The Formula for THAT Game and Improving on It

There's that certain game everyone talks about in some form or fashion and too often every other game is referred to as a clone. Honestly, I have yet see a clone so don't know what people are talking about sometimes. If questing and killing mobs makes it a clone, well okay I guess they're all clones.

So what exactly do they have that the others don't? Obviously, it's not one thing but the combination together that works:

1. Low-end graphics - This is huge yet few take it seriously. An extremely large population buy their systems already put together and keep them for years without upgrading individual components. Even three years after release, people still complain about their computers not being able to handle one of those other games. Yes there are serious gamers who upgrade frequently so there is a niche for them. But if you're seeking to hit the million mark, this is the first priority.

Low-end does not mean ugly. There are certain MMO's that look quite beautiful and can run on older systems.

2. Non-forced PVP integrated with PVE - Only one other game comes to mind that had something similar, the difference being you had to travel to certain zones to engage. In this one, however, you might see the enemy player attacking the guards in town. You can go your merry PVE way or choose to attack them. I've seen many players who never wanted to PVP change their minds when they see their town attacked and the excitement of other players around them running around in the fray. But it's not forced on you. The choice is yours.

Past PVP MMO's have not been overly successful. I have no intention of ever participating in PVP, but obviously its existence in this particular MMO has worked to its advantage because it was accommodating to both types of players and even some in between.

3. Variety of Terrain/NPC's - Most MMO's have their rolling hills, snowy areas, and deserts. But the selection in this one was more than I'd ever seen anywhere - deliciously spooky zones, prehistoric dinosaur jungle, and autumn-colored forests, just to name a few. And mobs are extremely varied and appropriate to their setting. Odds are when you see a skeleton, it is not standing in some pretty field, but somewhere dark and ominous. Also, you don't just kill higher level versions of the same mobs over and over.

4. Sense of Humor - I have laughed from quests and npc's in this MMO more than I ever had. Seriousness has its place too, but mixing in the fun stuff is important. I seriously wondered if they hired some joke writers for some of this stuff.

5. Ease of Play - Leveling was for the most part stress-free and enjoyable. You didn't have to look up quests to figure them out. You didn't even have to figure out what zones to level in as you would eventually be led there. And of course you could solo most everything. Many consider this hand-holding but for folks who are stressed all day, this offers a sweet release.

I've played a large assortment of MMO's and haven't seen most of the above in any of them. So there are no clones as of yet.

So why am I not playing it? Because it's missing some things. I'm not the typical player I guess. I'm part of that "mom factor" group. To get me to play, I'd like to see:

1. Housing - Has to be available to everyone, with even new players able to afford something small. And if we can decorate our yards too as one MMO was able to accomplish, even better.

2. Crafting - I'm not huge on crafting but it's something extra to do when I don't feel like adventuring. So if I'm going to be doing it, I want it to be somewhat interactive and useful such as the current game I'm playing or the one I revisited a few posts down.

3. Better Communities - In smaller MMO's it's not as big a problem but when you start reaching the proportions of this game, I just refuse to deal with it and leave. It's not a simple matter of turning off chat channels. I like helping people and want to be able to hear if someone has a question. I want to be part of a community, not exclude myself from it.

The only way around this that I can see is offering Roleplay-Enforced Servers. By this I don't mean forcing people to roleplay. What I mean is keeping chat clean and restricted to game related chat in general channels.

My tolerance for dealing with rude players grows smaller as I get older. I don't want myself or my family exposed to it. This is a big determining factor in my sticking with a game. Everyone has their bad days and sometimes things slip. What I'm talking about here is those that get their jollies belittling people on a continued basis. Rather than silence them, most of the mature community turns off chat, while others view the offender as cool and join in.

The community in the game under discussion is horrendous and the absolute worst experience I have gone through. Restricted servers is the only way I can see around this and I would bet they'd become pretty popular. And I'm not talking implied restrictions. This needs to be enforced.

4. Casual End Game Content - Raiding has its purpose for other players but not me. Give me something to do, something to work towards. I want nice items too, and if I have to do some solo quests building faction or accumulating some special gems that allow me to purchase one nice armor upgrade after two months of play, then I will have something to work towards for a couple years. At the least, add instanced dungeons that can be done with two people with a chance of something nice to drop somewhere in there.

Forcing full groups on me to get things accomplished is the equivalent of raiding. I don't have lengthy sessions available to me for waiting around to fill up that perfect group. I want to log in and play. If I'm able to do this for 59 levels, I expect to be able to do it at 60.

These are just minimal things I expect in an MMO to keep me playing. Of course there are other things that I'd love to have as well such as being able to set up a shop in your home, attractive armor, having an entertainer class, etc. But that would just be icing on the cake. Currently, I'm still waiting for my cake.

Horizons - A 2nd and Final Look

I had tried Horizons about three years ago. I enjoyed it somewhat at the time, but performance issues kept me from playing beyond the trial. I had seen so much potential in this one and periodically kept up with the game's progress. Various owners have come and gone and seeing that it currently seemed to be in capable hands, I thought it was time to have another look.

Much like other fantasy MMO's your race choice includes elves, dwarves, gnomes, and humans. In addition to these there are dryads (which in my opinion look better than the EQ2 fae), Sslik (lizard), Saris (cat), half giant, satyr, fiends (horned, blue and sexy!), and of course what sets it apart from all mmo's - dragons. Keeping in mind these are older graphics, even by today's standards I think the avatars are very decent looking. And of course the dragons look phenomenal and get larger as they level.

I wanted to experience as much as I could in a short period of time, so ruled out dragon as a starting race. The dragon is not just a race but a class in itself and requires more time than the others. I thought I'd be a sturdy warrior. Race does matter as far as stats go and as usual, the high strength races were not appealing visually. So I settled with a human. Not as exotic as the others, but the strength was reasonable enough to get me through.

