The classic MMORPG Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted (aka Horizons) has made it to 20 years of operation, which would lead one to think that developer Virtrium wouldn’t want to upset the sauce. However, the beginning of this year saw a major change to the game in the form of a combat overhaul — an update so massive, it required two pages of patch notes.
The changes themselves were sweeping indeed according to a granular deep-dive from lead designer Jason Murdick, affecting pretty much every major portion of battle in the MMORPG, from accuracy to avoidance, damage mitigation to dispelling. The entire revamp arrived to the game on Tuesday, January 30th.
Now that the overhaul has had three months of in-game life, the devs are processing the aftermath as it discusses what changes may have been missed since they’re under the hood and outlines plans like adding more ways to improve crit rating and tactical mastery, finding out a way to display accuracy (which apparently isn’t as easy as that sounds), and fixing bugs.
The same post also looks ahead over the rest of 2024 — aka the Year of the Dragon — and all of its coming updates, which will mostly focus on smaller changes, balance tweaks, and further combat follow-up. Some of these updates include a facelift for the Rite of Passage, a new epic, visual improvements to the game’s zones, and even more bug fixes.
