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Review of Horseland

There will never be a full strategy guide to Horseland here simply because I have not found it to be worth the money to subscribe, and many features are limited to me as a Basic player. In my opinion it is a far inferior online sim game when compared to Showdog.com or Furry-Paws.com. However, the site redeems itself somewhat by making an effort to reach a younger demographic: there is a Junior account option for children younger than 13.

The first thing that struck me is that the site is in desperate need of a creative design and some original graphics. Since my mother works in graphic design, I recognized a great number of Horseland's images immediately from my childhood reading of her clip art books.

The site is also crippled by a glut of inactive or hostile players. Consider the first task that any new player is looking forward to --- buying and owning their first horse. You can search for a horse, but a large number of players declare that they will not sell to "n00bs", even if you can afford their animals on a Basic player's salary.

So you buy a horse from the store, and then you try to find a place to board it. Most of the stables that come up when you click the button to find a new place to board are either inactive or openly hostile, declaring in their stable's name that they do not want your horses. Even after your best efforts to find a good stable, it is likely that the stable owner will not feed your horses, and you will find yourself moving your horse every week --- and since horses can starve to death on Horseland, this is serious! There appears to be no action that you can take against a negligent stable owner. It's paying players who own stables and basic players who board horses, so I doubt there ever will be.

Horseland makes no attempt to enforce logic in either shows or breeding. Horses can be entered in any show at any time in any quantity.

Update, May 2004: Horseland has solved its biggest problem by (finally) making a horse's breed something that cannot be changed. Users now only have the option of selecting a horse's breed when it is bought from the store. However, dogs and unicorns and the like have been provided for in the new system, and the owner of every existing horse got to choose its permanent breed when this system when into effect. I applaud this step forward but I am not sure whether it will solve the problems listed below. My original comments remain in gray below and will be updated more in the future.

The owner of a horse can change the horse's breed for its first three weeks of life. This has lead to a huge number of horses of truly bizarre parentage. Some even include rabbits, unicorns, dogs and rats. I agree that horse breeds should be allowed to mix --- as they so often do in real life --- but wouldn't it be easy to have a defined breed? It's also annoying when users cannot restrain themselves to simply typing a normal breed and instead type something like

_/*\_/c@thy's elite kick YOUR horsie's butt arabian!!!!!\_/*\_

instead of Arabian.

Basically, the ability to define a horse's breed yourself demands a level of maturity, intelligence, and willingness to play the game that is not present in a large number of Horseland users. Like a Monopoly game where you can help yourself to the $500 bills, a game where a Clydesdale and an Arabian can give birth to a Tennessee Walking Horse inherantly destroys any attempt at strategy, although younger children will find it fun. Players who try to impose order on the madness will just find themselves frustrated by the horses from these demented breeding programs --- who are often superior animals within the rules of the game.

I found little sense of community on Horseland. The "chat room" available to Basic players is flooded with advertising, and any question asked is ignored. Instead, people carry on conversations by creating a bizarre monolgue out of the class names in a show they are putting up, begging for someone to send them a message, and sometimes acting like radio deejays. There are clubs, but votes for leadership positions can openly be bought from other players and only Premium players can vote (so much for the democratic process).

No one seemed willing to welcome new players. I am sure that there are quite a few Horseland players who are charming, polite, and friendly, but as a self-defense mechanism they have had to hide themselves so that a new player cannot find them easily. This site also suffers from the attempts at scams, hacking, and account theft that plague any large online community.

I found myself considering a Premium account only out of desperation --- not out of any desire to play the game more. This game also seems to lack a clear goal: unlike similar games, there aren't lists or awards for top horses or players. So I found that it offered more carpal tunnel syndrome than entertainment.

Of course, this review is only an opinion. If you aren't convinced, go ahead and sign up for an account. After all, it's free, and it's only your own time you're wasting.

Tips for Horseland:

All the general tips for online games apply.

Buy your first horse from the store --- it will be three "years"' old and ready to enter in shows.

If you are buying a horse from another user, don't forget to look at the pedigree.

Horses (and you, the "rider") gain points by entering shows. You can usually find plenty of shows with a very cheap entry fee, and it's only a matter of clicking your mouse until you're sick of it to raise a horse's points dramatically. Someone with too much time on their hands can gain 1000+ points a day, although with a Basic account you will find your money vanishing if you attempt to show multiple horses (because of "Horseland tax," the minimum entry fee is $10).

Don't pay boarding fees more than a week in advance until you see whether the stable owner actually feeds your horse! You'll just lose money if you've paid ahead and have to move.

Training is not worth it unless you are training your own horses. You will gain more points spending the time searching for shows instead of trainers --- and after two weeks on the game I have yet to put in a training request that actually resulted in my horse being trained. Most trainers seem to be inactive, or only interested in their own horses.

If you become serious about this game, upgrade your account. The difference in salary between the Basic and Premium accounts is huge, and you probably won't be able to afford to buy horses or pay stud fees for the top horses without it.

This web site lists a bunch of horse breeds. You can see what breeds look like and learn their histories.

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