Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Reviving Horizons

For anyone who has followed this game as I have, you know that it has changed ownership several times now. While Horizons never had large player base, it did have some committed players and a very decent established community. But one of the more recent owners even managed to botch that up. Double billings, removal of the European and test servers, and doing absolutely nothing with the game as far as development, are just a few of their blunders.

Rumor had it that they defaulted on their payments to Tulga. Tulga briefly resumed ownership before it was more recently purchased by Virtrium. Virtrium is comprised of several former, well-respected Tulga employees, which has both existing and previous players very hopeful.

Looks like they've been quite busy implementing a lot of updates, including bringing back the test server. They are also working on bringing back the European server and the characters that resided there. They've also increased the monthly subscription. Not sure this was the right time to do this. However, they are also offering a lower price model, but with fewer bells and whistles such as owning a plot. So this may be a good way for someone to continue with the game if there still was some interest beyond the trial period.

I had played Horizons for about two months over two years ago. I saw it as a game that had so much going for it but just didn't quite get there. The crafting was great and where else can you play a dragon, and pretty neat looking dragons at that. You could pick up several classes all on one character. But the leveling left much to be desired. I remember hitting about level 8 and not being able to find mobs within my range to kill. And then there were the performance issues. My husband had a better system than I and could not play the game. He would crash every few minutes. So I was playing by myself and that was the main reason I didn't continue with it.

Even with all the new games on the horizon (pun intended), I will still be keeping my eye out on their progress. If they can get the performance stabilized and some content added, I will most definitely be giving it another go in the future.

1 comment:

Pai said...

I too played HZ for a few months, right before it got sold to AI Interactive. So I got to see all the drama that debacle inspired. I love the dragons, crafting, and world design of that game, as well as the music. But the grinds were awful, and the client performance really flaky.

I have fond memories of playing it, though I don't think I will go back anytime soon. It has unique charm.