After a long period of no news about the free online browser game set in the Might and Magic universe called Heroes of Might and Magic Kingdoms, we have finally got some news! This is what Might and Magic community developer Yaiden writes at the Ubisoft forums:
"The technical beta that just ended offering a great and furious war between the Dominion, the most powerful alliance from the last 2 betas, and a coalition of several eminent alliances. We would like to thanks all the beta testers who definitely and positively allow us to tune and improve the game features and mechanics, especially the PVP aspect.
We are now launching a new closed beta to test all the new implementations and the new gameplay balance. This closed beta will be the last step before a Public Beta."
If we speculate that one closed beta round could take several months, the long awaited public beta could start around September/October. We will keep you posted!
There is a short developer diary about Clash of Heroes on the Ubisoft Web site. The two developers, Romain de Waubert and Erwan Le Breton, barely mention the game at all and instead talk to us fans about expanding the Might and Magic franchise on other platforms. They credit the community for their work during the past years regarding maps and mods, and nod to the largest Heroes sites across the world (thanks!).
Elsewhere, on G4TV, there is a short preview of the game along with screenshots. Here is a description of how battles will be handled:
"What sets this apart from most games in this genre, however, is how when you get to the aforementioned turn-based combat, the game becomes more of a puzzler. The idea is that you have to line up three of the same color units, with three vertical matches resulting in an attack, while three horizontal matches form a defensive wall. These matches are made by moving characters with the stylus, kind of like you would in Bejeweled. Not that you can just move your units all willy-nilly; you can only move so many per turn, though there are occasional special attacks -- such as a magic arrow -- that dont count as a move."
We didn't hear much about Clash of Heroes during E3. Let's hope Ubisoft will manage to generate a little hype before the release in August.
Trion World Networks released a trailer for Heroes of Telara (in both SD and HD), the fantasy MMO they will unveil at E3 next week. Trion is the company for which Jon Van Caneghem was the President and Chief Creative Officer until recently. Maybe that's just me, but the first part of the trailer reminds me of Heroes of Might and Magic V... but afterward we fall into Guild Wars territory.
The current GoGamer 48 Hour Madness sale includes Dark Messiah of Might and Magic for only $3 (plus shipping and handling). That's dirt cheap for a game that remains interesting despite its flaws. If you don't care about multiplayer, at least you can find out what happens after the events of Heroes V.
Please note that GoGamer only ships to Continental US, if I am not mistaken.
"The meat of Clash of Heroes resides in the battles, where players act as commander and give orders to their troops on the field. From a top-down view you can see your army on the bottom screen and the enemy on top. There are various colors of troops and players must arrange like colors into lines of at least three. A horizontal line will act as a defensive unit and a vertical line will attack the enemy. Your stylus is used to drag troops around the field, but you only have a limited number of moves per turn. At the start of each turn reinforcements will be added to your army in random locations. As the battle rages on your spell meter will fill up, and once it's full you can unleash a devastating attack."
And producer Erwan Le Breton explains the reasons behind the new art style:
"Being a DS game, we also wished to explore a different art style, something more 'Anime' that suited our gameplay and platform. The game's narrative focuses on heroes during their younger years, so we wanted to find a representation of the environment that properly speaks to their age. At the same time, we kept the bright, colorful, fairy flavors and tone associated with M&M."
You will find a series of new Clash of Heroes screenshots at IGN. They feature several familiar faces from Heroes of Might and Magic V. Unfortunately, at this point we can only guess what the gameplay will be all about. Thanks to evilp for the link.
The people at Good Old Games tell us that they have just added Heroes of Might and Magic I to their lineup: "The games sold on GOG.com are optimized to run on modern machines and often come with additional materials like wallpapers, artworks, soundtracks, etc." The game is available at a special price of $5.99 until Thursday, May 21 at 11:59 p.m. EDT.
Today, Ubisoft announced Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes, a puzzle RPG for the Nintendo DS that will be released in August 2009:
"Through five unique and epic quests, players will alternate exploration and turn-based puzzle battles in the game to save the world of Ashan from demonic chaos. Might & Magic Clash of Heroes also adopts a brand new manga-style art design that is perfectly suited to Nintendo DS. In a world populated by knights, elves, wizards, necromancers and demons, gamers can manage their own hero, customize their army and lead campaigns in the mythic Might & Magic world.
