Horizons: Yet another MMORPG going down

[DamnElfGirl]

http://pc.ign.com/articles/531/531616p1.html?ui=watch
http://www.istaria.com/

Looks like Artifact Entertainment is in the process of biting the big one and/or being bought out by some other (sucker) company. This comes as no surprise to those of us who were involved in Horizons' abysmal beta test. Many testers like myself came out of the beta experience vowing never to give AE a dime.

AE went beyond merely promising things they couldn't deliver. They promised that things they couldn't deliver actually existed, but on the top-secret developer-only server. We called bullshit, and were proven correct when the game launched as a skeleton of its promised self. Half a year after launch, I notice that they still don't have many promised-by-launch features and were trying to completely redesign their adventure schools. Hell, they didn't even have icons for everything. That's just sad.

It amazes me that "tens of thousands" of people are still playing, though I suspect that "tens of thousands" means about 20,000.

When will they learn that you can't make a successful MMORPG with nothing but a hype-happy CEO, a skeleton staff, and the pink painted butterfly wings of a dream?

 

[Whipporowill]

Good riddance. I played that piece of crap for a month - it doesn't deserve to continue to exist.

 

[Anonymous]

I predicted this pretty easily, the game was trash and totally unoriginal. It would sink into the Pit of Redundant MMORPGs, and it has.

 

[DamnElfGirl]

It would have been pretty neat if they'd been able to pull off the monster AI, dynamic world, and developing storyline they promised. Unfortunately, they didn't even have the skills to make their basic combat interesting.

 

[crufty]

The problem with MMORPG's is that they are developed with the same mindset of newbie game programmers..."I wanna make Final Fantasy. But like Zelda. With weather. And jobs. And NPC schedules. And spaceships. And first person. With randomized quests so each game is different." Burdened by all that scope, they never get further then displaying ripped SNES sprites on the screen.

Ok, so the analogy isn't perfect. But if you haven't developed a single player version of a game with the features you want--odd's are a multiplayer version isn't going to work out so well either.

 

[undead dolphin hacker]

I played this at launch with a group of friends, and for the first week or so, it was pretty fun--but only because I was with 20 other guys and gals that were gaming with me too. We all gave up on the game two or three weeks later (it was around Christmas, we all had time off, there were always at least 10 folks on at nearly any hour of the day).

Amazing how a solid group of people can make half-aborted anal adventures like Horizons seem like a pretty cool experience...

 

[xemous]

>wah

 

[DamnElfGirl]

Re: dumbarses at ae

to play the game you had to go through ie first, unbelivable,

Oh, right, I'd completely forgotten about that. Yet another reason I refused to buy the game after being in the Beta.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Die Horizons, die!