f13.net

Egad...  Here is the direct copy... I did not even know the game was still alive...

"Famed Fantasy Author Joins the Quest in MMORPG Horizons: Empire of Istaria

Peter S. Beagle to Develop Quests and Backstory for Fantasy Game

November 11, 2005 -- Today is a landmark day in the land of Istaria, as Peter S. Beagle, famed author of the classic fantasy novel "The Last Unicorn," has signed on to provide story support for the MMORPG - Horizons: Empire of Istaria. Throughout the coming months, Beagle will be writing quests for Horizons, along with enriching the overall backstory of the game and taking part in various in-game events.

Peter S. Beagle is best known for his work in fantasy, which includes the novels "A Fine and Private Place" and "The Last Unicorn," along with being credited as the screenwriter for the 1978 animated version of "The Lord of the Rings." His most popular work, "The Last Unicorn," has been in print since 1968, and is considered a fantasy classic among fans of the genre. Not limiting himself to fantasy, Peter S. Beagle is also the writer of "Sarek," one of the more popular episodes from the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" television series.

Developed by Tulga Games, the MMORPG Horizons: Empire of Istaria enables players to create characters from any of 11 fantasy races including Dragons, Satyrs, Dryads, Humans and Elves while developing skills from 50 schools. Horizons' world is near-limitless in scope; as dragons soar above and below one another in the skies and players embark upon adventures spanning land, sea and air while working collectively to build a variety of surface and subterranean structures. The game's family-friendly nature allows for cooperative gameplay, and players with limited time can enjoy brief solo adventures without suffering any penalty. More information about Horizons: Empire of Istaria is available at http://www.istaria.com."

I know it tells me who Peter S. Beagle is, but fantasy books are just one of those places where - if I haven't heard of you, you aren't famous.

He wrote The Last Unicorn. Most people have simply seen the animated movie, but yes, there was a book upon which it was based.

Among other books he has written are The Innkeeper's Song and Giant Bones (a collection of 5 stories including Lal and Soukyan, of which my handle has its origin - I am revealed!). Anyhow, he's a good writer and does fantasy quite well.

You are correct, though, schild. Since he isn't very well-known or high profile people probably won't get very hyped about it.

If it doesn't exist on the Nintendo, it doesn't exist.

Within fantasy circles, Peter Beagle IS famous. But he's famous in a Robert Holdstock or Jack Vance kind of way, not in a Robert Jordan kind of way.

I highly recommend "Tamsin," one of his more recent books.

I'll second that. I enjoyed it very much.

The Last Unicorn is to me that old movie my eldest played over and again, insisting I hold her everytime the drunk skeleton had his bit.  In a fit of pique she introduced her younger sister to it so here I am, back in 1992, listening to the same damn movie over again.  ;)

I dunno about the book but the movie is actually decent.  Well the first few hundred times.

Don't worry, Raph... I know who he is.  Of course, I'm old, too.   :-P  He did that old cartoony version of Lord of the Rings in the 70s. I saw it on TV.  It was cute.  The Last Unicorn was really famous and also cute. The only famous Eric Schild I found was a co-driver in the Doo Wop Pro Rally Series in Olympia, Washington.  He drives a Plymouth Neon and finished 11th in the championship.

People play Horizons?

No, not me... that was ages ago.  I might do a free trial, however, just to see what it's like to be a fairy.

See you on there, Signe. I'm doing a trial sometime in December here just for shits and giggles.

I always knew you were a fairy at heart.  Maybe we can flit together! 

I wonder if they ever got around to adding any mobs to fight in the vast empty world?

I wonder if they every let one create / cancel an account without going through a 3rd party porno-supplier charge company?

I wonder if they ever reduced the crippling lag in the only large city which made it almost impossible to even move?

Writing good quests was the least of the problems.

I'll find out, Sunbury.  I'm going to fiddle with it today.  The only reason I am is because I want to see what I'd look like as a fairy. (and I'm feeling bored and antsy)  But I'll check that other stuff out, too.  If there is still that horrible lag in what ever that city was called (Tazoon?), I'm sure I'll delete it pretty quick.  I think I read someplace a while back that now you just have to cancel by clicking cancel... but they've fibbed before so who knows? 

I poke into horizonsvault forums for sheer amusement factor once in a while, and it seems they've got a new billing company. Of course, that didn't stop iBill from beginning to send porn spam to me about a month ago, saying that I signed up with them to receive those emails.

