Shores of Hazeron

I played it for a bit a good while back and while I am absolutely in love with the concept I'd advise against giving this a go. The whole thing is still so wholly unoptimized and broken that it's more of a tech demo than a beta or even an alpha. I don't know how much it changed since then, but flying over the homepage and update log, not that much.

The lag with only ~30 players is already so bad that it becomes borderline unplayable and even with just around 5-10 players it's no better. On top of that the lag isn't even “evenly distributed” so if you happen to be one of the unlucky ones who burden most of the lag, well then tough luck for you.

When I tried to play I had to register for about 20 times because both the client and servers are so unreliable. There are probably currently 10 different empires all registered to my name that I can't even access because I have no character in them. The client just locks itself up in an eternal loop trying to establish a connection in which all character and empire creation choices do seem to be saved into the database, but it refuses to give you any access to either, which leaves you with attempting to create something again.

You can also join an existing empire, but I found that to be a wholly unsatisfactory experience since there is no real information about existing empires other than maybe their flag. The one Empire I did join just threw me in a city with no obvious way of doing anything or getting off the planet.

When I finally got to make my first empire things went smoothly for a while up until I got my first real spaceship. The spaceship designer is a fun concept but a horrible, horrible execution (much like the rest of the game, I guess). First off, every person that is currently in the Starship Designer pretty much doubles the load currently being done on the server. Then there's the little problem that while you can design the general layout of the ship, the dimension stay the same which caused my slightly bigger than normal (which I didn't even know thanks to the glitchy character creation) race to get stuck in the floors and walls and made them unable to move around. So there went my first race.

None of my other races ever made it to the spaceship phase, simply because the entire game is a connectivity gamble. Characters frequently get stuck in “Limbo” which is pretty much the loading screen for no apparent reason and the only way to get them out again is to send a mail to the developers and hope they eventually take them out again.

The procedural nature is one of the game's biggest pros as well as one of its biggest contras. On my first planet I pretty much lucked out and had most of my city up and running in no time. On later planets it turned out that the fauna was made up of entirely vicious carnivores which killed my character whenever possible. And seeing that there is absolutely no defense against this creatures other than killing them yourself (and good luck with that) I died a lot until I eventually gave up.

To top it all off, pretty much everything in this game reeks of “programmer art” and even “programmer design” and could hardly be any more counter-intuitive.

I personally don't have high hopes for this, because it already seems to suffer from so many bad design choices that the only thing that could save it would be starting from scratch. I don't know if network code behind it is just “bad” or if a game of this scope simply can't be done with todays technology but if you really want a game with free form MMO civilization building and galaxy conquest then this is not it. But God do wish it was.

When I was recently asked in a survey about what I'd like a game to be that was made specifically to me I basically replied with just “Shores of Hazeron with the development team and budget of WoW”.

I'd like to point out that this all sounds incredibly harsh, but that's because I only focused on the negative things here. The game can be a rewarding experience if you get lucky in getting past the game's many shortcomings.

Tried it again, couldn't create an empire because it doesn't let me select a flag, which is required to start an empire. I think it's understandable that I'm still not entirely convinced.

Again, this game is in a very early playable state. Patience is very much a requirement, but I wouldn't discourage anyone from trying it out: there's plenty of people who love it regardless.

Yes, I know. I did play this before, you know. But the button that normally brings up a file selection dialog window does nothing.

Don't forget to read the guide. That, and there are also a couple of “Let's Play” videos on YouTube.

xD To be honest today was a bad day to try, it's alot better normally then before <.< but ya know gallactic war and all tends to slow it down

I would try this, but it looks like everyone walks as fast as a turtle. The ships seem look to be that way too.

Then it's a problem on your end. Nobody else has reported such a problem.

I know this article is 4 years old, but Shores of Hazeron’s development is still going strong!

Most of all wanted to point out that the wiki link in this article is outdated. Now have an official wiki for the game at http://www.hazeron.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page .