Tulga’s Horizons

MMO Design for the Masses

by Jeff “Ethec” Woleslagle

We spoke with Jason Murdick, a key player in the just-announced “Settlements” expansion for Tulga’s Horizons: Empire of Istaria. Murdick, a Lead Content Designer at Tulga Games, began working on Horizons four months before the game went live in 2003 (interestingly, in an industry rife with turnover, Tulga’s 20-man team is composed primarily of folks from the original team). Murdick has been involved with “Settlements” from the start, and was significant in creating the expansion’s feature list (that is, new housing for dryads, dwarves, and possibly other races, decorations and furniture). While not very involved with Tulga’s other newly announced project – horror-themed MMO Dark World Online -- he promises we’ll see big things in the near future.

Murdick describes quest tool

Right now, Murdick’s focus is finishing a revamp of the first 20 levels of gameplay. For those unfamiliar with the game, dragons and “bipeds” start on different “newbie isles,” then come together from levels 20 onward (all the way to the level cap of 100).

Recently, Horizons brought fantasy author Peter Beagle into the game to write on a freelance basis. Beagle’s 112 pages of dialogue trees and branched content for his initial attempt, the “Wedding Quest,” was delivered to the live team in early April. As a content designer, Murdick was heavily involved in bringing Beagle’s quests to life using a very innovative tool, the Horizons Quest Editor.

Using a public copy of the game database, players and writers alike can use existing characters, enemies, and items to add or change their own quests. Tulga’s staff will evaluate these quests for quality before bringing the customized quests into the live game. These customized fan quests should certainly add a homespun dungeonmaster feel to the thousands of Tulga-crafted quests already in the game.

It’s been a week of exciting news and announcements from Tulga. Between the Horizon expansion “Settlements” and Dark World Online, and now the quest design tool (which has been in beta testing for several months), Tulga Games is quickly becoming one of the most ambitious and player-centric houses in the business.