Horizons: The Future of Horizons

Prior to August 31, 2004 we will complete and make available the following:

Client Performance: This is an ongoing project for us. The team is continuing the progress on Crashes to Desktop (CTD) errors, frame rate improvement and rendering errors. We have been successful in broadening the number of configurations that do not see these problems, but will continue to hunt down the remaining problems.

Tier V and VI Content: We are introducing Monsters through and past level 120. This includes entirely new Monster types. We are creating Quests (and reworking many of the old Quests). We are introducing Resources through Tier VI. We are introducing Techniques through Tier VI. We are introducing Formulae through Tier V. Players will discover new landmasses. The Withered Aegis will have a new agenda and some of their locations in the world will be assailable by the players. This will result in those locations being cleared of Withered Aegis forces.

New Plots and Communities: We will at least triple the currently available plots. These plots will be added to existing Player Communities, near Empire Communities, and in entirely new locations and newly discovered land. All structures are now tiered through VI and will have a specific purpose. For some, the purpose will be purely aesthetic, but for most the purpose will involve: storage, machines or computer controlled characters such as trainers and consigners. All styles of plots (Industrial, Commercial and Residential) will have structures that have purpose. The first style of architecture that will be complete will be Human. Interior improvements to these structures will become available as they are completed after August 31, 2004. The exterior size and appearance will be final. Other racial styles will be introduced following August 31, 2004.

Due to the low concentrations of players per shard, we have been considering consolidating players to a fewer number of shards for some time now. With the recent Chapter 11 filing, it might become necessary to implement this sooner rather than later. No date has yet been set for this, but with the benefits to the game and the changes to the company it seems both likely and imminent. If this occurs, we will be creating two new shards; one for role-playing characters, and the other for non-role-playing characters. (We will also probably maintain a Blight testing shard.) I've listed below some of the issues with which we've been dealing and current proposed solutions:
· Moving characters and their belongings from their current shards to the new shards. (This has been solved and should be smoothly done whenever this might occur.)
· Renaming characters with conflicting names. (Conflicting names would be renamed XXXX of shardname and be marked so players may rename themselves what they wish.)
· Renaming guilds with conflicting names. (Conflicting names would be renamed XXXX of shardname and can be renamed by the guild steward.)
· Structures on plots. (Owners would receive "coupons" worth the applied resource values for the structures. These coupons could be redeemed against new structures without the necessity of skill, tools or new resources and would apply that amount of building material to the new structure.)
· Items in storage on plots. (These would be forced to owner's vault.)
· Plots. (Owners would receive a "token" that could be used in the bidding on the new plots in the new shards. It's important to understand that the two new shards would be entirely new and no player would own plots on these shards prior to the consolidation. These tokens would have priority over coin bids. These tokens would have priority over other tokens when applied toward the same plot from a previous shard. Ties would be resolved by random selection.)
· Guilds and groups of players that own land together. (Some of the new plots are marked as "Guild". Guild plots are linked to a single key plot. This plot acts like the Keep plot, unlocking the other guild plots when a Guild Hall is completed on the key plot. We are the least comfortable with this proposal, and are especially interested in constructive debate on this topic.)
· Relation of plots to resources, transportation, danger, location etc. (We are changing the distribution of many of these but not all. The plots on the new shards will not be auctioned for one week after consolidation. Bids can be placed during that time. At the end of the week, plots, which currently exist on today's shards, will be auctioned first. This will give players time to evaluate the new lay-of-the-land. New plots will then be auctioned in a rolling availability.)
· European players. (All of these changes in content will be available to the three European shards. We are working with Game Network to avoid any impact on the European players. Negotiations continue.)

After the above changes are introduced (and following a consolidation if that occurs), we will continue to provide bug fixes, upgrades, events, new content etc. The following is a list of items we will be working on after August 31, 2004:
· Dragon Lairs
· Ancient Rite of Passage
· Item Decay for Tier VI items
· Item Decay for Blighted Armor, Blighted Weapons and Blighted Tools. (These will be monster dropped.)
· School advancement from 100 to 120.

We are making good progress on our goals. For those of you who have been supportive of our efforts, thank you, it helps.

David Bowman