THANK YOU! I also have to have loot. If I wanted to do crafting, I’d have become a baker or something.
Despite the mediocre (at best) comments here I decided to pick this up today.
Unfortunately account creation has been down all night.
Sigh.
Interested to hear what you think of it. Most of the posts here are either beta players or people who haven’t even played beta, as nearly as I can tell.
Ok, spent about 3-4 hours with this now. Not exactly an in-depth review but enough to get over the initial interface hump and start exploring a bit.
So far, I’m totally loving it.
I haven’t been bitten by any perf problems, but I have a pretty beefy machine. There seems like there’s a ton of loot, way more variety than in AC2 or EQ for that matter (though admittedly, unlike EQ you cannot directly use any of the loot you find so far).
I really like the way you can pursue multiple classes. You can only have one active class (well, one adventuring class and one crafting class) at a time, but you keep some of the abilities and skills of your other classes. You can really easily explore all the classes with one character early on.
Nice quests, lots to do so far. It really needs an in-game map badly, though.
Interface seems nice, much cleaner that EQ but still pretty useful. Missing a lot of the polish that a more mature MMO has (for example, all the combat text is in one color, whereas the color coded text in EQ is much more parse-able). If they continue to improve on it I have confidence this will get where it needs to get. Highly customizable and powerful interface though… some nice touches like good integrated help, nice sortable table vs grid views for inventory, etc.
The “consignment vendors”, their version of SWG’s bazaar, is very nicely done. Easy to use and powerful… actually so far I like it better than SWGs, but it’s too early to say whether it will scale.
Best of all, the crafting / economy system is awesome, IMO. The economy is heavily player driven and seems active so far. The depth of the crafting system is incredible.
Is it revolutionary? Definitely not. But it seems like a very respectable evolution of the genre. I can’t tell how anything beyond the very opening of the game is, of course, but they talk the talk for some pretty cool later-game features like land ownership, player towns, and dynamic world / epic quest stuff.
I definitely recommend it for MMO addicts. :)
Sounds like some of the character design came over from Demise. BTW, Demise was an underrated hackstyle Dungeon Master Wizardry game that came out a couple-three years ago. One thing I noticed about Demise was that the class/race combinations were more in depth than most crpgs! Hmm, Horizons might be pretty cool.
etc
How does combat work? What’s involved in getting a better weapon, armor, etc.? Do you HAVE to do your own crafting or can you just pay someone else to do it for you? Are there enough mobs to go around or do you find yourself wandering forever looking for something to kill? 
So far there has been tons of monsters to fight, no real problem with overpopulation. Then again, the world is still pretty new to everyone, perhaps there will be camping problems in the long term, I dunno.
The core of combat is fairly similar to other MMOs – choose weapon, attack, etc. But you have a good complement (so far) of special abilities to use during combat. There are stances that have a rock-paper-scissors dynamic, which is interesting. Also, there is no mana – spells and abilities just have a fixed time until they are available again. This reduces downtime considerably and causes some different tactics to be required.
I don’t have a real sense of how deep the combat will prove to be, but so far it’s intriguing… because equipment is so customizable, and there are lots of abilities to learn in all the various classes and prestige classes and races, I can see there potentially being a lot there. Hard to say if the content keeps pace or not though since I’m still low level.
You can buy equipment direct from the “pawn broker”. You can also get stuff via the consignement-bazaar, or make it yourself. There are also usually people willing to make you stuff on demand. I don’t know how that will play out at the higher level, but at least at the early levels their economy seems very interesting – I don’t think it’s at all going to be required to craft, but it’s so compelling that I think many people will do it.
That’s a frickin brilliant idea! I hate waiting around to regen mana/stamina/whatever. I do wonder, though, what is the point of having low level skills once you have gotten higher level ones? Why “train” in them, or whatever? (normally, these skills still have SOME value insofar as they use less mana)
Although I’m not playing Horizons, I would assume low-level spells would be useful for the analogous reason: that they have a shorter “cool down” timer.
I like the idea, because it forces people to use a wider variety of spells instead of just casting their highest-level DD until mana is depleted, or whatever.
Don’t have a lot of insight into higher level gameplay yet, but it seems to be a mix. Some spells come in “lines”… like Flame Bolt I, Flame Bolt II, etc. When that is the case, they share the same “recharge timer” so when you cast II, the level I version is greyed out for recharge as well.
