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Horizons Tries Playvault, Artifact Files Chapter 11
StanTheHand writes "Horizons, the Artifact Entertainment PC MMORPG, has joined forces with PlayVault to 'migrate' users from a bunch of other MMO games - it works by 'fetching your old game currency so [Horizons] can provide you with the proper amount of currency on your new game', meaning you can go from being rich on Ultima Online to rich on Horizons seamlessly." In related news, as noted by Terra Nova, Artifact Entertainment "has now filed for Chapter 11 protection from creditors in a move to keep operations alive", although "game play will not be interrupted at all by this decision."
To avoid losing all of their assets, Artifact is using their own technology to move all of their assets from Ultima Online, into the New York Stock Exchange. This, along with the sale of the sale of the "Uber sword of vanquishing" is expected to expedite Artifact return to normal financial operating conditions.
Horizons was an awful awful game. I beta tested it for three months or so, and they never fixed the major problems that people were reporting (very low FPS, sound problems, network lag.) It also just wasn't a very fun game. You'd have to practically read an entire manual to even get started. There was no "jumping in" right away.
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
While it appears that nobody cares about Horizons any more, I wonder what allowing someone to bring over stacks of money to a new character will do to the in-game economy. I suppose Horizons is not far away from that next announcement of closure anyway.
But the game ran out of content, and was plagued by problems and poor management. I don't really plan to play another mmo (played quite a few), they always seem to turn into a waiting game for more things to do.
Whatever the method, there's probably a way to corrupt the system. Someone just needs to come out with a cheapass MMO game that lets you collect vast amounts of money so you can exchange it for currency in another game. You are a cube, you go out into the flat featureless plain where you fight smaller cubes who leave large amounts of gold when defeated. You then go back to town (a really large cube) and save the game.
If the exchange rate is determined by total amount of gold in the game, you jut put caps on the total gold so no one can collect a truely huge amount at a time. Everyone quickly collects (say) a million gp and then converts it to another MMO before collecting more. If it's determined by the compared cost of items, you can have the monsters drop a small amount of gold, but make a dagger cost a copper, and the Uber-Sword of Godslaying cost a single gold, etc.
Whatever the system, just figure out the right exploit, and charge a minimum monthly fee so people can just sit there collecting loot for the game they really care about. Sure, you'd probably get locked out of the exchange program after a while, but you might be able to get a month or so of decent income in before that happened :)
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
An excerpt from my Virtual World Bylaws (rules to live by). This exact scenario fits the bylaw perfectly.
The world must be able to exist when the vendor loses interest and shuts down the hardware.
Peer-to-peer networking is an excellent example of letting a good thing keep running even when somebody wants it to come down. The same resiliency should be applied to virtual worlds. Distribute the servers that manage the virtual areas or worlds and localized hardware problems only mean a degredation in service.
Likewise, folks who are open with their underlying engine will find their technology replicated so that the world continues without them. Find a balance with openness and intellectual property or risk having your worlds be meaningless six months after creation. Note the difference between a graphics engine and an object interaction/scene description engine.
Vendors around the world will testify that customer service is the hardest part of MMOGs. No vendor wants to keep a customer support team paid and trained for 300 total players. If the technology is open, then those 300 players can play when they want and they will be expert enough to keep it running.
But what about artwork and the licensing that goes with it? Yes, that is a troubling sticky point. So what I recommend is that at the moment the vendor decides it's time to abandon, they exercise a clause they signed with all the graphic artists that says all royalty payments stop when the support section for that world closes. The artwork should then be released under something like the Creative Commons License. This ties the company's profit line to the royalty distribution, if one exists at all, and as long as the venture is profitable to someone, the artists involved should be compensated.
...Horizons consisted of some of the worst community relations and live game design decisions (those made after launch) to ever be a part of a MMORPG.
I don't like to see it happen, but honestly, they had it coming and it was inevitable. After they hit 3 months on the market, it was clear they were making the wrong moves to try and pull the game back from the brink.
No jaded ex-player here, but someone who has experience working on a MMORPG.
The biggest thing that pissed me off with horizons is that when I was done playing after a few months I had to phone in person to cancel the billing. This is just awful. I can sign up online quick and easy, but to cancel, well I have to phone in wait in the queue and then talk to an agent to get my billing canceled.
If you can sign up online, you should be able to cancel online. Period.