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Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted News - Rebirth of Horizons
Posted by Keith Cross on Aug 21, 2007 | 28 comments in our forums
GamersInfo.net is reporting that Horizons, an MMO which has spent a significant amount time in development limbo, is poised to make a comeback under the new management of Virtrium.
Like the proverbial phoenix (dragon?) that continually rises from the ashes, Horizons: Empire of Istaria is poised to take flight once again. Purchased just over one year ago by EI Interactive, the game has languished with no updates, billing errors and poor community support until recently when Virtrium, LLC purchased Horizons and all remaining assets from Tulga Games. The players have been wondering, though: exactly who is Virtrium?
Good question. In the previous two weeks alone they've re-established Blight, the test server; opened the community forums to registration (they've been closed for more than 8 months); established a new, very agile support ticket system (none had existed for nearly a year); and have somewhat covertly been talking to the players. Things the remaining rag tag bunch never expected as they were simply hanging on to the game until its dying breath.
Read the full article here.
Im telling ya, Horizons MUST become somthing special this time round, it MUST do well. Its obviously not in its destiny to die as it has proven so many times already.
I liked Horizons it just wasnt polished and had alot of bugs at the start, but it still had a great community and some great features in the game, building houses and bridges to other areas of the game, the whole community would get together to do it and it was superb, i really liked how it was upto the community to find new areas etc.
I really do hope they do somthing good with this game, it could have been great and who knows maybe this time it will finally get the improvments it deserves and become what it should have been.
Garrik
I liked Horizons, i'd play it again =)
3 strikes your out as they say...
Just read the article. Well, I'm psyched, but reserved, with a "wait and see" attitude. They have made way too MANY promises over the years and flopped on most of them, even under different owners. That very last owner, doesn't even deserve to have their name written for fear that people might actually think it is a REAL company. OMFG, why did they even buy the game, then just bury it further into the ground. They should be lined up and shot.
Anyway, Hz was one of my favorite games of all time. I sincerely hope they can actually get a new graphics/comm engine in place (finally!!!!), and get the bugs out. I could care less about new content until they can at least pull that off. Any MMO that can barely handle more than 10 players in the same physical area is downright pathetic. That technology was mastered over 10 years ago.
Too bad my Adult dragon has most likely been erased.
I'll give em a go again, and see if they can really bring the game to the level that it always should have been.
well good for those few diehard Horizons players. As for me giving Horizons 5th try ..- No thanks. Been there, Done that...donated the Tshirt to goodwill.
I tried it before the first buyout and actually enjoyed it. With the right marketing/publishers it would have had more success. I'd be willing to give it another try now. I really liked the crafting and building system, and the skill sets weren't too shabby either.
That's interesting... if there is a playerbase to slavage then why not...It's a tough road ahead though
Many big titles are set to debut in 2008
It would be more interesting if they'd get an engine overhaul with something that looks more... "current generation"
...like what Jumpgate is doing
bugfixes, and a graphicsengine update, and a new trial and i would say they'd be ready to rez this game. It was awesome in many ways, but way to poor performance and too many game-breaking bugs ;/
I hope the game does well. I really enjoyed the time I played but was having too many difficulties to pay for playing and decided to wait. Been looking every couple of months to try and find information and glad to see this.
Horizons with David Bowman out of the picture could very well become successful game!
Couple buffs on the engine, bug fixes and tweaks on network code and i'd so be back!
Horizons is an underdog, and I always love an underdog. I know it may be too little, too late for many people, and we still haven't seen how it turns out, but I can't help but /cheer a little at this news.
There's got to be something special here for this to keep happening. I'll keep my eyes on it and hopefully this time the dream will be realized. Kudos for trying again, it could have gone the way of E&B and AC2, though I still wish someone would try rezzing E&B also.
I'll sub Horizons again if it looks to be an upturn, if only because someone has to love this game for them to keep trying.
If they can start getting new and old players back on this will hopefully start to do well. I think the population before this buyout was I think 50-100 players? not sure now though. I'm rooting for this new company, if it's already fixed up Blight the website and more in a relatively short amount of time compared to EI it might just live to see another day.
I however am just going to sit back and wait before I think about trying Horizons again.
Well it sounds more like they aim to travel light and keep to stuff they can fix than an engine overhaul. I think they're probably gonna fix the bugs and run as is, creating content for players for the "deltas"(updates)
I haven't been able to login in at all.. Keep getting errors about communicating with the server.. I can get to the screen that says it is loading character models and such sometimes. Other times just black screen :/
Any suggestions?
