Horizons bites the dust

[Axecleaver]

Artifact Entertainment lays off 75% of staff including developers and cust svc:

Developer Goodbye Post
IGN reports half the staff sacked

Looks like the community manager position has been eliminated, as well as at least four of the developers who were invovled since the beginning of the project.

This game had such promise. Then the redesign and blackout period, and the beta. I thought the beta was kind of fun but empty, unfinished... but I played anyway and did a lot of crafting and just general hangin out. Though there was few people to talk to. Axelet and I had fun making characters and doing stuff in the game world.

I cancelled my account ... sort of... about a month ago. AE had never billed me, and then after 3 or 4 months I got a message that my account was suspended for lack of payment. I wasn't able to sign up and pay so I just let it die.

RIP Horizons

[Zutroy]

The lag is what killed it for me.  Honestly, if it hadn't been for that I probably would have bought it and played for at least a couple months after beta was over. Running around empty towns at 3 fps was sickening.

I wasn't a big fan of the combat system either.

[Caohmin]

I didn't like the combat system either, but I did think it had some promise.

Speaking of lag: I remember in the beta when you'd get hit with a lag spike and then all of a sudden both you and the mob would execute about 5 swings/spells in a row and then you or the mob would fall over and then it was over.

Of course, this was all in beta because I could never get the piece of crap game to run after it went live.

[Axecleaver]

Yeah, they still have horrid problems with ATI cards. When mine burnt up and I used my old GeForce 4200 I got about 30 fps in the cities instead of 4 or 5. Guess they ain't gonna fix that now, lol

Here's my favorite quote from the IGN article:

Bowman did mention that the financial stability provided by the cuts will allow Artifact to discuss possible new projects with various potential publishing partners. While no details on these projects are available right now...

Axe translation: There's a chance that we're going to get a call from somebody with tons of work and money delivered right to our door and will pull us out of this huge mess we're in! There's also a chance I'll win the lottery and not have to deal with this crap anymore.

[Amberryl]

im sure another company will come in, sweep up the dust, add PvP and fix the bugs, and a new horizons games will be coming soon

[Sodom]

My account is still paid up (they charged me another $12.95 yesterday), but I haven't played in months. I don't even have the game installed on the PC I'm using now. Anybody know the web link you use to close your account?

[Siddhartha]

Comedy is easy. Software is hard.

I feel bad for the devs. They prolly were faced with completely out-of-the-ass deadlines, souped up on their own pent-up testosterone, hence over-optomistic with their own projections of what was possible; coupled with clueless Project managers who didn't "KnowBetter" TM than to take their or the upper management's adolescent projections at face value.

Hey - at least I'm not bitching about Scouts any more. I've entered my Scout happy place. I tried to set up a boycott on critshot, and it flew like the Hindenburg. So now I know its not just everyone else that doesn't give a crap about the Archers crusade - Archers don't care either.

So yeah, I'm in the happy place with that.

At least my birthday isn't coming up.

Oh and I waited 5 hours today to find out that my flight was canceled. - Course I was sucking down beer when they "announced it three times Sir." So I don't feel too bad about that either.

I would log in now and drool all over /gu, but I've got to get up at 5:30 to catch my little "make-up" flight.

Over and out

Thanks very much for your time and patience

[Axecleaver]

ibill.com to cancel. Theoretically.

I just spent all night getting our stupid medicare program working to hit the 9am golive date. Guess what target we didn't hit. Turns out if you keep people up for 30-40 hours straight they start making mistakes.

[Sodom]

All canceled. I'm paid up til July 13th, just in case I have second thoughts