Ulujain.org v6.0

Obsoletion alert: Very outdated material. Game was recently renamed to "Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted".

The good: Music is good for the most part, especially battle music. Spell sound effects are very good. Sky is well done, the rotating corona about the sun is a nice touch. UI is comprehensive and very configurable. No zones. Spell effects themselves are fairly well done. Combat animations for bipedal characters is pretty good IMHO. There's something placid about gathering and crafting stuff despite what I may write about it further down. Fairly decent community.

The bad: Character modelling and animations (non-combat) are awful for non-dragons. Some serious work should've been done on the armor texturing. It looks plain amateurish. Compare the detail of say, Morrowind's Daedric or Glass armor to what you find in Horizons. They aren't on the same page. No swimming.

The game is obviously inspired by and based on a couple of predecessors, namely AC2 and EQ. Almost copies AC2's death system to a tee. The recall and binding system is straight out of AC2. Has an EQ style levelling treadmill regardless of whether you craft or you adventure. No dungeons. Racial choices mean nearly nothing when it comes to class choice. A half-giant mage is pretty much identical to a saris one. Most of the differences are cosmetic. Throughout beta, we were told that we aren't seeing all the content. Therefore, a lot of us felt we were weren't testing the game at all, but some bogus incarnation of a game that'll never exist in a live form.

One must ask: what was the point? Very vague distinctions between a lot of the adventurer schools, and some of them are not clearly defined. No item degradation; IMHO there'll be no reason to craft basic tools and weapons 3 months into the game as everyone and his/her twink will have 20 of everything. Game suffers tremendous video lag for a lot of people. Rubber-banding and warping are common. Can take some time to load the background in when you port somewhere or recall.

Same with PC's and NPC's Game can be macroed for the most part. Hello UO and AC1! Background and storyline are not well developed. Web-based login requiring the use of Internet Explorer 5.5+ (allegedly this will change) In short, Horizons is a genteel game, highly derivative of other games out there, that is a mildly enjoyable time-sink for those disposed toward this type of fun. IMHO, it needed 3-6 months more work, especially in the character animation and clothing/armor department and the graphical lag that is endemic. It's not what I hoped it to be; I hope it's different for other people.

The original "thinker-upper" of Horizons, Dave Allen, had an interview with MMORPG.NET; here's an excerpt from it:

Unfortunately, certain individuals at Artifact felt it was important to make statements that the original HORIZONS was too ambitious and could not be delivered. The sad part is that these individuals lack the design, development, and technical qualifications to even make such statements. In essence, they were simply doing what they could to prepare the community for the only product that they were capable of delivering something completely different from the original game: their game. And their game will reflect their abilities.

The original HORIZONS offered all of that and more. The problem I ran into is that some of the people I made the mistake of working with and hiring just didn't get it - at all. They saw Everquest and that's what they wanted. No innovation, just duplication and enhancement.

Need the scoop on Horizons? Try this place for all the latest and maybe not-so-greatest.

See also my write-up on Deusimperator and my Horizons Pictures.