Istaria Chronicles of the Gifted (Horizons)

[Aada]

Not sure if many of you played this but i played this at release and to be honest it was probably one of the best MMO i had played up to that point sure it had it's problems and almost died twice! but has surpassed even some of the multi million dollar mmo's that have come and gone.

I have revisted this MMO several times and enjoyed every moment of my time there and 7 days ago i logged in once more, started from scratch with a new Hatchling Dragon on a free 14 day trial.

The game has changed so much there is a lot of content to go through and it is very confusing to start off with but the community in this game is probably one of the best i've ever encountered, after about 10mins i started asking questions how to do this and that etc and people were literally bending over backwards trying to help me out. It actually felt refreshing to play an MMO and not be called a noob etc for not knowing what i'm doing lol.

You can actually be a Dragon start as a Hatchling eventually become an Adult Dragon with the abilty to fly and look pretty huge as well and then you could become an Ancient Dragon which dwarfs the Adult Dragons. Probably one of the main attractions for the game.

Besides this you can play up to 9 other Races called Bipeds and become 1 of 30 or so classes that are in the game but if you wanted you could actually master EVERY class in the game on that single character, it might take a life time but you can do it.

Also a very deep crafting system is in place in this game and it is as awesome as i remember it and over the years gone by they have added more and more to it.

Also probably one of the only games to come out where you literally build your House from the ground up! Literally placing the foundations and then the bricks/roof the list goes on

I was running a long the road the other day and saw around 5 people around a empty plot they had just bought and within minutes these guys were to work on it building the foundations and i started to see the brick work go up before i left.

Dragon Lairs are now in something that has been in for only a few years basically like a plot but in a cave and you the player build your lair from scratch and some of the lairs are absolutely huge and i'm told it can take months to build places like this.

I read recently that a lot of old school MMO players are going back to the pre WoW mmo's because they feel that they are still the best and i feel this is true to be honest.

Anyway if you are bored of the usual MMO then why not try Istaria? sure i won't like about the graphics they are coming on 7 years old but they still hold their own in my opinion and if you can get past that and give the game a proper go then you might just find something a little special that dispite all odds has survived 2 near death experiences and has one of the best communities in any game. I won't lie server population is probably 200 or so people at prime time.

If you are not bothered about making a dragon you can actually have a free account for 1 biped character that you won't have to pay for.

I've rambled on i know but i feel so far i've just had an awesome 7 days in this game again and wanted to share it

Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted

 

[svartalf]

I played Horizons in beta and contributed thought crafting to freeing the (satyr?) first expanded race a few weeks after release. The game was the first I played after daoc, and it was interesting, but had massive laggy problems and the gameplay and combat was a bit crappy.

On the good side, I really loved the buildings, and the massive city was really something. The player-driven market was a great and novel, if difficult to master, concept.

I think this was one of the first games to allow players to build their own house and contribute towards an objective via building things in the gameworld (aforementioned freeing of satyrs was via a player-made tunnel iirc). It had novel features which I had suggested Daoc implement, to no avail. Having said this, more recent games have taken up the mantle to some extent, though I feel there's a massive amount more that could and should be done to make gameworlds more interactable.

Having said all of this, I would never go back. The game felt wierd at best, and the lag was still there years later. And I couldn't get them to stop spamming my email!

 

[ford prefect]

I played Horizons for a good while after release too, but a few other MMO's were released around that time and I never went back to it. I might give it another go, I always enjoyed playing the bipeds a bit more than the dragons tbh.

 

[Aada]

I think i've come back to the game 2 times since i left at release, i just have a really soft spot for the game.

Prehaps it's the community and not having to deal with Barrens style chat in most new games these days, actually quite refreshing to have a conversation in the game without some Coca Cola driven kid on a rampage because his sugar level is high.

Combat is still pre wow ie a bit slower and not action based.

Just really having a nice chilled out time on the game to be honest something i haven't encountered on an MMO for a long long time.

 

[Fafnir]

Might give this a try since Star Trek has grown boring after a month.

 

[ford prefect]

Yeah, also worth mnentioning that at face value it looks rather quest based, but they are purely optional. Worth doing for the first 10 or so levels if you are new to the game tho.

 

[Aada]

Yeah, also worth mnentioning that at face value it looks rather quest based, but they are purely optional. Worth doing for the first 10 or so levels if you are new to the game tho.

The only real quests are for Dragons as we get 6-7 quests every 10 levels.

Bipeds get naf all tbh maybe 3-5 quests for their entire class but then again each biped can be every single class in the game if they want.

 

[Ctuchik]

started playing this game many many years ago but i just couldn't get the hang of it.

wonder if that account still exists...

 

[ford prefect]

started playing this game many many years ago but i just couldn't get the hang of it.

wonder if that account still exists...

A friend of mine started playing it again recently. Apparently although a few shards have closed over the years, they have a complet backup of all their old databases and can restore any old toons you had. You just need to let them know the name of the toon through their support pages apparently. He managed to get back a seven year old level 45 dragon.

 

[Aada]

started playing this game many many years ago but i just couldn't get the hang of it.

wonder if that account still exists...

my account was still there and because I made a trial account I then wanted my old dragon and they transfered my old characters onto my new account at no extra charge the day I emailed support.

 

[Fafnir]

And does not look to bad on maxed settings.

 

[Ctuchik]

A friend of mine started playing it again recently. Apparently although a few shards have closed over the years, they have a complet backup of all their old databases and can restore any old toons you had. You just need to let them know the name of the toon through their support pages apparently. He managed to get back a seven year old level 45 dragon.

don't care about the toons, i never did get above lvl 10 or so...

 

[Aada]

don't care about the toons, i never did get above lvl 10 or so...

So why pay £8-9 to reactivate a sub when you can play the trial?

 

[Ctuchik]

i never said i was.

i just wondered if the account were still existing.

i wouldn't resub to that game if it were the last in existance..

 

[Tallen]

Been climbing the walls trying to find something worthwhile playing atm so might give this a look.

I honestly thought this game folded years ago

 

[Fafnir]

ordered Assassins Creed I and II White edition yesterday got both for 6 euro, getting a figurine of the hero aswell

 

[Ctuchik]

Been climbing the walls trying to find something worthwhile playing atm so might give this a look.

I honestly thought this game folded years ago

Its been really really close at least once what i know of.

they got into dispute with the company that did their subscriber billings about 5 - 6 years ago, and basically had the game free to play for almost a year before they found one that were willing to take over.

and then the company basically ran on fumes so they weren't sure if they could continue.


did a quick google to see if i could find anything about it but their old forum is closed so most of that info probably isnt available anymore, and i couldn't be arsed to search harder.