The tutorial has been simplified since last I played. Here you will be offered some basic classes, but by no means all of them. The mainland offers more class choices. But you will have to do some exploring to find them all. Basic crafting trades will be offered in the tutorial. After completing several quests, you will be about level 5 and sent to New Trismus.

Here you will find your class trainers, a pawn broker to sell junk loot to, and a consignment merchant where other players sell their wares (affectionately referred to by other players as "Connie"). Surprisingly, I was able to find some very affordable player-made armor and a weapon.



When you first arrive and see a sign like the above, you might be misled into believing this is some hand-held, easy mode game. That is definitely not the case. The tutorial only covers some very basic information and most of the rest you will have to discover for yourself. Quests are vague telling you to go "over yonder" and you often have to explore off the trail to find what you need.

A few things that stood out to me -

THE GOOD STUFF

1. Music - I'm a sucker for good music in an mmo. I know many people turn it off and play their own tunes, but when the music is good it sets a gaming mood. Horizons has some of the best music I've heard anywhere.

2. Multi-classing - Aside from dragons, what also sets this game apart from others is being able to be as many classes as you wish on one character. There are restrictions and reasons for not taking up too many classes. But this is a bit too complicated to go into detail here.

3. Crafting - The crafting process was for the most part enjoyable. I had even sold several pieces of armor that I crafted.

4. Variety of Races and Classes - Lots of choices here.

5. Easy Travel - There are portals to most of the cities and if you stick to the road, you get a bonus to your run speed. Also, your recall button is always available to port to wherever you choose to bind.

6. Roleplay - Horizons is the only game I've played that had an enforced Roleplay server. Names are required to fit within their fantasy world and real life may not be discussed in public channels.

7. Community - Although I can only speak from my experience on the Chaos server, everyone was polite and there were no Chuck Norris topics to endure.

THE NOT SO GOOD STUFF

1. Not enough adventure content - There are levels where everything is either too high or too low, so you must grind through low level mobs to level.

2. The Grind - There are only so many quests so you must endure long sessions of random slaughter. I actually wouldn't mind this at all if mobs had a chance of dropping armor I might use. But everything is crafted so there is nothing to look forward to other than another level.

3. Crafting Recipes - Recipes are not granted automatically and must be purchased using tokens. Tokens are acquired by doing quests for the crafting trainer. One single recipe cost 13 tokens and I was only receiving one token for each quest. Gaining recipes was a long, tedious process.

4. Dragon Lairs - About 8 out of every 10 players you encounter are dragons and currently all lairs are spoken for. Some of these are expired accounts and supposedly they will be reclaiming some lairs in the near future. Housing is important to players and if you wish to retain them, make sure there is enough for everyone.

5. Keyboard Controls - I like to use my right mouse button for looking around as I'm running around. When I set it to do this, it interferes with being able to right click recipes to scribe them or to examine items. I should be able to do both as I do in other mmo's, without having to reassign one of the keys.

In it's current state, I think it's still a great game if you like the idea of playing a dragon AND love crafting. But if you prefer to just adventure, you will hit some walls of frustration and fairly early on. I played through the 14-day trial and subscribed for a month beyond that. But I can't bring myself to log in anymore. The thought of having to kill more maggots, pigs, and spiders several levels below me because I can't handle anything higher is just too much to endure.

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.

Rooting for the Little Guy

When I look at the anticipated MMOs coming up this year, while I will likely try a few of them out, to be honest I'm not overly excited about any of them. Or maybe my two-year anticipation of Vanguard has left me a bit jaded and wary. I had been hunting down some smaller names that rarely get mention to see what the little guys are up to. As often happens, many of these projects have been shut down and likely a good percentage of those remaining will also face a similar demise. But I would love to see one of these make it through and succeed. Here's one in particular I've been looking at:

Alganon - This one has been on my radar already for awhile. The gaming company behind this one was founded in 2006 by David Allen, the original designer of Horizons. While ultimately Horizons had many failings, I really liked some of the concepts behind it and think it could have been a great game with a few tweaks. Their four main areas of focus are community, immersion, interaction, and reward. This leads me to believe they are putting effort into the social aspects of the game, which is right up my alley. Solo and group play will be supported.

There are two organizations in this world, the Asheroth and Kujix, or basically your good and evil. Each organization has four races and five classes, with the healer class being the only that is the same among the two sides. So there are nine classes total. There will be PvE and PvP servers, with player-consented PvP on the PvE servers.

When you start a character, you are born into a unique family made up of many other players of the same race who are your siblings. The moment you log in your new character, your siblings will be informed. Just as in real life, you cannot choose your family members nor leave it, and there will be a cap at the number of members in each family. Families can work together to elevate their standing. This is also separate from guilds. So essentially you can belong to two community units.

Some other non-standard features include no level cap and your appearance can change as you gain power. Pure tradeskillers can rejoice, as they can do so without ever entering a battle. And supposedly they are addressing tradeskill issues found in other games such as costs to build up skills, difficulty earning profit, and difficulty finding resources. Also, something interesting they are incorporating is a system they claim to be more friendly to casual gamers. There are skills that can only be gained over time, so that a casual gamer who has been playing a year for 10 hours a week will have access to skills no power gamer can achieve without a year of play.

On paper, I see a lot of nice concepts and really hope they can pull it off. The only negative from my domestic viewpoint is lack of housing which they state doesn't fit in with their game. But if the gameplay is interesting enough, I likely wouldn't miss the housing all that much.

I wish these guys a lot of luck and success and look forward to playing this one.