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."

Comments

In related news...

[MobyDisk]

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.

Good Riddance

[delus10n0]

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.

Economy?

[Teh Suq]

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.

It did have potential

[Fiz Ocelot]

I played Horizons for 3 months, started a month after release. It had some good ideas and a lot of potential. I did have a big adult dragon (required a difficult and lengthy quest), fun to fly around the game world for a while.

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.

How to take advantage of this?

[Daetrin]

How do they decide what the exchange rate is? (I'd try RTFAing, but there doesn't seem to be one)

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 :)

Re:Virtual World Bylaw #1

[KDR_11k]

I think they should just put their server software up for download once they shut down the game servers. No need to fiddle around with artwork licenses and such (since the artwork itself is still covered under the game EULA), just let 'em run the servers, maybe give 'em the tools you used to add content and perhaps release the main game under the GPL (so no competitor can just copy from your old code). The problem would of course be that sustaining your old game might create competition for your new one.