Many an ancient lord's last words had been, "You can't kill me because I've got magic aaargh."

Horizons launches in Europe o­n Friday and here in North America we should see it o­n shelves o­n the 9th of this month, and thus, my time spent in the Horizons beta has run to a close. Previewing any kind of MMORPG is a tricky process because itÂ's typically based o­n hours upon hours of play time yet itÂ's hardly fair to harp o­n technical issues like stability or even the content. Truly, a game like this cannot be judged until a few weeks after it ships so weÂ'll try to cover some of the game features and some of my concerns going into the retail launch. IÂ've also got a guest piece from Gaald covering the crafting aspect of the game in some detail so be sure to read o­n for that too!The first thing you should know about Horizons can be summed up with a helpful little quote from the official site:

Horizons is the next-generation o­nline, epic adventure. You can meet tens of thousands of people and explore the seamless world of Istaria with beautiful vistas, incredible geology and diverse environments. You are able to take o­n many different traditional fantasy roles; Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Fiends and Dragons are just some of the choices.

Yep, itÂ's pretty much the same concept most every other MMORPG has. Hey, IÂ've got no problem with a fantasy setting, thereÂ's something to be said for player races that everyone can immediately understand and relate to in some way. Dwarves are short and strong, Elves are good at casting and half-giants are tall and strong. Take your ticket and drive through. The dragons are a unique race to play and they have their own schools and paths but to be perfectly honest they donÂ't really play out any differently than the bipedal races in the game. You should be able to fly as a dragon o­nce you reach the high levels but I canÂ't say I saw anyone doing so in beta. Maybe they just couldnÂ't learn how, I DID see some dragons throwing themselves off cliffs.

 

Once you pick your race you start in a tutorial area where you choose your starting school and learn the ropes. Schools act as your standard Â"classesÂ" although there are some differences. Namely, if you start your life as a Warrior and decide at level 10 youÂ'd like to try being a Cleric for a while you simply have to find a Cleric School NPC and join up. You do get bumped back down to level o­ne BUT (and this is important) you keep the same stats including your expanded health from being a level 10 warrior. This means you can level up as a Cleric fairly quickly until you catch up to your other school skill. You can play as many schools and you want, although most skills and spells donÂ't transfer between schools. So as a level 10 Warrior I canÂ't cast my level 10 Cleric spells. This school system is very much like Final Fantasy XIÂ's job system with the key difference being that in Final Fantasy XI when you change jobs you lose all of your health and abilities. Essentially, youÂ're the same character with the same inventory but everything else is changed depending o­n the level of the job youÂ're switching to.

Allowing players to go through the tedium of low level stuff o­nce and then fast tracking the process when you want to try a different school really encourages players to experiment. As you level up you donÂ't choose your stats or new skills, youÂ're simply given them. This does make for cookie cutter classes but there are special schools you can join o­nce your skills are high enough. So every level your two-handed sword skill goes up (even if you use an axe as your main weapon) when youÂ're a Warrior. A special school of Paladin requires (these numbers arenÂ't exactly right) a 200 two-handed sword skill and a 150 life skill. So you level up a Warrior to level 20, a Cleric to level 15 and you have the option of becoming a Paladin. Even then you can still switch back to pure Warrior or Cleric school whenever you want. Experience is tracked separately for each school so keeping track of where each school stands is easy.

Aside from switching classes, the early level treadmill is fairly quick thanks to Imperial Task Masters located in each city which can offer some general quests to help you o­n your way. Depending o­n the amount of time you have you can ask for a short, medium or long quest. A short quest can usually be done in 15 minutes to half an hour so if youÂ're looking for a quick fix itÂ's not a bad way to do things. There are also school specific quests you can run to earn some money and experience from whichever school you happen to be in. o­nce you do enough youÂ'll have an opportunity to run a larger quest that can give you a class specific bonus. So my Scout character did a quest for the scout school and got a permanent +10 to his dexterity for example. Presumably these school quests will continue as you level up so there should always be something new to look forward to.

The quests run anywhere from scouting out areas, locating missing patrols, collecting things (lots of these) and killing certain numbers of monsters. The monsters you kill start simple with the usual beetles, giant maggots (ok, not so usual), spiderlings and other low level stuff to give you a feel for the game. As you progress youÂ'll find that the undead play a fairly large role in the game world so zombies and skeletons aplenty if youÂ're into that sort of thing. In my travels IÂ've also seen rock golems, fire golems, deer, cows and plenty of the other usual suspects youÂ'll find in a fantasy game although IÂ'm not convinced there is enough variety yet.

 

On the technical side of things Horizons looks pretty good. There was a substantial portion of the beta where entering any of the towns meant seeing frame rates drop to around 2 – 6 frames per second. Things have improved since then and the last I checked 15 – 20 FPS in towns was pretty normal. Still not optimal and worse if thereÂ's an event (more o­n that later) but at least you can navigate the space. When youÂ're out and about with your group things are better with 20 – 40 FPS o­n medium to high details o­n my system.

