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MMOG Subscription Analysis Provides New Insights
Thanks to jer0 for pointing to SirBruce's updated MMOG Subscription Growth analysis page, which tries to "chart the trend in active subscriptions" for major MMO titles using public and private data. This "major revision" has the "chart separated into three tiers" dependent on subscription size, and shows Lineage as the worldwide MMO leader at "just under 2.7 million" (though this may be reliant on bulk 'PC Baang' subscriptions in countries such as South Korea, and the game has "only 7,000 [subscribers] in the United States.") Other notable entries include City Of Heroes ("surpassed 180,000 subscribers... proof that a well-executed MMOG can still garner substantial numbers even in the current competitive climate"), and the also recently launched, but less successful Horizons ("After peaking at around 35,000 subscribers, they have since fallen to somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000 subscribers.")
I consider myself up-to-date on gaming news, but I've never even heard of Horizons. Is it good? I'm interested in trying it out. Has anyone on here played it, and if so, what do you think of it?
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
Horizons had some nice ideas but the implementation was horrible. The game felt incredibly lifeless and boring.
There were no equipment drops as far as I was aware. Only items that could be used by crafters to create equipment.
The combat was extremely boring and had little to keep anyone interested.
The only interesting things was the extensive crafting system but it wasn't enough to keep this game from dying a slow death.
There's a free trial if you want to try it (www.istaria.com), but Horizons has a ... colorful history.
Since a corporate takeover from the inside by David Bowman (of Asheron's Call fame, who was fired for "agressive ladder-climbing"), the game underwent an extreme redesign, and hasn't been the same since.
It made its retail debut around December of this year, still very much in beta, for which it received sound derision. The bugs were incredible. The game was a flop
Artifact Entertainment filed for bankruptcy a few months ago, and last month handed pink slips to half its developer staff. This seemed aimed at making the game a viable target for a buyout, but nothing has happened as yet.
David Bowman ran AE and Horizons into the ground. All in all, I wouldn't play an online game with no future. Subscription numbers are dropping steadily every month. Horizons is on its deathbed, waiting to die.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
after playing SWG for a few months and getting tired of paying for it, I tried some free MMORPGs. There's a list of some here.
It will be interesting to see how free MMORPGs in the future such as Guild Wars (http://www.guildwars.com/) do. For me, I personally refuse to pay 10 or so bucks a month when I don't have the time to commit to such a game.
1 - all info on each game is provided by the game maker, so take it with a grain of salt.
;) But I doubt the makers would provide that data.
2 - the stats don't differentiate between "players" and "accounts". So a single account with 3 characters may show up as 3.
3 - the stats don't differentiate between active accounts and inactive accounts.
4 - the lineage figures are crap as massive bulk of them come from South Korean cybercafes. It's noted that South Korea apparently doesn't get many Japanese import games, thus it figures that Lineage may have a disproportionately high user base there.
A much better chart would be the server population figures for these games
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
Hehehehehehe.
I just watched an episode of G4TechTV's "Icons "profiling Will Wright and it was before the full launch of The Sims Online. Someone said something like "it could do well, or fall flat on its face."
Boy did it ever fall flat on its face.
ah...so they're still pissed about the whole WW2 thing huh?
It's been going on longer than that. Korea and Japan have been invading each other about as often as England and France have.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
I see the replies here are sort of one-sided, so as a current Horizons player I guess I should post my views. As good as any first post, I guess. =P
First off, let's deal with the "corporate takeover from the inside." There are two camps in regards to this. There are the Allen camp and the anti-Allen camp. David Allen was the CEO of Artifact Entertainment before the "takeover," and provided most of the early days ideas, concepts and designs.
The Allen camp claims it was a vicious, ruthless takeover, taking Allen's baby away from him and then ruining it.
The anti-Allen camp claims that Allen was fired due to incompetence and inability to make all his nice ideas into something real, and then the remaining staff created a game as best as they could with the funds and time left at their disposal.