I'd check this game back out just for a laugh, but I have no confidence that they still don't bill you for the free trial like was happening for so long. Especially after, at release time, cancelling after 1 week but still receiving 4 monthly charge fees on my CC regardless of the "30 day included" time. I just can't trust them with my CC info any longer.

Fairies (Dryads) are very naked in character creation, although they have no nipples, genetalia or buttcrack.  You can have purdy butterfly wings, though.  I hope they still have the big sign that says  MONSTERS → or I won't know where to go.

** I was just looking at their board:

 There are 31 of 4,379 registered user(s) online: Kitimandiri, Joaqim, David Bowman, Fridlekh, Drasdil Redin, vannessa, Firedragon, Razon, Quianna, Silveron, Guaran, Aryk Nainhammer, kylara, timanou, walkerglassmire, Rover, Eileen Mavourneen, evilkarl, Pharcellus, Runtus, Krakoa, Illi, Dotcher, Doombreak, Aucus, Deth, PJ, Solanaceae, Jayne, Frith-Rae, Dravatar

I think schild should give the trial a go and start posting in the forums.  I bet Mr. Bowman would be thrilled to hear from him again.   :evil:

My only memory of Horizons was taking my lizard-guy outside some town where there were these giant thornbushes, with shitloads of monsters right underneath them.

Of course, not having any LOS checks on anything I did what any cheater would do.

I loaded up keytext, i figured out how to get up on top of the thorn bushes, and then I made a macro that was 'target next/nearest monster', cast spell whatever 10 times, repeat'

It wasn't a pretty macro, but I fine tuned it over an hour or so and left it going while i slept. Woke up to a crashed client, but when I logged in I was 5 levels higher. Set everything back up and went to work.

A few hours later I was curious, so I VNC'd to my home machine to check it out and there were 3 or 4 chat windows of people telling me to stop stealing their shit. 4 levels higher.

Over a few days I got to like level 26 or so (?) off these level 10-ish monsters. I have some screenshots of GMs sending me messages asking me how I was doing it and to please stop stealing peoples kills. One guy even said he wanted to talk with me about how exactly I was setting up the macro, and what I thought I could do to stop it.

I tried to get in touch with that guy, but never could.

Moral of the story, line of sight checks. Also don't make it so you can hit the 1 button X times, hit tab, repeat and gain levels.

You think that would break my writers block?

It'd be like a psychological laxative.  Or maybe an enema.

Turning one's brain to goo is probably not good for writer's block.

Last email I got from Horizons was about a year ago, and they mentioned that they have flying dragons now and that they're the only MMOG that lets players fly.

Oh, except Shadowbane.

Oh, and City of Heroes.

But hey, you know... uh, DRAGONS.  WE FINALLY GOT THEM WORKING EVEN THOUGH THEY SHOULD'VE BEEN THERE AT RELEASE!

Yes.  Not sure how anyone can solo, though, since they made combat much harder just before the achievers jumped ship.  The only way I can see actually advancing solo is by pulling a Nija, but that just isn't fun to me.


Yes.  I can vouch for the new ease of canceling one's account.


Yes.  With only fifty people onlne at any one time (I am not exaggerating in the least), lag has gone the way of solo combat and social interaction.  Also, it is actually possible to obtain a plot for your house now.  And silos work.

And Planetside.

And WWIIOL.

And SWG (JtL).

And some I haven't played, like Eve (I'm guessing, since it's in space and whatnot)

Well, technically it's flying. But it's a lot more like walking in any direction.

Hello Mr. Jack Handy.

I think a cute movie idea would be about a parrot who is raised by eagles. It would be cute because the parrot can't seem to act like an eagle. After a while, though, to keep the movie from getting boring, maybe put in some pornography. Later, we see the happy parrot flying along, acting like an eagle. He sees two parrots below and starts to attack, but it's his parents. Then, some more pornography.

Maybe after the porn, the parrot would go to the doctor where it is found that he is suffering from cherpes.

Is credit card information needed for this free trial ?

If not, I might check it out.

And be it just to annoy be anyoed by Signe in real time.

HA!  You DO need a CC.  HA!  It's still so awful I probably wouldn't be there by the time you figured out a name for your fairy!  HA!

Oh.... jesus.... god.... A:LSFKS:KD"S:DK"A:dlr'ael"AELMY TEEF ARE TRYING TO EATMEWLEKT{WP$KJ^Q@$ ^QPKQ

I quit after 3 months, and about 3 weeks after becoming an adult (flying) dragon, and was level 80 something out of 100 at the time.   Vast majority of that time solo, but I was in a guild and helped on server building projects.

