Rating: 
Summary: Just About Everything You Wanted in a MMORPG
Review: True, the MMORPG scene is very very crowded. So, why Horizons?I can't do this game justice in the allowed 1000 words, but here are some of the (publicly-available) highlights: - EVERYTHING in the game can be crafted. Start with the necessary weapons, armor, tools. Add structures, communities, castles, machines, bridges, portals, hedges, statues, etc. etc.
- CHARACTER GROWTH - Not locked into any "job". Change schools to advance different skills. MANY different schools, including "prestige" schools with prerequisites for membership. No level caps! Tons of skills.
- MAKE A DIFFERENCE in the world - Help reclaim lands from the enemy. Free subjugated races (so they add to the nine playable races available at launch). Build houses & communities. Build "empire structures" and "artifacts" that help your community or everyone.
- HIGHLY DETAILED CRAFTING SYSTEM - Wow! Obtain formulas, acquire the proper skills, harvest over 100 different types of resources, (Wood, sap, flax, essence, carrots, iron, silver, wheat...) Obtain the proper tools, Use the proper machinery, make the item. Enhance the item. Now sell it, consign it, build with it, trade it, etc.
- CHALLENGING REAL-TIME COMBAT - Not just "click and wait until the random-number generator decides on a victor". Learn special combat skills and use them at the proper time in combat.
- STUNNING VISUALS - Real weather. Layered textures. Fluid cloth motion. Spellcasters can create jaw-dropping weather affects seen by all players. Player-dragons can take flight to reach floating cities. Huge surface world with areas in the sky and below ground. Hundreds of animations per player race.
- AMAZING SOUND - Rich cinematic score. Impressive sound effects. Combat, race, and town-specific scores.
Rating: 
Summary: Great graphics, weak rollout
Review: Whenever a new MMORG hits the market, one expects a few issues with the rollout. Horizons is no exception. In the past week, I have personally experienced multiple boots, along with quite a few programming bugs. I am not going to review based on these, lest I knock the review down quite a few points. On graphics: The graphics in Horizons are excellent. The textures, overall, are very smooth, and the graphics flow nicely as you move from location to location. Considering the game world is huge and holds thousands of players per server (er shard), this is no small task. Unlike Asheron's Call 2, you do not see the lag when your character on your local machine gets out of sync with the server. The sky textures are especially nice. I have stopped just to look up at the clouds rolling by with a lovely moon in the background. One downside I have noticed is you sometimes have to stop for the engine to paint in NPCs and other characters. If you are on the move, you will completely miss many people. Gameplay: Many of the elements still feel half baked. In many instances, you have to click a button more than once to get the desired effect. Compared to other MMORGs, this is a sore spot. Click on monster ... click on monster ... click on monster ... click attack ... click attack ... finally attack. Fortunately, the game paints items with a box when selected or you might just sit and wonder why a creature is pounding the snot out of you and you are not fighting back (also fortunate is the fact that the lower level creatures do not agro until you attack). Menus: One thing I do not understand is why all menu items were not hotkeyed prior to release. Want to pull up the quest menu the first time. Okay, click the blue button on the hotkey menu ... click the blue button ... click the blue button ... now, choose Quests from the menu. Now, you want to see your knowledge box ... click the blue button. Did I mention that you sometimes have to click multiple times to do anything. Character play: Overall, very nice. The humans run rather stupid, but that is a minor annoyance, as you get to see gnomes scooting around, which is rather amusing. Character race: While choice of race does not affect gameplay that much (all start with the same health), there are benefits to each class. Dragons and half-giants, for example, have greater strength, which helps you with damage at the lowest levels. Once you advance a few levels, the extra points are less significant. It is really neat you can choose a dragon to play. Character classes: The beginner's choices are rather limited in both crafting and adventuring, but you will find that there are plenty of prestige classes as you move up the skill tree. Be sure to craft and adventure, as you will want to create or repair items to get better weapons and/or armor. Anything you craft, but do not need, can be sold, either to pawn brokers or other characters. The character classes are one of the things that really makes the game shine. Combat: Fairly similar to most other systems. Click to choose ... click to choose ... click attack ... click attack. (OK, except that you often have to click multiple times). After that, it is largely a system of watching your character and the creature beat the snot out of each other. Like most MMORGs, you can also choose special abilities to use when attacking. NPCs: This is where Horizons shines a bit more than some systems. There are plenty of NPCs in the game, many of which can give you tasks. You can also ask for short, medium and long tasks from many of the NPCs. The experience you gain from tasks is largely based on the time and difficulty. Community: In Horizons, you can purchase and own land. If you desire, you can build a variety of structures on your own land. Rather nice. It is easy to group and form guilds, which helps with the community structure of Horizons. Finding other players is not as easy as some other systems, however. Summary:
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Pluses - graphics, NPCs, choices in character race and classes and community (if it really takes off) Negatives - hitting the button ... hitting the button, ad nauseum. Early release bugs. Menus not being hotkeyed.