However they have a variety of spells that do similar-ish things but have very different recharge times. Because you have to buy or resesarch all your spells, deciding on the kinds of things you want to focus on is an important part of growth strategy so far. Would I rather spend my coins on another heal which is weaker but recharges faster (and is a differently named spell so can be recharging simultaneously) or get the next level up in the slower, more powerful heal that will replace my old one?
The skills themselves follow a different system; they go up strictly with class advancement (though you get to use the highest one from any class you have trained), and are both a modifier to how effective your spells & abilities are, and also are a gating factor for them (spells usually have a minimum skill requirement, so Resurrection I requires 50 Life skill, etc.). One of the cool things definitely is there is so much stuff… even at the low level you have skills, stats, XP in multiple classes, abilities, spells, and recipes to keep track of, and I can already see on the horizon new things like traits, prestige classes, and weapon customization.
Oh, I forgot to mention, if anyone picks this up… I’m on the Dawn server (one of the RP servers – I find the tradeoff of fewer l33t obnoxious types worth the increase in “verily, thou dost needeth a hunter” obnoxious types). Character name is “Xem”.
I like that spell system. You are starting to sell me on this, Xemu.
Don’t get me wrong, it definitely has it’s share of problems. But I’d say none of them are any worse than other MMOs in their first week of launch.
Any QT3ers who get onboard should drop me a line, it’s really easy to find other players and set up impromptu chat groups, etc.
Horizons sounds a lot like EQ, except phat loot has been replaced with crafting. Otherwise, both games feature leveling and pve as core game play.
I guess AE has created a mmorpg for those that like EQ, but hate the dependency on loot drops.
Raven
That’s a frickin brilliant idea! I hate waiting around to regen mana/stamina/whatever. I do wonder, though, what is the point of having low level skills once you have gotten higher level ones? Why “train” in them, or whatever? (normally, these skills still have SOME value insofar as they use less mana)[/quote]
The higher level skills replace the lower level ones, for the most part. You don’t train in any skill. You level up in a chosen adventure class, which raises your stats in various skill lines. You don’t really have any control over how the skill lines raise other than in the adventure class you’re playing which will raise given skill lines. At least that’s how I understood it.
What you do control is how you specialize your character via multiclassing and through the eligible spells/skills you choose to purchase, though there’s no reason not to purchase anything if you can afford. I don’t think you’re ever presented with an either/or decision when buying a spell.
Sounds like a great system…to macro/script/bot the hell out of.
Sounds like a great system…to macro/script/bot the hell out of.[/quote]
What’s really weird is they’ve made the magic system work like melee combat in these games. Just as you hit the attack button and keep auto-attacking in a game like EQ, in Horizons you have repeating spells that keep firing after you cast them. What I found was that there was little reason not to let my spell repeat over and over as opposed to casting other spells. The spells can’t be interrupted, either, unless you choose to cast something different.
Eww. That doesn’t sound very appealing.
Also been playing this a bit. Have to agree with Xemu on this one. The timers on the skills (at least for Dragons) are slow enough that you can really only use a skill once per fight. This early most stuff has yet to agro anything close by, but it does force one to decide which skills to use, and which to hold on to (instead of mashing every button ala DAOC).
Also the regen/down time is great. I have never had to wait more than a minute or two before I was fully healed up. Downside is some skills are on a 2 min timer, so I lost them for the next fight.
Lastly, the crafting system is by far the best I have seen in a game yet. AE has removed the “I wonder if this will work” by laying everything out. Game tells you what you need, what you have, chance of creating item, and most importatnly…why you cant make an item and what you need to make it.
Horizons as of ow is worth the money if you ask me. Still has its share of bugs, but then again it is only 5 days old.
For Xemu and any others I am also on Dawn, name Sareth or Grisha.
That’s great, Greg. But what I really want to know is whether or not you will be back again next year? I think that you have done a fine job, considering all the new free agents you had to work with. As a Titans fan, I still think you will lose this weekend, but I remember the great work you did for us as a defensive coordinator and…
Damn…wrong message board.
Is there a current qt3 following for this game right now? I’ve been studying up on this and might give it a shot, and if there is an existing qt3 element that would be added incentive.