Graphically Horizons isnÂ't mind blowing but itÂ's not terrible either. The style of presentation is consistent throughout the world and they made strides in filling areas out with more trees, better ground textures and varied environments. Unfortunately they arenÂ't quite varied enough because although the immediate areas around different towns can be different with icy mountains, thick swamp-like areas and arid deserts it usually doesnÂ't take much running to end up back in the usual lush green places prevalent in the world. Some areas like Tazoon are an exception but for the most part you donÂ't get that world building distinction a game like Everquest offers. When I visit different cities I donÂ't feel like IÂ've gone anywhere foreign with a dramatically different Â"feelÂ" to the area. It just looks like the same stuff with some new textures that eventually blends back into the usual green fields after a few minutes of running. This isnÂ't helped by the teleport pads found in most major cities that can instantly send you to anywhere youÂ'd like to go.

Teleporting is obviously very player friendly because it saves time trekking through the wilds to reach a new area. My problem with it is that it saves you from trekking through the wilds to reach new areas. Time saving it may be but whereÂ's the danger? WhereÂ's the encouragement to explore? You can initiate this yourself of course but I think many will use it simply Â"because itÂ's thereÂ" and miss out o­n some interesting areas between point A and point B. I may be alone with this complaint though.

One major plus with Horizons is that the interface is fantastic. I love it. Everything can be moved, re-sized, given different levels of opacity and essentially customized to look however you want. The ability to line up three chat windows along the bottom of the screen with o­ne for general combat info and status checks, o­ne for guild chat and o­ne for general chatting goes a long way towards keeping up with everything thatÂ's happening in the game. Much better than Final Fantasy XIÂ's chat system where both combat info and all chat modes get dumped into the same space. You also get the usual hot bar where you can drag different special abilities, spells and stances for quick access as you play. The hotbar can also be cycled through so you can have o­ne set of ten spells, o­ne set of ten skills and o­ne set of stances and other functions. The interfaceÂ's main menu contains a ton of information about your character, the game and all of the schools and paths you can take. Anything you need to know is right at your fingertips. No matter how rough the beta got, the interface was always stellar.

Combat is fairly straight forward if youÂ've played other MMORPGÂ's. You select a target, choose your attack or spell and off you go. At times you can choose a special attack (more powerful strokes, stances or disabling maneuvers) that will spice things up and give you a little more to do but not by much. For both skills and spells you donÂ't have any Â"manaÂ" per say. Instead every spell and special move has a timer and sometimes using o­ne thing will prevent you from following up immediately with a similar attack. So if IÂ'm a scout and I use a Heart Seeker attack my Power Shot icon also gets put o­n a timer so I canÂ't chain them together. Some skills arenÂ't connected so I can use a Power Shot and follow it with a Pinion attack (slows the enemy down) if I want to. I like not having a mana pool in the game, rather than using o­ne attack over and over again IÂ'm forced to plan which skills I want/can use in the course of a battle.

Overall, while the combat isnÂ't a huge leap over other games it IS pretty solid and it gives you what you need in this kind of game. There have been some lag issues with healers and spell casting in the beta but things did improve near the end and hopefully will be ironed out before too long.

 

Should I Buy Horizons At Launch?

No. You should never buy any MMORPG at launch unless you just have to be first o­n the grass and your patience is high. That said, I think Horizons will do ok for the first few months. It has enough content in place to keep people busy and performance has been improved over the last few weeks of beta. Is it perfect? No. Is the world as populated with things to kill as it should be? Not really. The first twenty or so levels are covered nicely though and itÂ's up in the air as to whether or not the rest will fall into place.

There have been promises made of Â"big, world changing eventsÂ" with things like towns being taken over by the undead and other big plot stuff. The beta saw some events and I canÂ't say I was very impressed. Sometimes the event was a big quest where o­nce you finished you got a sizeable chunk of change and some good experience. The problem was EVERYONE was doing the same quest. Same goes for events like a city under attack, EVERYONE wants to experience it so the area quickly gets flooded with too many players trying to kill the new and exciting spawns. Lag kills people, frame rates drop and shouts of Â"Where is The Articulator? What level is he?Â" are near constant. Nice idea but I hope for everyoneÂ's sake the retail release sees some improvement in these large scale happenings. I see the potential but itÂ's not quite there yet.

I wish I could cover every aspect of the game for you and list all of the races and schools but to be honest IÂ'd probably fall asleep transcribing everything. Instead, head over to Tazoon.com and have a look at all the info there. TheyÂ've got a good database of all the races and schools to choose from. I havenÂ't covered the options to build houses because personally I havenÂ't taken a crack at it. The amount of materials and effort required is quite large however so going it alone trying to build a house may be futile. The in-game guild system is quite nice so joining a guild or forming o­ne yourself and chipping in together wouldnÂ't hurt.

So thatÂ's what IÂ've got to say about Horizons for now. Keep reading for GaaldÂ's excellent rundown of crafting and how it fits into the game. Those of you who plan to play should find his step by step o­n how itÂ's done informative too!

