I picked up a copy of Horizons: Empire of Istaria today. It’s a game I had the “pleasure” of beta testing. Not that the beta was as bad as Shadowbane or anything. Horizons does have a very cool trade skill system. But that is really it.

I install and patch. When the game loads it tells you your in que for authorization. I was 150 something in line. Finally the game loads. All I see is sky and fog, and a few buttons for character creation that don’t do anything when clicked on. I decide to go look at the support page over at the games site. These two paragraphs were in red:

3/10/04 Following today’s maintenance, players are reporting that when they login the only thing they see is the sky and fog. Our development team is aware of this issue and we are currently working on a resolution for this. Please do not open a case regarding this since it is an issue that we are already looking into.

3/10/04 (3PM PST) There is currently an issue with players logging into the website and into the game. We are aware of the current situation and we are limiting the number of players that can login at once, lessening the load on the web and game servers. If you are having difficultly logging in, please do not submit a support case. Instead please wait 15 minutes and then try logging in again.

So I’m supposed to wait? I can’t open a support case. I can’t do dick with this game I wasted 50 bucks on? But I did do something. I uninstalled the game and canceled my free 30 days for this piece of shit. It’s now my back drink coaster, just in case my Shadowbane disk fails in that job.

This is just another event that makes me really happy with Mythic and their game Dark Age of Camelot. Some of these game developers should quit before they have to inflict this shit on the people that play these games.

So in summary. If you see this game on the shelves in your local software retailer just walk away. It’s not worth the trouble. Play Camelot or even that god damned EQ if you have to.