Much like Colonel Klink of Hogan's Heroes we have ways of making people talk. Our victim today is Jason "Amon Gwareth" Murdick of Tulga Games, who will be splling the beans on Horizons.

A) The Past - What Was...and What Isn't Anymore. Jason, please educate those that haven't played Horizons with some general information about the game as it was at launch and up to the Tulga buy-out.

Well, a lot has changed in Horizons since the game was released. The most obvious change is that we have merged our servers from 11 to 3. But the world also underwent some dramatic changes during “the merge” as most players term it. That is, there was a huge event that involved a cataclysm and much of the world changed. Monster spawn regions changed, NPC locations changed, and quests changed.

The other big change since release has been the size of the company. We went from having quite a few developers to being a very small family, I guess you could call it. There aren’t very many of us, but we all work hard on the game and we’re dedicated to making it better each and every day.

B) The Present - What stage is the game at today? Are dragons now fully implemented? How does Horizons stack up to the current MMOGs on the market?

Horizons is in a state of improvement right now. Over the last eight to ten months we’ve been working hard to fix bugs, complete some of the things we have said would be in long ago, and establish a foundation on which new players to the game would enjoy themselves, while attempting to add content for the long-term players to keep them coming back.

Dragons are nearing their a well-rounded state of implementation with the upcoming release of the Ancient Rite of Passage and Lairs. But there is no final point at which we’ll stand back and say “this is complete”. MMOs are always a work in-progress, always changing and growing, so the implementation of the entire game is never done.

I don’t really like to compare it to other MMOs on the market. We’ve worked hard to overcome some of the problems from the early stages of the game and we’re still here. We may not have 4 million subscribers, but we have a dedicated core group of players that have formed a great community and hopefully will continue to support us as we grow the game.

C) The Future - What is planned for the game in the coming six months? year?

The immediate focus of the design team is on getting the Ancient Rite of Passage released to the live shards, finishing up Lairs and getting them out to players, and then working on some other areas, such as revamping Confectioners, making sure that the “newbie” experience is solid and entertaining. Beyond that, we’ve got a design preview that lists more of our goals and it can be read here.

Putting the broader picture behind us for a moment, let's take a closer look at the game.