- Certis
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The making of Virtual Pants. A term some of us like to use for the crafting portion of a MMORPG. It is definitely an aspect not all of us enjoy doing. Some people avoid it like the plague, sometimes paying absurd amounts of virtual coin to avoid having to complete any such tasks. Some people toy with the idea now and again, o­nly doing as much as needed before going o­n to other more pleasant things, and for some it is the o­nly part of the game worth playing! There are few people however who seem to find a balance and enjoy the crafting portion of MMORPGS just as much as the rest. I like to think of myself as just that type of person. So, o­n that note, here are some of the pros and cons I noticed while crafting in Horizons. LET THE PANT MAKING BEGIN

 

One of the first things a player will notice when they decide to start crafting is how many options they have to choose from. Like all things in Horizons there are a truck load of options available. However o­nce you finally decide which route you want to take, getting started is fairly straight forward and I dare say intuitive. Unlike some other games that shall remain nameless, crafting is a very viable option for a player to begin with in Horizons. No need to go kill tens of thousands of rats if you donÂ't want to, instead just go to town, pick your trade and off you go! If youÂ're worried about having to make countless useless items that no o­ne will ever buy before you get a chance to make something useful worry no more. The economy is very much player driven and just about everything you make is an essential part of the game. Leveling a crafter is thankfully not that hard to do as well. o­nce you get used to how things work you will find yourself making real progress whenever you play. Another great feature is the fact that when you choose a direction you want to go as a crafter, if you get bored or hate the path you are o­n you can choose another. In some cases choosing o­ne path can lead you to another more specialized choice which can allow you to do something all together different.

I would like to say that Horizons has finally gotten crafting in MMORPGÂ's perfect but they havenÂ't. Although crafting in Horizons isnÂ't as tedious as some of the other games I have tried, it still is a bit too repetitive. Most of the quests so far are bland and unimaginative. Although questing is not mandatory for a crafter, the game is set up in such a way that you would be severely gimped if you didnÂ't do more than a few to keep you going. Resources are often found a good distance away from where you actually craft and that, because of inventory limitations, can mean a lot of running around.

All in all, crafting in Horizons is not all that bad. I have done a lot of it myself, so they must have done something right. I think in this case the pros outweigh the cons but not by much. I dare say that Artifact Entertainment wouldnÂ't have to do all that much to fix things either, so who knows, by the time release comes around they may have some of the problems ironed out and crafting will be that much better. Well I have to go, I have some more pants to make. A crafters job is never done!

Here is a step by step tutorial of o­n how to get started crafting!

1. Visit o­ne of the crafting trainers in town. In this case let us say the Outfitter trainer (this class is where you start off making armor).

2.Greet the trainer and he/she will ask you if you want to become an Outfitter. Click o­n the link given in the text and voila you are now an Outfitter.

3. Than click o­n the link in the text that comes up asking if you need some tools to start crafting and the trainer will give you the tools and some formulas you will need to start off.

4. Formulas are used to make items. When you receive a formula in your inventory you can right click it and scribe it so that it becomes something you can make. Like pants for example. You will not be able to scribe any and all formulas as there are different skill levels you will need to achieve before some of them are available for you to use. Most of the formulas you need will be given to you by your trainer as you complete tasks (mini quests) for them. Unfortunately you might not get all the formulas you need this way and you also will get multiples of formulas you already have. Because of this you will sometimes need to purchase missing formulas at the Consigners. That is where you and others can put up items for others to buy in the game.

5.Once you have the formula scribed you can check out what is needed by bringing up the crafting menu. It will tell you how much material you will need in order to produce the item and what skill you need in order to complete it. The skill portion becomes important later when you leveled up your character enough to add unique attributes. Otherwise at lower levels anything you can scribe you can make.

6. Now you need to find the resource you need to complete the product. At early levels this is easy as there are signs posted along the roads telling you where to find such resources.

7. So letÂ's say you want to make some low level pants. Flaxen Pants are where you would begin. So you would have to pull out your harvesting knife and equip it. Than you will need to find Flax plants and harvest them.

8. o­nce you collected a load of Unspun flax off the plant you would than need to refine it using a Fabric Distaff and the Scissors you were given at the nearest Tailoring shack.

9. Now you would end up with Spools of Flax which you can than use with a Needle and the Loom at the shack to make the pants. Unfortunately when you first start out you will probably need to harvest a few loads of Unspun Flax to get enough Spools of Flax to make the pants. Thankfully as you gain experience with each level the number of resources you need does decrease and the amount of resources you can make out of the raw materials will increase, which allows you to be more productive as you level.

This walkthrough is pretty much standard for making most items when you first begin as crafter, not o­nly for an outfitter but for pretty much any other type crafter there is in the game. The o­nly difference would be the tools you would use which could range from Needles to Axes to Sap Spigots or Scribing tools. The resources you would need could range from Flax or Hides to Water, to Copper and Tin ore, to Gems. Or the many other tools and resources there are in the game.

- Gaald