I've been struck while playing online role-playing games by the fact that they tend to be about killing opponents in order to become better able to kill more opponents. Because this was taking place in a persistent world with many other people to compare against, it was entertaining as long as there were new opponents to kill. Then, the repetitive nature of this act became apparent and I felt disenchanted because it began to feel pointless. The only goal was self-centered.

While creating Horizons, we've concentrated on providing multiple goals. Horizons does let you kill monsters in order to get better at killing monsters, but it also provides context for that act by better preparing you to defend communities from the acts of those monsters. In addition to this, you can also achieve many other goals related to not just your character's killing ability, but also the ability of your guild and/or community to defend itself, to build the type of communities that you want, to explore Istaria, to defeat the Withered Aegis, to free Subjugated races, to rebuild destroyed ancestral cities, to discover new lands and recover long lost ones, and to shape the story of Istaria in response to your actions.