Rating: 
Summary: Unless you have a credit card, DO NOT BUY!!!
Review: A user posted that as far as he is concerned, it is still in the beta stage...That is giving it far too much credit!! I bought the game because a mmorpg guild I belong to uses this as their main game of play. Was I ever wrong to join them this time. I installed the game fine, I went through most of the sign up fine until I had gotten to BILLING...WTF!! My box states I have a free month included...Yeah?!? Where is it?? I live in Canada so it makes it that much worse in trying to play this game, their support website is the absolute worse because in order to get help, you need to sign up your account but in order to sign up your account you need to get past billing...WTF, WTF, WTF!! This game would be worth it if you had a credit card but everyone else can spend their money on a far better company...Blizzard, Microsoft, Strategy First, GoD games....anyone who doesn't charge you to buy and charge you to play...Stay away!!
Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic Potential, but Still Needs Some Work
Review: As far as I'm concerned, this game takes what's best about UO (a complex crafting system) and EQ (stunning graphics), combines them, and then eliminates one big pain-in-the-neck plaguing the casual gameplayer (player-versus-player combat). I'll admit it -- I'm a MMORPG wimp. I don't like to kill players and don't particularly enjoy being killed. I like to make things, build things, and casually poke around the game world. I've played Horizons now through 80 aggregate levels of experience in my three classes (Spellcrafter / Mason / Healer). I feel competitive, despite the fact that I'm limited to evening and weekend play. Here are some other thoughts: 1. The crafting system and options are the best I've ever seen. I was easily able to quickly purchase a nice plot of land with money earned selling spells to other players. About 10-12 of my items sell each day off the in-game consignors, who act as your vendor for a 10% fee. Level advancement in crafting can be boring, but it's not grueling, and the payoffs can be quick and substantial if you focus on high demand items. And the number of create-able items are amazing. As a merely low-to-mid-level spellcrafter (level 35), there are literally hundreds of different spell combinations that I can put together. 2. The land / construction system is ingenious. Buy a plot, plan it out, and start construction. Each building unit requires resource contributions that must be made by several different crafters. If you are an independent sort, master all the construction crafting skills (Mason, fitiing, carpenry, etc.) and make those buildings yourself! Or, if you're so inclined, "deposit" money on your structures. Other players can draw off this money by contributing resources towards the construction. It's a real thrill to drop by my plot and see a couple of carpenters there adding wood. And if I need a few silver, I can make some bricks and drop them off for payment somewhere else. Unfortunately, not all buildings work -- so right now, some (particularly the much-coveted storage silos) are merely decoration. 3. Combat is not overly challenging or overly easy. I can solo mobs at my adventuring level with reasonable success. Experience gain is steady and fair. Loot drops are weak, but not pitiful. You'll never get rich in this game if you don't do some crafting, but adventuring helps facilitate crafting (through the collection of craft ingredients and the enhancement of attributes) and does provide a small income stream. 4. The game has easy to use and comprehensive communications features. Contacting other players and managing multiple conversations is simple and efficient. 5. Griefing is minimal, at worst. Camping really doesn't pay off. And the world is big enough to support the player base. 6. Lag has recently become an issue for me, but only during high-traffic times. I can craft away from 6-8 a.m., but crafting at 9 p.m. has become quite irritating. Inventory takes a long while to update and I spend as much time waiting as I do crafting. Lag hasn't affected my adventuring at all, however, so I bash beasts at night and craft during off-hours. 7. The huge world is a bit barren. You can run in a straight line for 10 minutes without seeing a single mob. That's a bit weak. 8. The game logs me out for no reason about once every 12 hours of gameplay. Logging back in takes about 90 seconds on my DSL connection. Bottom line: A terrific game with some early problems. AE needs to fix its server lag problems during peak hours. It needs to fill in the huge world it's built. It needs to get its buildings in working order. If those three issues are fixed, the game's a clear Five Star purchase. Until then, I give it Four. *edit* 1/29/2004 The game is getting better and better as the weeks go by. New features are appearing each week, problems are being remedied, and new areas are being opened for exploration (through community action, no less!). If you've been biding your time to buy, I think the time is now.
