Some of you may recall from years ago an MMO I was into called “Horizons”…
Horizons was a benchmark in the MMO genera for several reasons, most of which are still valid even four years later: The crafting system is astounding and offers a level of personalization not found in any other MMO, the skill system is school based and multi-class friendly, the community is very mature and role-play friendly, and best of all – they have playable dragons!
Unfortunately Horizons was victimized by internal politics and never really reached its full potential, and was eventually sold off to another company, and then another, and another… But the community of Horizons hung in there because they could see the potential of the game – if only someone would take the reigns and guide it there.
So here we are, four years after launch and yet another company has acquired Horizons – but this time something magical is happening… This new company is made up of many of the original developers, community managers, artists – the dreamers who made it what it was – but none of the back-stabbing corporate money whores are attached this time.
Virtrium, the new owners, have in the last week pushed a new client build to the “Blight” external test server, updated the forum software, got a new trouble ticket system running, are working on the billing system that’s been a shambles for years, and even better – are talking to, and listening to, the community.
In the last few days so many of the old time players have returned that it almost seems like the clock has been set back 2-3 years and things are actually back on track.
For a while, at least, I will be spending all of my miniscule amounts of free time in Horizons lending my testing expertise to them to try and fix a few things like database lag, server lag under load, and Vista compatibility.
One of the most fascinating things about Horizons is how the characters change over time. Kaeliss here will eventually have to do the first of his trials of adulthood – only then will he be able to fly – and then he’ll begin working on his rights of passage to an Ancient Dragon… This is months down the road though as Kaeliss needs to amass his hoard first – not an easy task as all of his magic and special abilities are tied to his hoard and using those abilities consumes it… So, for the immediate future Horizons is free to play and it sounds like it’ll cost $10 a month for a basic subscription – so if you want to look me up, I’ll be on the ‘order’ (roleplay) server working diligently to earn my wings. 🙂