f13.net forums - Horizons: For the love of God, man, give us money!

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June 24, 2025, 03:31:44 PM

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Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 04:34:10 AM EST
From: "David Bowman" <david.bowman@artifact-entertainment.com>
Subject: Try Horizons Again Allow Subject

“Horizons just isn’t for me.”

“This game has too many bugs.”

“There must be something more to do than kill wolves.”

Friends in Horizons:

I know that you have made a choice to discontinue playing Horizons: Empire of Istaria. The choice you made was a personal one; and you made it for one or more reasons. In some way Horizons did not hold your interest, you became dissatisfied, and decided it was not worth your valuable time or money to remain part of the Istarian community.

I’m writing today to invite you back.

I’m inviting you back because I have confidence. Confidence in the game and confidence that whatever attracted you to Horizons in the first place is now better, more robust or more interesting.

Unsubscribed players offered me many reasons why they chose not to continue playing. I can tell you with complete confidence that a vast majority of these reason and issues have been fixed. Horizons offers an extraordinary amount of new content that satisfies both crafters and adventures, in groups, guilds, and as soloists.

Here are just a few examples of what Horizons now offers subscribers:

· A new combat system provides better feedback to group members and takes much better advantage of your client hardware to help eliminate combat latency;

· New buildable structures that range from Tier 1 to Tier 5 and provide storage and added functionality to the owner;

· Guild Communities provide vast areas for your Guild to develop and settle.

· New monsters and creatures ranging from level 1 to level 120 that challenge and reward the brave;

· The Realms of Chaos and Order provide populated worlds to meet new friends, sell your wares and share the Istarian Experience;

· New regions of Istaria continue to be discovered and require your exploration;

· Crafting schools now have access to Tier V and Tier VI materials, and a richly expanded range of techniques and formulae;

· Our developers continue to optimize all aspects of the technical game. We have addressed many of the reasons crashes to desktop were commonplace.

· A new series of quests provided by the Trophy Hunters provides coin and experience to the courageous.

· The Istarian world now has a logical progression for both adventures and crafters from Tier I to Tier VI as a player moves from west to east.

· In-game events continue to move the Istarian story forward: Both the Dryad and Satyr races were freed through direct player involvement – and are now playable races; the Dragon Rite of Passage allows the magical transition from Hatchling to Adult Dragon enabling the only “flyable” character among MMOG’s. The Elven city of Feledan was freed – again through player involvement – resulting in a new, beautiful racial city.

· There are now over 2,500 plots of ownable property located throughout Istaria ready to be owned and developed.

· We continue our commitment to a cooperative Istaria with new content, new adversaries and new resources.

· The visual and musical world of Istaria continues to impress even the most jaded of gamers.

· You need not remain in the game for hours at a time accomplish and be rewarded – unless you want to.

· Our crafting system is well known to be one of the most intricate and vigorous of any MMORPG available.

Here is my proposal to you:

1. Resubscribe to Horizons: Empire of Istaria;
2. Activate any of your characters or create a new one;
3. Connect with your friends & catch up on the latest news and events;
4. Explore the new Istarian landscape;
5. Experience the vast amount of changes and additions for yourself;
6. Enjoy the game.

I can’t guarantee that you will be satisfied – everyone has different expectations for what creates an enjoyable game experience. I can guarantee that you will find a new, greatly improved, on-line world that provides subscribers with an immersive and detailed experience worthy of your commitment of time and resources.

The staff and developers of Horizons have listened to subscribers – both what they enjoyed and what was challenging about the game – and have worked diligently to meld our values and advance Horizons within its original framework while acknowledging to and overcoming the challenges inherent with a game of this scale.

I know we have accomplished our goals and have set some very ambitious targets for the future:

· Raising all crafting and adventuring school levels to120:

· The addition of Dragon Lairs and other racial structures;

· Promoting the Ancient Rite of Passage for Dragons;

· Providing Blighted Equipment – with its own special features – as loot:

· Adding many new formulae, techniques and crystals.

Now all we need is you.

Please, consider Horizons: Empire of Istaria again.

Sincerely,

David Bowman

Artifact Entertainment

P.S. We have retained all your characters’ inventory, skills and schools. The resubscription process will grant you full access to the game. If you have not been to Istaria since our shard consolidation you will now find yours character(s) in the realm of Chaos or Order: Order for role playing characters and Chaos for non-role playing characters. If, for some reason, you need a CD Key to activate your account, click here. Also, be sure to take a look at our new community site.

Thank you, I hope to see you in Istaria.

Well, other than the blatant begging for money, there is at least one complete lie in there. It says Adult Dragons are the only flyable character in MMOG's. Except, they aren't, since Aracroix in Shadowbane can fly from day one. Yes, you had to play for what 2-3 months to unlock it, but big whoop. Now I think they have it open to everyone.

Horizons can and does suck a big one.

It's really more entertaining if you read it in the style of Dr. Terminus from Pete's Dragon. (Cue Image from J. <here>)

Quote from: HaemishM

CoH?