Rating: 
Summary: Boring, complicated, and unfinished
Review: I was very disappointed with this game overall and stuck with it for a full month before quitting. What got me interested in the first place was its beautiful graphics and the chance to play a dragon! The graphics are wonderful with towns that are breathtaking. The crafting system is complex to the point of being too complicated. Resources are fairly scarce and very hard to find once you advance. There's no information on their website on the actual gameplay, schools, crafting or anything of real value. If you MUST try this game, I seriously recommend getting into a guild as soon as possible so the experienced players can help you since you'll never be able to figure this game out on your own! The world itself is huge, which is both good and bad. The main problem is that you WILL walk miles and miles without seeing any spawn at all! There's not enough variety of monsters when you do find them.... You'll be killing zombies and maggots for the rest of your life! Entering towns or being around too many people will most definitely give you lag, no matter how uber your pc is! Getting too close to server events has a tendency to randomly and spontaneously disconnect you from the shard. Recently, the devs have been nerfing dragons (a race that is still incomplete at the moment - there's no adulthood!) And to make matters worse, if you've been spending all your time playing a dragon, working skills and earning money, well.... you can't even own a home of your own, so what's the point of playing a dragon? And if you're not a dragon, there's not enough land to set down housing with your bi-ped any way! So if you're going to try this game to be a bi-ped, play some other game, any other game. Seriously, there's no long-term goals after you start this game. You spend your time either crafting or killing monsters to gain in skill, but what for? It gets pretty boring pretty fast. By the way, it took me several days to actually quit since they keep your billing information in the hands of another company altogether and they had me going in circles. When you first sign up, you MUST give credit card or debit card information or you won't be able to play, and if you dare quit, you have to make a phone call to a completely different company. There's no ingame support and reporting any trouble is based on sending emails and waiting on emailed responses... This is poor service for a game that should not have been released so soon! As far as I'm concerned, it's still in a beta stage.
Rating:
Summary: Wasted Potential
Review: I feel bad that so many talented people worked so hard on this disappointing game.
I started my account day of launch and played it for 2 months. I was intending to write a very detailed, scathing review...but I find I no longer have the energy or desire to devote my attention to it.
I'm fairly certain no one is considering this game unless theyre already familliar with MMORPG's, so let me be as brief as possible:
Dont even bother with this game! It was released months too soon. It's buggy and laggy beyond belief. It's underdeveloped and woefully short of content. It's poorly balanced with few worthwhile playable classes. It loads from a slow-moving website (load times can take 5-10 minutes depending upon your system and connection). And lastly, aside from playable dragons (which arent all that great), it offers nothing new to the genre.
Play Dark Age of Camelot, Play EQ, or wait for World of Warcraft or EQ2. This game deserves a quiet, merciful death.
Rating:
Summary: Lots of potential - still unfinished
Review: I've got the game this weekend. Installed, setup account, created a Lizard cleric, no problems. Web interface (idea) is real bad. Also IE takes a lot of memory so I suggest you close the IE while the game engine is loading. (Still it may take a few minutes until XP drops the IE libraries) The good:
- Graphics, visuals, even in such low detail level (for good performance) Istaria looks amazing.
- Sound, best music for MMORPG by far.
- Tradeskills are OK (better than other MMORPGs)
- Fighting is fun, got some skills to use and make a difference
- Can really be unique with so many races available and then so many features that can be customized (height, head shape, etc)
- Can actually multiclass and it really works.
- No exp penalty on death, no corpse runs to get gear (allows you to take risks and have more fun) The bad:
- The web interface login.
- not enough servers for the demand.
- Loading times are ridiculous if server is highly populated
- Gathering resources for TSkills is difficult cause so many ppl doing the same (if same place).
- Unless someone is selling what you want (spell or gear) you cannot buy it.
- Not enough information anywhere about the schools and skills, didn't even know Druid was a choice from start until read about it somewhere.
- It seems to have several bugs including very nasty memory leaks (game gets real slow after a while)
- Casters are not working very well ATM
- Warrior types always take Cleric to lvl10 for heals
- NO PETS in game, huge drawback for me
- Huge BUG when abilities go grey for no apparent reason thus becoming unavailable until you log (loggin in takes quite some time).
- Lacking dungeons which I think are great fun.
Can be the real next generation MMORPG if several issues are addressed (I'm sure all problems will be fixed eventually).
Rating:
Summary: Beware, you might like it!
Review: I've played three different characters with combinations of skills, and am over 50 with each character now.
Dragons are still nerfed to some degree, but overall, after adulthood, they're decent. My cat that's a ranger has been put aside due to some of the nerfs they did to archery... My Paladin however is rocking things that are much higher than he is, the problem with this is that there isn't a lot that is higher now.
The only serious problems I have are finding crafters to make me that new sword or piece of armor! People that can make tier 4 stuff won't make tier 3 (it's not worth my time, or find a lower level crafter to make it so he can make some money... What an attitude, and seriously prevalent in HZ! You don't want my silver? Hell, I would pay 10s for certain spells right now! How is that not worth your time?) So, if you're in the middle somewhere, it may be really hard to get certain items unless you decide to become a crafter to support your adventure class, ie, spell crafter for mage, armorer / blacksmith for warrior type, etc.