"Our fans have always appreciated the depth and richness of the Might & Magic universe," said Romain de Waubert de Genlis, senior producer at Ubisoft. "The teams at Ubisoft and Capybara were inspired to extend that universe in a unique way onto the DS, creating an engaging new game experience."
Created for Might & Magic fans, while also attracting new audiences, Might & Magic Clash of Heroes can be played in solo mode or shared with a friend in two-player peer-versus-peer mode."
The game is being developed by Capybara Games. Head to Worthplaying to see a few screenshots.
There is a free multiplayer Web game out there, Lords of War and Money, that borrows heavily on Heroes of Might and Magic V (as a matter of fact, it used to be called Heroes of War and Money). It's currently celebrating its first year of existence, so after such a long time I guess that Ubisoft doesn't mind the little... homage. HodgePodge provided a nice description of the game in the forums:
"The battles are real-time with people from all over the world & the monsters are directly from Heroes V. All the factions are there: Knight, Wizard, Elf, Demon, Necromancer & Barbarian. You can change your Faction every 24 hours so you're not stuck if you don't like what you've picked.
You can build up your own Castle & recruit your army from it. If you get killed in battle, your army is restored in 15 minutes. You can start learning your Skills (Talents) at Level 5 and many Artifacts are available. You can start casting Spells at Level 5 when you build a Mage Guild in your Castle.
To earn money, you can work in a variety of factories (each shift is one hour). You can play Arcomage in the Tavern with other real-life players from all over the world & can place a stake when you reach I think Level 1 in the Gamblers' Guild."
Have you played this game? What do you think of it?
Following our previous news item about the Might and Magic Tribute, Oren sent me additional details by email. I'm reprinting them below:
There's a playable version of what you've seen in the video (which is not MMT 0.42). And this is a link to the instructions I posted (although, don't use the files linked there because they have bugs which are fixed in the previous link).
The graphics and physics aspects of the engine are in an advanced state. Meanwhile we have another programmer working on a scripting system. No A.I yet. I'm currently working on a level editor (examples can be found here) in order to release a full-scale playable level of the MMT game.
MMT has a lot of the dialogs, quests and storyline already made which will be used.
The thing we lack the most is artists (2D and 3D). currently the demo I released uses placeholders from M&M 7 and some art made by MMT team (except for the walking man which is a Microsoft's XNA model and won't be used of course, it was just to test dynamic shadows and animation).
The little village I created in the demo is for demonstration/testing purposes only and won't be used in any part of the game. It is possible that even some of the models won't be used in the entire game...
Community support has a great impact on making fan-based projects succeed, and hopfully we could raise interest again in MMT. We are doing it in our free time, for free, and aside to the pleasure of making a game, community feedback is a great contribution for motivation...
Today, on May 7th, UbiSoft announced the date of their E3 press conference: June 1st at 5 pm (doors open at 4 pm), in the Los Angeles Theatre.
The press conference is by invitation only - to Ubisoft partners, investors, retailers and select media - but if you're sufficiently curious, you can view it online the following morning at http://www.ubi.com.
But now for the exciting bit: During the press conference, UbiSoft will unveil their game line-up for the Holiday 2009 and beyond. Skipping over the games we're not too interested in (Rabbids Go Home, Red Steel 2 and Assassins Creed 2), the press release also says they will announce "other unannounced titles".
What does this mean? Can we hope for a bit of a Heroes VI tease at last? Anything? Or perhaps something related? Fingers crossed...
Edit: it appears that the Nintendo DS title is called Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes, according to this report.
King's Bounty: The Legend is now available on Steam for $26.99 (a limited-time offer if I understood correctly, possibly a week-end deal). Since you're familiar with the game and its gameplay by now, I'll report the system requirements just for fun:
# OS: Windows XP/Vista 32-bit
Processor: Intel Pentium 4 2.6 GHz or Athlon 64 +2800 (Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz or Athlon 64 +3200 recommended)
Memory: 1 GB RAM under XP and 2 GB RAM under Vista (2GB recommended)
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 6800 256MB or ATI Radeon X800 256MB or better (NVIDIA GeForce 7900 512MB or ATI Radeon X1900 512MB or better recommended)
While we have no information whatsoever indicating that there's a new Heroes game in the works, it doesn't hurt to have a community of fans shouting at the top of their lungs how much they want it, and just exactly what they want it to contain.