Forgot about CoH, but then again, Shadowbane did it first. :)

Shadowbane.

Nope. Saying it 3 times doesn't make it go away.

Some things can't be erased with anything less than orbital artillery.

Dear Gamers:

Shit. Its almost November, isn't it?

-David Bowman

PS: Shit.

"I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

Dear Mr. Bowman,

I will buy your game and play it if you can guarantee me that I can play a dragon and enjoy it.

'Cause last time I tried, "enjoy" is not really the word I would use.

Sincerely,
Ardent (wyrm in waiting)

Has anyone here tried the dragon advancement in Horizons lately? I'm curious, has it improved?

Quote from: Tairnyn

"I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

"Words of wisdom, Lloyd. Words of wisdom."

On top of all this, there still seems to be a lot of billing fuckups going on over the game. Reportedly, a lot of people who give out their CC info for the 7-day FREE trial, and promptly cancel, are still being billed for a full month once the 7 days expire. Presumably, people who read the above email and actually re-sub would have the same trouble getting Artifact to stop billing them.

One poster I read suggested that people interested in playing Horizons setup a special debit card account which receives a monthly direct deposit from another account, and that the amount of the deposit matches exactly the monthly fee. That way, when you want to quit the game you stop the direct deposit, the debit account goes to zero and you cancel by virtue of empty pockets.

The mind reels.

I played in Beta for like maybe a month before I got fed up with the crap... and I just got the same bloody email. I never purchased the retail.

Quote from: Mesozoic

They will keep billing you and overdraw your checking account. Then your bank will charge you $30 a day on your other accounts until you are broke. Then you get collection agencies on your ass and your credit goes to shit, and you can't buy a house or car or get any more credit cards ever again.

All because of Horizons. Worth it? I think not. I'll pass on the 7 days.

Quote from: Fargull

I played in Beta for like maybe a month before I got fed up with the crap... and I just got the same bloody email. I never purchased the retail.

I got accepted into beta but never actually even downloaded the software and I even got this email...

Quote from: UD_Delt

I got accepted into beta but never actually even downloaded the software and I even got this email...

Downloading the software was almost as much fun as the game. Goat farming in WISH was better than Horizons...

Heh. And here I was contemplating trying Horizons, now that I have enough time that I can get back into an online game. But if they're already coming out with the "please, please come back" emails, I think I'll give it a miss.

To think I was *this* close to re-entering the MMOG timesink hell.

Quote from: MrHat

Well, it is financial advice from vnboards. I was only mentioning the lengths that people were going to.

Quote from: Paine

Heh. And here I was contemplating trying Horizons, now that I have enough time that I can get back into an online game.

If you have the itch, City Of Heroes is probably the best offering currently and to be honest might be the best for some time.

I vaguely remember playing the beta.

It ran like shit on my system at the time (933Mhz P3 + 512MB of RAM + GeForce4 Ti4200) at any setting, the combat sucked, and the crafting was fun...until they changed monster distribution so I had to fight maggots for 5000 hours to get a formula.

Quote from: MrHat

I've never had problems cancelling from ibill subscriptions. What sucks is that in order to cancel you need to visit the ibill site, not the Horizons or Artifact sites. They aren't very clear about this, instead saying you need to call a number. This number plays some recorded message stating you need to visit ibill.com.

It seems GN is considering consolidating the Horizons European shards from three down to one because of low concurrent user counts on the servers.

It sorta looks like the free trial didn't work very well in Europe either.

Quote from: HaemishM

I think the Metaphysicist can fly in Anarchy Online with their Quantum Wings "program" and perhaps the Adventurers can too in Reet Form. Not sure if that counts as they don't fly naturally. My Fixer could fly around level 20 when I purchased a Yalm for that matter.

just slightly off topic, but what exactly is so hard about coding flight into a game?

I mean, in all honesty, all flight really is, at the base level, is jumping without coming back down. If you game gives your character the ability to jump, it shouldnt be THAT much more dificult to grant the character the ability to fly.

Flying is different from jumping. In zones designed without flight in mind you could circumvent parts of the zone and thereby shortcut content. Especially outdoor dungeons. There is also the problem with the z-axis, because in some engines its existence is basically ignored (Jumping is no problem there, because the short distance you can jump can be ignored by the engine, for example aggro management should be different if you jump over an orc or if you fly high up in the sky over him).

Quote from: Jamiko

perhaps the Adventurers can too in Reet Form.

No, the Reet form is just fast "walking". But IIRC their dragon form (high level) allows flying, though perhaps not at Yalmaha speeds.

Reet-form was nap-of-the-earth flying. The actual free-from fly of the adventurer was parrot. The dragon thing could fly originally, then it couldn't, then people whined, then I quit sometime around here and never did see what may or may not have been done with the dragon/pit lizard form.

Everyone not advent or MP pretty much had a Yalm to get around. The sad thing was the grossly expensive aircraft was pretty much necessary to reach missions past level 40. Very strange game design.