Well, one other is that there aren't any higher level quests (above lvl 60's anyway) Hopefully they will fix that SOON! Where will Horizons be in three months? Probably a lot more filled in! They're adding things every week! Newer spawns, adventures, events, quests, etc.
This game is a lot of fun! But you really do have to work on your characters!!!
Rating:
Summary: This is good stuff...
Review: ...don't let sour comments from some powerplayers (or munchkins - RPG-term) fool you, this game is great stuff.
A MORPG can never be Baldur's Gate. It cannot have a story that evolves around you the player. A MORPG is about immersing oneself in the world presented; and the world of Horizons is splendid indeed.
I see a lot of people complaining about the graphics, and this annoys me. Some visual flare has been sacrificed, true, but instead you have HUGE landscapes, and LONG view distances. I prefer that to walking around in a bumb mapped haze. It looks GREAT, believe me.
As for gameplay, well, you can play a dragon. Enough said. I've tried a lot of other titles like this (Galaxies, AO, DAoC, ++), and they are all basically the same, limited by the type of gameplay a MORPG can offer. Horizons is somewhat different. Horizons offer something more.
The music is second to none.
A lot of the issues that plagued Horizons has been resolved. It is relatively stable, and you can run it on high setting with any machine above average. Try the free trial...
Rating:
Summary: Horizons - A long awaited disappointment
Review: After a long, long (years) wait for this game to come out, and all the hype surrounding it, I pre-ordered my copy and rushed to pick it up as soon as they called to say it had arrived at the store. But the game that was supposed to encourage roleplay, allow dragons to fly, have characters who aged or never went fighting... The game that was supposed to have such character design features so that no two characters looked alike even... Doesn't. Characters do not age. You talk to NPCs via a private chat box that no one else can hear, so you don't really "interact" with them, but instead choose which quest you'd rather they give you to maximize your experience points or money gain. Plenty of characters look alike, though there is a lot to choose from when designing a character, it's certainly far from limitless. And everyone will be wearing the same darn armor anyway, as everyone wants to generally be wearing the best armor for their class and level. Everything in the game has a level base on when you can start using it, and some tools become worthless after you've passed up a certain level. Crafters [are] actually worthwhile, but it's boring as hell to be one usually, and you have to search down your raw materials before the higher levels get to it with their heavy duty cargo discs that can carry more for them, and their better tools that can ore more in the first place. Mind you, some things required for the crafting can [only] be found on the mobs, so don't expect to be crafting everything in the game unless you make a lot of cash selling items to buy the resources off the fighter classes, choose a fighting class too, or have a friend who gets the goods for you. Oh.. and the game favors specialization on all levels. All the wonderful things about being able to play a combination class of, say, cleric and warrior? Nope, you'll likely get your virtual butt handed to you if you don't specialize and become a paladin or something later. Mind you, you have to get level 15 or so in both before you can become a paladin. And don't even think about becoming an adult dragon who flies. They only recently added the flying ability to the game, and it can only happen after you get past a certain level and stuff your hoard full of crap. And hoard depreciates over time - and more so once you're an adult. I hear that nerf happened back in beta. They recently nerfed the archers to make them pretty much useless, and since they were who I was having the most fun with (even after the first nerf to "pinion" they were still fun, but now you might as well not bother to make one) I've canceled my account. There's a huge disparity between the levels - you can group with higher level people and still get experience and all, but stay in the back as the mobs will crush you with a glance. The mobs tend to know cool spells before their player counterparts get them. Mind you, the mobs tend to flock together - strangely there are miles and miles of road that are both unguarded and unclaimed by either good or evil. Although "miles" is a relative term, as the world feels pretty darn tiny. Then again, I suppose it doesn't need to be too big with no people in it. Did I mention the utter lack of townsfolk in Horizons yet? Yep, everyone has a purpose - a trainer, a merchant, a questholder, a guard (and they sometimes have quests too). No townsfolk just wandering about to make it feel like a real world. The major in-game events are both geared towards higher level characters (newbies need not attend) and, I've heard they are major lag-fests. There's hardly any roleplaying going on, even on the roleplay servers, so if that's your game - don't bother. And if you're like me and want to make a bunch of characters and play until you feel out which combo you want to make your main character - well you're only allowed to make five characters [total]. And I mean total amongst all the other servers. Not five PER server, but just five total. I'd be sorry I gave up my EverQuest account if this game hadn't pretty much turned me off on this kind of game altogether for now... Also, tech support is next to non-existent. My husband had trouble with his account a couple weeks after signing up, and the best they could do was give him a work-around that allowed him to get into his characters if he changed his password each time before he tried to log in. They didn't communicate with him on what they were trying to do (if anything) to fix it until he complained. I'm not sure if they ever got it fixed, it became such a hassle logging in for him - "will we get in or not tonight?" - that we stopped bothering. Half my enjoyment of these games is getting to play them with him.
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