Ever want to just get away from it all? Christopher Rush provides us with a beautiful piece of concept art depicting a great place for a weekend getaway. The big question is, is it really as nice as it seems? Could this island be the home of something terribly powerful or an ancient race long lost? Ah... many questions.

I'll let ya'll ponder that while you take a look at Christopher's latest work in the World Artwork section of the site!

Is it possible to be a pirate in Horizons? Will there be supply shipments that go by boat that we can rob?

Ships and their interaction with the world are going to evolve as the game progresses - there is a very good chance for what you have mentioned taking place in the game.

Is it possible to lose faction for using certain items? Like using a Dragon Tooth spear to kill a dragon? Or poison on a dagger?

While the base faction system has been finalized, there are some references to faction modifiers that have yet to be visited, but in short, I would say yes - with certain items carrying a karma or alignment reference to them, an angel picking up an evil sword...

We wanted to let the player community know what was happening with HORIZONS, and now that HORIZONS is under full-scale development, we have made the decision to add another underwater race. The main reason for this was to balance the vast underwater expanse that will exist. While we are not yet prepared to announce the name of this race, we wanted to let the community know that we are going to evolve the underwater realms even more than originally anticipated. Having said that, the initial release of HORIZONS will not feature either of the underwater races. The main reason for this is so we can release the game in a timely fashion, and focus on the realms that the player base is most familiar with. However this does not mean that we will not have Lamurians in the game; as a matter of fact, we are planning on releasing the playable underwater races roughly 3-6 months after initial release so that we have ample time to balance them properly. It is not defined as of yet whether or not these two races will be blood enemies, but they will be distinctly different, and have open conflicts.

Another reason that we decided to choose this path was to show the versatility of the game and the evolution of game features without the need of purchasing an additional patch in order to receive large-scale game enhancements. We want the player community to be excited about how HORIZONS was designed to truly grow as time passes, and this approach will define just that.

The initial release of HORIZONS will feature plenty of underwater realms, creatures, and places of adventure for land-based players to enjoy. When the Lamurians and secondary underwater race are introduced into the game, the size of the underwater world will actually be much larger than originally designed, thus creating an even larger game world.

Our goal is to work with the players of the community in order to create the best MMOG on the market. We understand that many people may be disappointed by this announcement, but please understand that our goal is to get HORIZONS into the hands of the players as soon as it is ready, and the inclusion of Lamurians was not required to do so at this point. Lamurians, and any underwater races, are going to play a very important part in the world of Istaria - at the same time, this allows us to set some basis for adding future races as well; so we hope that this decision generates more excitement for the already established player base can look forward to.

Thank you to everyone for your support!

You can see the rest of their concept art gallery here.