Thats what happens when you ruin the original idea for the game to cry and cash in.

Totally correct. I remember, way back when, when Horizons had 2 screenies up at HorizonsVault and the idea behind HZ was a UO players dream... the dream... to play a UO style game in a huge 3D environment (which Origins should have done LONG ago). I don't care what people think of David Allen, his original ideas for HZ were just awesome and HZ had a huge following going with great momentum that actually helped them secure funding. Once all teh funding and attention was attained DA was pushed out of the picture, the design doc changed and hence a PoS was sent to the public.

I am glad HZ failed, serves the greedy SoB's right and now I hope James Jones and David Bowmans (formerly of Turbine) names are both trashed in the industry.

Currently, we are in talks with a seriously interested company that wants to acquire the assets of the company while retaining key staff to maintain operations of Horizons.

Please, say it isn't Derek Smart trying to merge Horizons, BC and Freespace.

Sorry, I just had to.

As I understand it Steam's subscription stuff is a way of enabling developers to charge for content but doesn't necessarily mean they will - for example that pirates MMOG that will be distributed via steam. HL2 appears to be on a direct purchase model with the steam system primarily an anti piracy measure, its a massive over statement but its possible that for all their problems Steam and similar models could be the 'savior' of PC gaming.

YES!

Artifact.. DIE!

Thats what happens when you ruin the original idea for the game to cry and cash in.

MMORPGs offer developers a decent economic model. Obviously they have to get it right to keep subscribers. With piracy rampant it simply isn't true that making a good game guarantees success. There are a number of developers who've made decent games (and they can't all be blockbusters) who've had to shut down or move development to hand-helds, phones or consoles. Some of these wannabe MMORPG people just took a gamble - let's do more and hope for bigger returns, instead of spending 2 years making a game that could be critically successful and still only sell 20,000 copies.

Valve are on the money with what they're doing. Best value, in their opinion, will be the monthly subscription. Look at EQ with half a million subscribers. If Valve can lock in just 100,000 people to subscribe to steam that'll be around a million dollars income a month. With largely static content and relatively minor server load apart from updates day. I know that's a gross oversimplification but you get the idea. Plus they're hosting other games.

With that kind of income they can be more confident about making great games. Hopefully.

At the end of the day we'll probably be left with small independent games with low overheads and big subscription based games from the large publishers. Nobody else will be able to make any money, unless somebody comes up with a foolproof anti-piracy system. Which isn't going to happen any time soon.

Hey,

Put out a good game and you won't tank. Have a nice day.

Um isn't Horizions the MMORPG that the head guy at EQ and his "dream" left to go make?
If so then WOOT!

I thought Horizons was a good game. It had the best crafting system I have ever tried. It needed alot of work, but that's true for all mmorpgs If they turned this into a 4-16 player game with a server customization program then they could at least keep Horizons alive. :O

They did not deliver on their game, not on its release, not even now. It shows that you cannot make a crappy MMORPG's now-a-days and expect to survive...well this company along with all those other's that are failing

The market has been saturated, and now its shrinking back down, hopefully companies will stop trying to make these stupid games, and concentrate on real games.

Thats not to say MMORPG's are bad. They are fun time-sinks, but require too much development and money for these new or inexperienced companies to be successful at creating them, and its beginning to show.

Plus I think we can attribute lack of good PC games to some of them. Too much time wasted developing this crap instead of focusing on something smaller in a single player form that could have been great.

In the end, there can be only one.

Artifact has always sucked. It's a wonder they've survived this long. MOG's will continue to get better as they weed out the chaff.


"Sit, Ubu, sit. Good dog." "Woof!"
- Gary David Goldberg

If he is talking about Horizons, they are probably the only two people that play, any more.

Is this the failure that makes MMORPGs dead?