What’s on Horizons’ Horizon?

The VP of Artifact Entertainment, James (I could but I won’t) Jones, conducts an interview with Gamespy on behalf of the game they’re creating, the distant coming (though popular amongst the fan community) MMORPG Horizons. It starts off in the shallow end, just above the surface, but soon enough you’ll find them discussing the random quest generator, the ambitiousness of the project and more. Here’s a bucketfull of the deep stuff:

Q: Mounts (i.e. horses, mules, etc.) in 3D MMORPGs have not been utilized to date with the current crop of titles. What sort of challenges have you encountered implementing this feature into Horizons?

A: Mounts really come down to the added requirement for animations. I think this is probably one of the main reasons other titles have steered away from them. It significantly increases the time it takes to finalize characters / creatures when you introduce mounts. We have budgeted this time from the start so that we are not surprised that it takes nearly twice as long to complete characters by including mount activities. The implementation from the server/client side is actually rather simple, it’s all a matter of the extra work it requires on the modeling side.