E3 2002: Horizons preshow report

Artifact Entertainment will have its online RPG Horizons at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles. The game itself will be a fantasy-themed massively multiplayer game along the lines of EverQuest or Dark Age of Camelot, though it will have a few notable differences.

Horizons first appeared on the scene a few years back, and since then, the game and its development team have both undergone some major changes. For starters, fantasy artist Doug Shuler is no longer providing art for the game--all of Horizons' artwork is now being done by Artifact's in-house design team. In addition, Artifact is stepping up its game engine development. While the company had originally planned to focus entirely on making the new game, it now plans to license out the game's Evolution engine and editing tools to other online game developers. Artifact also recently licensed business software company Geodesic Systems' Great Circle and High Availability Runtime technology to help with the development of Horizons, specifically to help keep the game running stably over Internet servers.

A few years back Artifact Entertainment had promised some very impressive-sounding features to the public. These features may or may not ultimately make it into the game, and as a result, the company has been very tight-lipped about Horizons. Horizons will still be a fantasy-themed online role-playing game, and it will still take place in a large, colorful world populated by fantasy races, such as elves and dwarves. And like in other online role-playing games, in Horizons you will begin by creating a new adventurer from one of these races, then jump into the game's world and explore, fight monsters, and acquire treasure. But Artifact has made it clear that Horizons will still keep the game's most intriguing feature: the ability to play as dragon characters. That's right, although Horizons will let you choose to be elves, dwarves, or humans, it will also let you choose to be a dragon. Naturally, playing a dragon will be a lot different from playing a more-conventional fantasy race, but how Artifact will actually implement playable dragons, their size, abilities, and strengths, remains to be seen.

Horizons currently has no specific release date. We'll have more information from the show floor.