Thing is - WE DON'T KNOW. We can never know either. All we have are Mr. Allen's biased articles and interviews and AE's official (and thus, naturally, biased) comments. In the end, this becomes a non-issue, since it's the game itself that is important, and not who made it and who not made it.
Also, AE did not file bankruptcy, they filed bankruptcy -protection-. The difference is huge, and the story is long. Details can be had www.istaria.com, for instance.
Alright, now for the game itself.
Horizons of today is a completely different game than Horizons of pre-launch, or even at launch. I'm not going to say much, in order to not come off as biased, but I will bring up a few of my personal likes.
Variety and freedom: Character development in Horizons is very flexible. You can decide to do anything at any moment. You can build complex characters with multiclassing, leveraging individual strengths of the different classes. For instance you can train up a warrior based class for the melee capability, and then switch over to a mage based class to get some magic support, then to a cleric based one to enhance your survivability. Since you can join any and all schools available in the game, you can do a lot of things. (Exception is dragons, more on that later.) Tired of killing things? Go join any of the crafting classes and start building weapons, armor, houses, food...
Construction: Unlike many games where you buy a premade house to put your things in, in Horizons you buy a Plot. The plot has a set size and any of three zonings which determine what structures can be put on the plot. (RCI - Sim City players will be familiar with those.) When you've placed a building on your plot only the basic scaffolding is actually placed. You then have to build it yourself. Putting in that final stone block on a building and seeing it complete is very gratifying.
Crafting vs fighting: While Horizons is very crafting centric, it's hardly a must. I know several players who have opted to ignore crafting in favour of more adventuring, and they are doing well. Likewise, if you don't like fighting you don't have to do that either - as long as you can outrun the occasional monster wandering around dangerous resource places.
Dragons: To my knowledge, Horizons is the only current MMORPG that allows players to play as dragons. Playing as a dragon is a -very- different experience to any other race.
Community: Due to how Horizons plays, it tends to attract social people, or "team players." In no other game have I met a community so helpful, kind and cooperative as in Horizons.
In the end, Horizons is not for everyone. It is a niche game, and everyone knows it. Chances are it might be for you. In fact, you know what? Don't listen to me. Don't listen to what anyone else says about this game either. Go download the trial and play the game to get your own perception. It won't cost you more than your time and some bandwidth. If you don't like it, fine, leave it. If you like it, a winner is you! I will give you one advice, however. Don't be afraid to join the community. Ask for help, trade, just plain chat. The communication inte
Its not perfect by any stretch, but COH had the smoothest release and has the least problems of any of the MMO products I have tried.
Its a fun PvE game, the AI on the mobs is quite good - again far better than any other MMORPG game I have tried - and the developers seem to have a handle on what the game needs. They listen and respond to public feedback.
Currently its a bit content light, but they are adding new content and new features quarterly at the moment, and the first (and only) patch was pretty problem free.
I went to DAOC from EQ because Mythic looked like they were doing things right and addressing the aspects of EQ that really bothered me, and the whole RvR thing looked neat. I played it since release until the release of City of Heroes, and was a pretty big DAOC fan. I don't think I could return now, COH has spoiled me. It is lightyears ahead of the competition in my opinion, and while its early still, being only 3 months old, I think it has a very bright future.
Its well worth checking out City of Heroes if you are looking for a new game.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
I'm one of the developers on the free (in the sense of not having to pay money to play it) MMORPG game called PlaneShift (http://www.planeshift.it). The MMORPG engine is fully Open Source (GPL). This game is still in development and the current released demo is getting old. But even if you can't do a lot in it yet (only explore, chat, hunt crystals) it still has 100000 registered accounts. The next version which will soon be released will have magic, combat, ...
The game is fully free. You don't have to pay to download the game and you don't have to pay to play it.
Greetings,
Project Manager of Crystal Space (http://www.crystalspace3d.org). Support CS at http://tinyurl.com/cb3x4