Official Site: Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted (fka Horizons)
Studio: Virtrium LLC
Launch Date: December 9, 2003
Genre: Fantasy Sandpark
Platform: PC
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Massively Overthinking: Is ‘layering’ tech actually MMO community poison?
MOP reader ACuriousTanuki left a brilliant comment on a Palia article earlier this month that I thought deserved more discussion. Tanuki wondered about how...
Istaria plans new content, quest classifications, and revamps for races and armor in 2021
It's been about a million years since we last checked in on Istaria, fka Horizons, but that changes today thanks to the Virtrium team's...
Massively Overthinking: MMO voids that haven’t been filled
I swear, so many of the posts I bookmark on Reddit to muse on later wind up deleted, and today I've got another one,...
Massively Overthinking: Jumping the shark in MMOs
I'm sure those few people out there still bearing a grudge over the Rune-keeper would disagree with me, but one of the things that...
Massively on the Go: Animal Crossing’s housing islands from an MMO player’s perspective
One multiplayerish game that we've talked about a bit as the MOP team's been quarantined on the Golden Yacht is Animal Crossing: New Horizons....
Massively Overthinking: What one piece of knowledge would you like to impart to new MMO gamers?
A while back, I was reading on a non-MMO subreddit some comments from some younger people that made my head spin: They were informing...
Battle Bards Episode 149: Istaria aka Horizons
Is Istaria more than just “that game where you can play a dragon?” If it is, the answer might lie in its hidden repository...
MMOs You’ve Never Heard Of: TERA Origin, Astaria, NosTale, and Veloren
Welcome back to another brief roundup of MMOs and other online games you’ve (probably) never heard of!
Let's kick off our roundup with something for Japan...
Massively Overthinking: Which MMORPG, living or dead, offers the all-time best crafting experience?
Over the last couple of weeks, when I was putting in sometimes 18-hour days working on the site, I didn't really have much time...
Battle Bards Episode 116: There be dragons
Mighty and majestic, scaly in hide and shrewd of mind, smoking with fury unabated… these are the Battle Bards! Also, dragons. Yes, in today’s...
Re-examining Asheron’s Call’s Shard of the Herald event on its first deathiversary
Although the Asheron's Call series has now been dead for exactly one year today, it's far from forgotten by fans. It was admittedly a cult classic, and...
Massively Overthinking: What’s the smallest MMO you’re willing to play?
A comment on Reddit about the current size and viability of Kritika Online got me thinking about MMO playerbases in general lately. We all...
Halloween events across the MMORPG verse, 2017 edition
Hey, you. Yeah, you, dude leeching candy from the bucket you bought "for the neighborhood kids." And you, lady still trying to decide between...
Massively Overthinking: Is open-world housing really a ‘failed’ MMORPG experiment?
Massively OP's Justin Olivetti has a provocative article on his personal gaming blog, Bio Break, this week on MMORPG housing.
"I once again wonder why...
Perfect Ten: 10 MMORPGs with playable fairies
Probably my greatest and most constant gripe about fantasy MMORPGs is that for all of the freedom and imagination that this genre supposedly boasts,...
Perfect Ten: MMOs that changed their names
Names and titles fascinate me. While sometimes they have no deeper meaning than to sound pleasant and be memorable, a label can indicate purpose,...
Istaria kicks off Halloween early with a community contest
It makes sense, sort of, that in an MMO where you can dress up as a dragon year-round that Halloween might be a favored...
Whatever happened to PlanetSide 2, A Tale in the Desert, and Istaria?
Ever pause during your day and find yourself wondering, "What ever happened to that game?" With hundreds upon hundreds of online titles these days, it's surprisingly...
Massively Overthinking: Being Uncle Owen in MMORPGs
Ever since the tone-deaf SOE proclamation that nobody wanted to play Uncle Owen in an MMORPG, contrary me has consciously fought that very stupid...
Massively Overthinking: Competitive PvE in MMORPGs
During last week's podcast, Justin and I bumped into a tangential topic about competitive PvE and how relatively rare it is in MMORPGs, which...