The word is currently spreading across the web that the former M&M and Heroes designer Jon Van Caneghem has left his role as President and Chief Creative Officer of Trion World Networks.
Joystiq has the breaking story, having followed up on an anonymous tip that JVC had been let go from the company. An official statement from Trion read:
"Jon Van Caneghem has transitioned out of his role as president and no longer holds any operational responsibilities at Trion. His creative and operational roles have been distributed among the talented senior team."
Obviously, we are big fans of JVC here at Celestial Heavens, and although Trion's statement continued that his departure is "a part of the natural evolution of the growing company", we have to wonder what losing a talent of his magnitude will mean for the company. What will happen to the fantasy-themed MMORPG game that was announced last June (and which JVC was said to be developing) remains speculation; it is rumoured Trion will present their first title at this year's E3.
I must admit that I lost interest in the Might and Magic Tribute fan project five years ago, thinking it had gone the way of those countless unfinished mod projects out there. But the following movie made me fell off my chair:
A clean interface (check out that paperdoll at 0:45), much improved textures, good character animations and to top it off a beautiful original score. The game is far from finished, but I'm putting it right back on my watchlist. After all, this is perhaps the Might and Magic RPG franchise's last hope to get a commercial revival. The official site is here if you want to learn more about the project. Thanks to phamlongtuan who shared a screenshot and a link.
Bandrobas Took has put together a new guide for the inferno faction in Tribes of the East. It's a comprehensive, yet general guide, offering tips on which heroes to choose and what skills to go for; what magics to employ and which creatures to bring with you.
Have a look at the guide and tell the world what you think; whether you think the Took is a genius, or even if you disagree with everything. Just read it; it beats watching the soaps on daytime TV.
Got a potential POTD? Then we'd like to hear from you.
As some of the more astute of you may have noticed, there aren't many updates on our site nowadays. We're in "between games", as they say, so the producers aren't saying much, the fans aren't saying much... resulting in what I like to call the "slow news day". Basically, there's not much happening, so we have nothing to write about.
The decline in Community activity also means that you guys are less active in sending us material we can use for our "Picture Of The Day" feature. Yeah, that's what that stands for. Now you know. But frankly, these lulls in "between games" are becoming tedious, and that un-updated picture right at the top of the main page is really becoming an eye-sore. With the general slowdown, the "daily" feature went fast from weekly to almost monthly, and we'd really like to prevent it from becoming a "once a year" thing... So, this is an appeal to help us do something about it.
If you're playing a Heroes game, or Might & Magic, and something cool, nice and/or funny happens, press the "print screen" button. Store the image. Send it to us at the address below, there's a good lad. Oh, and do try and remember to tell us what the image is about, a'ight?
Round Table member Corlagon (a.k.a. Cepheus) found a little scoop on the personal Web site of Jeff Spock, lead writer on Heroes of Might and Magic:
"Upcoming DS fantasy game in the Might and Magic universe (2009): This will be an awesome puzzle game with an epic fantasy storyline. And, yes, both of those things are possible. Watch the review pages; I think this one will make waves."
DS stands for Nintendo DS, in case anyone wonders. Was Ubisoft impressed by the success of Puzzle Quest? We should learn more about the project sooner or later.
This really nice gameplay video over at ActionTrip shows great promise. By the looks of things, Armored Princess is coming along very nicely, expanding on the quality of what was one of last year's big surprises: King's Bounty.
The contents of the KB: Armored Princess expansion include:
A new female character: Princess Amelie.
A new Pangolin race.
You can turn your horse into a Pegasus, which can fly.
Resurrection of the contracts and headhunting system.
Fast travel between opened continents.
Tame dragon, which becomes more powerful when you do.
New engine supporting the latest graphic effects.
More story.
More spells.
More abilities - achieve level 50 and higher.
A whole new continent.
New unique bosses: Borer Robot, Gremlin, Archdemon Baal and more.
Two new maps this weekend, just in time for Easter. Both are big single-player maps with underground, both for Heroes V - Tribes of the East. Why don't you put your Easter egg hunt on hold and have a go?
