Howrse Cup

A brand new game is coming. It's called Howrse Cup and the game is currently is beta testing with a selected number of players from around the world. There is already some information on this new game, in the Events forum on International Howrse.

Here at Ultimate Howrse, we will be bringing you all you need to know about this groundbreaking new game which will be launched on 24th July 2012.

The game is a limited time game. That means it will only exist for a few months, before the servers are closed. This is because Howrse Cup is a group competition game where the focus is on competing against other teams of players, rather than spending time breeding and training your horses.

The aim of the game is to be the team who win the world championship in December.

A team has up to 15 members and the top 25 teams who collect the most diamonds in the next few months qualify to compete in the world championship for the Howrse Cup. The players of the team that win the Howrse Cup each get 100 passes and a new and exclusive Divine which they can activate on any server they wish.

To earn diamonds on Howrse Cup your horses need to win races. Every race you enter and place 1st - 4th brings you diamonds. The player and team rankings are all based on how many diamonds you have.

You can also enter challenges against other players to try and win their diamonds off them. For a challenge each player enters 2 horses into a Trot, Gallop, Showjumping, Cross Country and Dressage head-to-head competition. Whoever wins overall gets the diamonds.

However, it's not as easy as it sounds. On Howrse Cup you cannot see the skills or GPs of any of the other players horses - so you have no idea what you're up against!

The game is set up to make it as easy as possible to get your horses trained and start competing. Horses age 4 months instead of 2 and there are no WoYs, there are no rides, no strokes, no turnips and training is done in chunks of 3 hours in a single click.

There are no foal games, your horses age every 6 hours instead of waiting for the update and you can only buy / sell 1 horse a week (unless you have a Unicorn Account, similar to Howrse's Pegasus Account). Another thing is that you can't make your horses immortal!

Horses only start to lose health after the age of 30 and they never lose their skills - so you can keep them alive with Black Orchids if you wish. It takes a while to get used to after playing Howrse but is really simple once you pick it up.

So, an exciting development from Owlient and one we will be following closely. And of course, we will bring all the news and developments as they happen. Watch this space!

UPDATE: A lot of you are asking questions about the Howrse Cup, both here and in the forum on Howrse. Here are answers to some of those:

Q. Can I bring my horses over from Howrse to the Howrse Cup?

A. No. You start from scratch with just one horse

Q. Do you HAVE to buy passes to play?

A. No. But without passes, you have no chance of winning enough races to gain enough diamonds for your team, to climb the rankings.

Q. What is the point of the Howrse Cup.

A. To win. You join (or create) a team of players and compete against other teams to win as many diamonds as possible.  You win diamonds by coming 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th in races. That's it!

Finally, there is a great deal of chatter about the Howrse Cup. It's important to be clear - this is a separate game from Howrse. It runs on it's own server and is a short-term, competitive game. It is designed to be very fast-paced and well, competitive! 

There are no free BM items or passes to help you. The second the game starts, players will be buying dozens, hundreds of passes to race and breed their horses. The game is designed to make breeding and training much faster than on horse - so you can concentrate on entering races. BUT those players who can buy passes and give every BM item to their horses will be the ones who win the most diamonds for their team.

To BLUP a horse on The Howrse Cup only takes about 10-15 minutes! This game is fast and to be competitive you definitely need to buy passes.

If you cannot (or don't wish to) buy passes then of course you can still play. Just don't expect to earn many diamonds and don't feel too sad when more highly skilled horses 'stomp' on yours. It will happen I'm afraid. However you can still enjoy the fun of getting a team together and doing the best you can - passes or no passes.

Well, either way, everyone (over 13 years old - according to the rules from Owlient) will be able to join the Howrse Cup from July 24th. Then you can see for yourselves what the fuss is all about!

UPDATE: The game is now live. Enjoy!

Patsy