I took the plunge on another 3D, computer based time waster yesterday; Horizons.
So far it’s a lot better than Shadowbane simply because it has a lot more depth. Shadowbane excels with the combat aspects of a MMORPG, but they seriously overlooked everything else “RPG”… Some folks have taken to calling Shadowbane “ShadowQuake” for this reason. The game has a lot of promise, but it appeals too much to the twitch gamers out there who could care less about back story, detailed race histories, or political strife… They just want to run around and kill people.
Enter Horizons, a true RPG world accessible by thousands of folks simultaneously. Really, you can advance your character just by making things and selling them… No combat needed. Though it helps to be familiar with which end is the sharp one on a sword as the world is being over run by an undead army and they don’t care if you are the best mason anyone has ever seen.
Oh, and dragons are a playable race. (yes!)
Fortunately they did dragon’s justice by making them;
A) Hard to play well as pretty alien to anything people have played before, as I would expect from a sentient, winged, weapon breathing lizard.
B) They start off pretty weak as hatchings and take a long time to “grow” into the 60 foot long monsters they are capable of becoming… This keeps the average dragon “wannabe” from playing one for very long before moving on to a Dwarf or something.
C) They are physically a bad choice for “combat gamers” as they cannot wear armor other than their scales (which mature as they do into tank-like plating later), and use no weapons other than tooth and claw (which improve with age as well)… So for the first 60 or so days of play, you’ve gotta learn your enemy real well before engaging them in combat.
So if you don’t have the patience to tough it out being one of the weakest races in game for a good long time, dragons aren’t for you.
The game is new and no one has managed to get a dragon past “adolescent” yet so no one really knows what we’re capable of. There are theories that it will take an accumulated 60 days of playing to reach “adult” and it’s unknown how long it will take to reach “ancient”.
So far, after one evening of play I’ve achieved 8th level in “Adventurer” and “Crafter” which are the two basic schools one can learn before 10th level. After 10th, there are something like 20 different schools one can train in, though Dragon kind are bit limited in this respect (we don’t use tools as bipeds understand them, so their classes mean little to us)… I think I’ll either become a lair crafter or a scholar of the healing arts, not sure yet.
No one is exactly sure yet on how far one can advance either… In beta some players managed to get beyond 100 levels in a class. Of course this took months of single minded dedication to said class. But for all practical purposes the game is limitless.
Mechanics aside, the game is also quite beautiful to look at… For example, one of the dragon cities, Dralk, is set in the cone of an active volcano and consists of massive floating rock spires held down with immense chains with links three times my height. The lava flows and glows, the paths around the city steam and fissure, and the crystals that hold the spires aloft glow faintly and are translucent… Even the occasional small rock falls from overhead and can be heard splashing into the lava pool below. Pretty amazing really… And it’s probably a lot better than this as my video card is on the far edge of “suck” these days.
All in all, I’m pretty impressed. I’ll report more as the days progress and I manage to squeeze a little more free time out of my day to play.