The other odd thing I recall was that there was no Mana.  Healing spells were recycle time based.  So a Healer + Tank could pretty much own anything as long as the damage rate of the mob did not exceed the healing recycle time.   Did they ever change that?

Did they ever add the 'pushing back the blight'  or 'expanding blight' like they talked about from pre-beta?  The blight areas were still static when I quit.

You have so many questions, Sunbury.  You have inspired me to uninstall the game!   :-P

Have they added... mobs?

I remember my friend and I, at about level 5 or so, went on a 3 hour tour to see what we could find. The answer was "nothing." 3 hours, and other than a blight area (that we frolicked freely in at our lowbie levels), we only stumbled on a single area of skeletons. We both had a good laugh over it and uninstalled right then and there. Never did figure out if it was that there were really no mobs in the world, or maybe we were running faster than the game could load them in. And this excursion was after an hour of prep time continually relogging until, while grouped together, we could both actually see each other's character, possibly our greatest accomplishment in that game.

Back when I played there were mobs.  Maybe they cancelled too?

I actually like that. Get rid of mana/power and you get rid of downtime. Recharge/recycle timers are better. Of course, it means designing encounters a bit differently.

Puns are bannable right?  :hello_kitty:

Yeah, just follow the signs out of town that says "Monsters" with an arrow underneath it.

God, I wish I was fucking kidding.

The downside is that it removes the player's ability to determine what spells to use when.  With mana, a player can (say) spam lesser nukes or use a smaller number of larger nukes or some combination thereof.  With recycling the player is generally confined to a set rotation of abilities, and it opens the way for developers to implement broadly similar spells/abilities differentiated only by being on different timers.  (See: City of Heroes)

With lesser nukes having a short timer and larger nukes having a longer timer, it's a similar way to approach combat, just without running out of mana, thus necessitating downtime.

So I logged in to check out Horizons and guess what I found?  It's every bit as dreadful as it was before.  All the bugs that were then in beta, are still there.  People don't appear until you're on top of them.  Once you kill an animal and you harvest it, it stands up and grunts each time you gather... rarely does it stay on the ground.  Sometimes dead animals continue to wander.  As you turn around, various bits of the geography disappear.  NPC names stick out of buildings. 

Combat hasn't improved at all.  I'm sure I read that they had improved it.  How?  Where?  Crafting is still okay but eventually it became tedious back when I was still playing so I expect, with no discernable improvement to combat, it will again.  On the plus side, there were mobs and the lag is somewhat better.  I have a pretty beefy graphics card now, however, and it still gets choppy in some areas.  Tazoon is still laggy, though it's managable now.

What the hell have they been doing all this time?  If they are putting their hopes on Peter S Beagle, they're as foolish as they are incompetent.  All he can do is write some nice stories.  Someone still has to fix the mechanics of this game and make a combat system that doesn't put you to sleep.  Anyway, I've already uninstalled the crappy thing.  Sorry, Soukyan, but I wouldn't even bother.  It's still that bad.  It'll make you shit, maybe... but there aren't any giggles. 

Sammy Specialpants in conjunction with the signs pointing to <- Resources ; Monsters -> got me to cancel pretty quick.

Then I had to call, with a phone, many different places till I finally found someone who would approve my cancellation.  They got a month out of me after all of the delays.  So I guess the strategy worked.

Now this has made me all nostalgic of the days spent snarking at how bad the game was in the beta irc chat.

I remember beta testing Horizons. I was actually excited to have gotten into a beta after a long stretch of missing out on all the cool ones.

I think I was able to make a roughly potato shaped human after the character creation hall stopped making the game crash. I ran around following signs that pointed to the various crafting resources after killing a bunch of badly animated maggots and skeletons who dropped stacks of random item plans. I remember finding mining satisfying because the entire mountain I was on was made of tin and copper I guess. Imagine WoW mineral veins clustered together in groups of 30 with nearly instant respawn timers. I made a bunch of random weapons and armor pieces, thought it was kind of cool I could gamble on failing item creation to make more, then sold them on their weird auction house which was admittedly also kind of cool.

I remember needing better tools so I could make better stuff, so I went and met Shavnir's cat thing and he gave me some better metalworking tools. Then two RPing lizard things sneered at me and made hurtful comments with really long "SSsssssssssssssssss" after every third word.

I think I logged in like twice after that.

Apparently grabbing CC info from optimistic people with short memories.

Like me, who was late canceling the last time I retried it (and laughed at the "run speed is effected by framerate" engine). That was $14.95 I could have spent on something fun, you fiends! Put the game out of its misery already!