Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted (formerly Horizons: Empire of Istaria) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by Artifact Entertainment and released in Europe on December 5, 2003 and in North America on December 9, 2003. Tulga Games, LLC acquired the game and all related assets on January 25, 2005 and sold them to EI Interactive July 2006. On July 18, 2007 the latest company to own Istaria, Virtrium LLC (Vi) acquired the rights to the game. Set in a fairly traditional sword and sorcery world, the game allows players to be adventurers, crafters, or both, and features a struggle between the "living races" (including the players), and "the Withered Aegis", an army of the undead seeking to destroy all life.

Istaria uses the race/class/level paradigm common to many role-playing games; the game also has various mechanics that are similar enough to those of other massively multiplayer online games that they won`t be mentioned here. Playable races include Dragons (the only persistent world to feature playable dragons) in addition to the more traditional biped races of Human, Elf, Dwarf, Gnome, and Half-giant. Other races are less familiar, but typical of fantasy games: Dryads (a fairy), Satyrs (satyr, from Greek mythology), Fiends (humanoid with blue skin, horns and tail), Saris (a cat-like anthropomorphic humanoid), and Sslik (an asexual non-anthropomorphic reptilian humanoid). Some of the core concepts behind Istaria just prior to the release of the game were to create a zoneless, co-operative, changing environment in which players would strive to hold back a seemingly unstoppable enemy: the Withered Aegis. This enemy would consist of a few individuals from the Living Races (races that the Players belong to) in an unholy alliance with groups of Devils and Demons from another existence called the Realm of Blight. The twisted Blighted magic would include necromancy, the ability to create zombies from corpses and even reanimate skeletal remains into fierce warriors. Due to the co-op nature of the game The Aegis would be entirely AI controlled. According to David Bowman in 2002, "Horizons will not ship with player versus player conflict. Rather Artifact has chosen to put its full attention to making the player versus environment gameplay the best it can be." This enemy was originally supposed to be dynamic in nature, launching automatic attacks on player held positions and blighting (capturing) the ground with its evil magic. This proved to be difficult to implement properly in practice, and the battlefront was eventually scaled back into static regions of Player and Blight held areas. However, in the years after Istaria launched "World Events" would be held that would allow players to make a permanent mark on the Istaria world. While not as cost effective to maintain as an automated system, this allowed Artifact, Tulga, and Virtrium to keep their promise of a changing, interactive world.

Istaria has no player versus player combat (PvP) to speak of. There is a small arena on an otherwise abandoned island, but that was primarily added for balance testing purposes. Players are nonetheless permitted to partake of PvP in this area if they wish (for a fee of in-game coins), but there are absolutely no rewards, and standard death penalties will still apply.

When first launched the Istaria staff established an event-driven storyline. These events revealed the lore and history of Istaria and occasionally lead to the discovery of new, different events. Originally the game was slated to have weekly events, but since September 2004 they were drastically reduced in number due to staffing and financial issues at Artifact and, later, Tulga. Some of the events included digging tunnels and building bridges to access new areas, and the freeing of an entire race from magically maintained slavery to the Withered Aegis. Both the Satyr and Dryad races became player accessible through such large scale, server wide events. Previous to the launch of Istaria and the problems that followed, these events and others like them were intended to be ongoing in a continuous fashion.

Istaria has suffered several problems since its launch. Many of these are acknowledged by both the current and former management of the various companies that have owned Istaria. Rick Simmons, the owner of Istaria, has stated that his team is working to rectify these issues as quickly as possible.