pull off such a feat, especially in the increasingly competitive post-WoW MMO market.
but all in all the craft system is the best ive seen and this game holds soo much potential for roleplaying its not even funny. i wouldnt be surprised that if things were different we wouldnt be seeing construction companies running around (throws a timber at the forman) oops sorry boss it slipped out of my claws
http://www.eiinteractive.com/
check out the website for the company buying this heap then talk about the future. Its funny like "clown car on fire" funny.Front page 4.0 for the win yo.
http://www.eiinteractive.com/contact.htm
Theres some of the new team.Two people that look like theve bean chaseing ambulances for the last 20 years and a stoner.Check out there one pimp ass office at the bottom that looks like i worn down strip mall.vegas wouldnt even take odds on this game lasting another year.
God people let it die already!
Give Bowman some credit guys; if the "other Dave" was left in charge, Horizons would still be dreamy vapourware in search of funding, like virtually everything else the "other Dave" has thought up.
I feel sorry for HZ's close knit community though, I really do.
It'll be interesting to see where this outfit takes HZ.
to the moderator, its hard NOT make personal attacks on david bowman, the individual (with assistance) ran a promising game into the ground, some of the comments by bowman on the boards about horizons is simple proof that his vision and no one elses was going to be it and everyone else be damned, i played horizons for about 7 months, its a fine example of not even wanting to try and listen to the customer base. something a dev should never do, delete posts on ideas, though i posted one or two times, reference lag in game (as i was currently happy with gameplay) tons of "new" posts were promptly deleted, they cant take critisism? the boards turned into a warzone, more so than the wow boards, only instead of help, the only thing the player base received was silence.
the customer service in the game was abysmal, the PAYMENT FIASCO, double and triple billings while normal billing occurred, continued billings for months after the game was cancelled and bowman simply claimed it wasnt horizons fault, it was the "seperate billing department" this one thing drove hundreds, if not thousands away as they were billed multiple times with no refunds. i am one example of a cancelled account, a deployment to iraq, and i come back and find i was billed the whole time i was over in iraq. david bowman and devs answers? you never cancelled, the email quite matter of factly stated. despite my showing the cancellation email. this happened so often everytime another request hit the forum boards it was promptly deleted. the folks at tulga are not to be trusted, neither is david bowman, personal attacks aside he simply cant be trusted.
and i am sorry if my personal feelings get in the way of typing this forum reply, i truly hope bowman and crew never find work again.
I cant understand why people call the graphics outdated. As most roleplaying people I know havent that high end first-person-shooter optimized machines, it is still one of the most beautiful looking games out there, especially if you havent the hardware to max all graphic options.
I just hope EI will listen to the community and fire the european team. Or better: Merge all servers (except blight) to create a richer player base and start a new raise. If so, I will be back and my teeth and claws will again strike back the blight.
No personal attacks eh... we wish.. ;)
Goodbye Mr Bowman.
Longlive flying dragons and true crafting in mmo gaming.
Horizons was probably the best idea to ever hit mmo gaming.. it was utterly ruined by the one person we're not allowed to make personal attacks against. And as a result 99% of all the players quit the game.
I remember seeing guilds organising with each other to help release the Satyrs, lines of players running from forests and mines with supplies of matierials for builders to craft into the tunnels to begin the rescue of the satyrs. Teams of fighters to hold back any attackers... organisation to build the towns and cities.. awesome game. Build you own house.. have a dragon which could grow and finally after a long long wait fly.. but even by then they game was dying rapidly.. and it was obvious in the end that they just wanted everyone to quit so they could pack it up and forget it.
But some never did leave.
There were some oddities to the game... and the total lack of pvp really did ruin it ultimately.. it was the lack of communications between the devs and the players, the lack in content, the broken promises then changes to gameplay without warning..
dragons were supposed to be mountable, the were supposed to be more of the great events, but the 2nd main event to release the elves or whatever it was we were doing in the jungly bit rapidly grew boring...building those things to push back the green plague stuff... so long ago now.
horizons is a could have, that could truely have been great in proportions even wow cannot reach. But one man got in the way and trashed the game. Changed almost everything in every way. Forced one of the best leading devs to quit the company and lied continuously to everyone. But we're not allowed to make personal attacks so i won't mention names.
Still...
bye bye mr bowman.. hope you find happyness somewhere else. I'd like to make suggestions...but i better not.
Sincerely.. Lochy Connel (Crafter extrodinaire)
I don't want to start an argument here. But the "other dave" was the visionary, if they'd followed his ideas... horisons would still be playing packed servers today. When he left..or was pretty much forced to leave, horisons went through the floor. The dreamy vapourweave you talk of was the idea that horisons came from.
Okay theres no denying that horizons might have been released about 6 months later than it did.. but be honest.. on release.. horizons still needed 6 months more work put into it. Dragon 'housing' and other ideas which should have been in release were trashed and the game released months ahead of schedule. Remember the posts about people needing to get paid.. and them running out of money? Which was the reason for early release.. remember the posts about playing and paying for a beta?
The wrong dave left. And as a consequence.. 'what could have been' become a 'no chance of ever being'.
tell me when david bowman has nothing to do with the game ot company what so ever and i might think about going back to horizons
If they can, go back to the "Original" Horizons. That was what I WAS all excited about eons ago
"Give Bowman some credit guys; if the "other Dave" was left in charge, Horizons would still be dreamy vapourware in search of funding, like virtually everything else the "other Dave" has thought up."
crusade anyone?
"The wrong dave left."
He is a game designer.. I bet the guy knows jack about what it actually takes to code all those ideas into a working mmorpg. either way , the wrong david might have have left.. but the other david is now probably quite rich.
and that my friends is how you do business.
I am now playing on order, and its still the most fascinating MMO I ever played. But if EI isnt capable to show they are interested in hearing the peoples voices they will also fail to grow again.
Finiaroth on Order
Eisdrache on Unity
I am now playing on order, and its still the most fascinating MMO I ever played. But if EI isnt capable to show they are interested in hearing the peoples voices they will also fail to grow again.
Finiaroth on Order
Eisdrache on Unity
Which Dave are you talking about here? Just to clue you in, the Bowman variety was sort of behind critically acclaimed titles like Myth and AC1.
The other Dave made one game, made in Visual Basic and he named it after a place in Middle Earth (imagine that!) and it was universally canned for being crap when it was released. This particular Dave can do nothing but talk up a game and post renders of these imaginary and never-to-appear video games.
My seven year old daughter can do the same and in fact, I may encourage her to get into this business as it seems to something anyone can do.
NB. I'm no fan of David Bowman, do not get me wrong, but I will call a spade a spade.
Horizons, as dreamt up by David Allen, would never have gotten past ooh aah stage at the rendered picture level. In fact, it never did.
Facts.
To help those who do not play the game, nor participate in its forums...
What I see is a very sick child (Horizons) with a curable disease... but it has no parents and the guardians and doctors that have been given the task of caring for the sick child are distracted and/ or not competent to attend to her needs...
She's squirming and crying now, but the fever is rising and her vision is failing...
She needs experts and love...
Her friends (the players) love her, but alone, they cannot save her.
The new "doctors" won't even talk to her... except to pat her on the head and say "It'll be alright" as they walk out the door... Even as her "friends" cry out for some kind of news or help...
And then Haunt woke up and realised that it's just a video game after all and that the adage that games come and go but true friends last forever is so very much true.