I would definitely play Horizons again but only if they add a new server or wipe the current one. The best thing about Horizons is the crafting and construction , so playing on a world where everything has been rebuilt is pointless. Someone shoot me an email if this happens.
I didn't experience many bugs originally and the graphics were fine. Keep in mind that the most successful games are the ones that can play on older machines and don't lag when you have many players in proximity. Developers need to focus on quality gameplay with decent graphics and stop pushing the graphics limits.
Horizons suffered mostly from a lack of players. The game did have a lot of empty landscape that could have been better utilized, especially for player plots which were in short supply even though the game advertised that everyone would have access to a personal plot, which wasn't true. I don't want to see a cluttered landscape with mobs every 5 feet like many current MMOGs out today. The vastness of Horizons with large tracts of land that you could traverse without being jumped constantly was nice, but it was a bit too empty in certain areas.
What Horzions needs is a polish with a heavy advertising blitz launching anew.
Disable any antivirus software you have running. If that doesn't help, disable your soundcard via Device Manager.
What this game needs is fresh blood, not the previous dev team trying to fix it as it is quite obvious from the product they produced they do not have the skills to succeed.
As to the above comment, only the braindead would disable antivirus software in this day and age, you should learn to give better advice.
Ok..get rid of anything that says "norton" "mcafee" or "AOL" and you should be fine.
Is that better?
D.
p.s. I say this because when I was doing computer repair, the first step I almost always had to make was to remove any of those programs that were on the computers. They are more virus themselves these days than anti-virus. YOu can get free programs that run better and catch more stuff.
While the antivirus thing doesn't bother me(I tried disabling firewall anyway), disabling soundcard is not worth it.. I suppose I will not check out Horizons again :/
Horizons is like a zombie. No matter how much you smash it in the head with a crowbar, set fire to it with barrels, fire shotgun shells at it and blow it up with a RPG. It still gets back up and shuffles on...
Yeah.. I am just frustrated that I can't get the client to run properly. The last hurdle seems to be getting stuck at "Receiving Character Essence"... It still shows the "..." 's for 30 seconds or so.. then they freeze.. Then after a minute or so, I can see the character screen faintly in the background(the loading screen still frozen in foreground).
If it gets that far, I have to hard reboot. If I get hung up earlier, I can sometimes end the process :/
After sifting through forums, it appears to be an issue with Audigy cards. The soundcard has to be disabled before playing. I really hope they get that fixed soon so I can come back and check it out.
Yeah. I'm sick and tired of these freaking Creative soundcards. Next time I'm getting some other brand. If it was just Horizons that had these problems I'd go "yeah, whatever" cause Horizons is pretty buggy. But every second program I install has an issue with these stupid creative products!
So no more Creative for me. I just can't take them anymore.
Well, after reading just about everything there is to read on this development I've decided to go ahead and pony up for the game. Once they get their billing back online (the current thought is the 27th or the 29th if I remember right) I'll happily support these new folks. They've already pushed two client updates to the Blight server for community testing, updated the base code for the forums, are working on the billing system, and best of all have demonstrated that they will both talk to, and listen to, the user base in the forums... Just for that last part I'd give them $20 - because to go infront of that crowd as the 4th owner of the game and make any sort of promisses, they have to either know what they're doing of have brass cajones the size if basket balls...
in fact they have already talked about a price increase.
They either know what they are doing or are trying to get a bunch of suckers to slap down prepaid monies while they run away.
I might give this company Vitrium a little time to prove themselves. what they pushed out to blight was nothing substantial. They have a bit more work to do before horizons as rebirthed anything but another sloppy mess.
I actually pre-ordered this game because my GF thought it would be interesting.
Remember they had this video (that looked like crap to be honest) about players building a town and having to defend it.
Oh the above isn't meant to be mean.. the video.. um I didn't want to buy it.
Anyway none of that of course was in the game but..
We did find it fun. Thing was as most people know there wasn't a whole lot actually in the game. Somehow we were having some fun.. joined a guild etc..
She moved quickly over to playing an elemental archer and was gaining levels like crazy. I think I was messing around with hell I don't even remember what but I wasn't leveling to fast.. just trying stuff out.
then they nerfed the crap out of her toon and we left. If there had been more to the game at the time we might have stayed. Well actually when fun is sacrificed for balance I personally about always cancel.. I'm in a game to be entertained... not keep remaking my character due to forum crying. I don't care if somebody else can harvest maggots off things they kill faster than me (oh if you weren't there .. some mobs dropped maggots as loot). Oh wait that rant is for another time..
she never has tried it again.. I logged in during some trial.. but if I saw what looked like improvements I'd resub... because there is just nothing out right now that really holds my interest.