Map 1 is "Out of Mind" by Sarvi, a Large map in which the main protagonist goes into a coma after drinking something he shouldn't have, suddenly finding himself in a mythical dream world of monsters... sort of a Life on Mars scenario, only with dragons and cloaks instead of Ford Cortinas and camel coats. Closer to Narnia, perhaps. The mission is to survive the dream, wake up and return to the real world. Sounds original enough - a simple premise on which to base a decent playing experience.
Map 2 is "The Forgotten Hero" by mweil86, a yu-hu-huuuuge thing with pretty nice graphics. In this map, your mission is to get hold of an artefact - the Armour of the Forgotten Hero. According to the mapmaker, who obligingly also included a walkthrough in the readme, this RPG map "incorporates resource management, but no town building/development". That means you gotta do what you gotta do with what ya got, doesn't it. And what ya ain't got, you gotta get on ya own.
Over the coming weeks and months, a number of changes will be introduced to the Celestial Heavens site. You see, for some time now, we have been looking into the possibility of using a private, dedicated server for the site, placing a nice piece of kit in one of the administrators' home. This would of course increase our server's space, speed and overall performance; question is, what to do with all this extra umph?
Contents-wise, we will be aiming to shift the site's focus a bit. To include a larger audience we will open up for games of other colours on the spectrum. First, we will introduce a separate "sports" section, featuring reviews and contents from such things as football, basketball and ice hockey games. Also, there will be a new forum separate from the familiar "Heroes Round Table" expanding the already-existing idea of a "Heretics Hall" in which discussions on the sports arena can be held, and unofficial tech support for sport games offered.
Later on, we plan on continuing this scheme with a section for TV shows, more or less following on the same track as outlined above. The difference is that some members of the old TV.com forum have found the site rather sluggish and wanted to set up shop elsewhere. They have worked for some time already, making it possible to merge their new site with ours in only a couple of weeks. So there you are; soon there will be a section for sports games, and by May we'll have a TV section featuring gems like Top Gear, The West Wing and the Star Trek series. If the interest is there, we might also consider opening up for documentaries.
Lastly, we have long contemplated including a second language for the site. Since their gaming community is one of the largest in Europe, the choice has fallen on German. We've had several volunteers from other German forums wanting to help with the transition, ensuring that the introduction of the German language on our site will be seamless, and in accordance with proper German grammar.
We are hoping these changes will widen the scope of the Celestial Heavens site, increasing traffic and growth. If you would like to volunteer for any of the tasks ahead, please contact the site's administrators.
Going on now, the Steam Weekend Deal - where you can get Dark Messiah of Might and Magic as well as three other classic Ubisoft games for a mere $9.99.
If you haven't had a chance to try Dark Messiah or the other classic games included in this pack, this is your chance. Sale ends Monday though, so if you're thinking about picking it up, you better jump on it!
The Electronic Entertainment Expo 2009 will be held at the Los Angeles Convention Center from the 2nd to the 4th of June. Although some of the bigger guys like Activision and id Software remain absent, the sign-up sheets for this year's expo now sport over 20 companies, including UbiSoft, Eidos, Take-Two and most recently, 505 Games.
According to the ESA (Entertainment Software Association), the E3 Expo currently has 90% percent of its available space sold, with over 100 exhibitors and some 40,000 visitors expected. With both organizers and game industry officials in buoyant moods, upcoming announcements of the individual exhibitions are soon forthcoming. This positive expectation is hyped up by statements like that of Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter:
"E3 Expo is back, and that's a very good thing. The conference is being held at just the right time, with June late enough in the year for the publishers to feel confident about game quality, and early enough in the year to generate retail buzz (...) E3 Expo will re-establish itself as the preeminent North American computer and video game show, and also will likely be considered the preeminent computer and video game event globally."
So, what are your expectations? Will you be going? Will the E3 be the global platform the industry is hoping for, or has the recent economic recession taken too much of a toll? What fresh and exciting news will the gaming community be getting?
Ubisoft is releasing some of their older back catalog on Good Old Games Included in the "coming soon" list, is the original Heroes of Might and Magic - retooled to work on modern XP, Vista, and Windows 7 systems.
There is no price listed yet, though other games released on GOG have a price range of free to $9.99.
The SourceMod, a server modification that has been in development since late 2004, has been updated to version 1.2 with support for Left 4 Dead and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic:
"SourceMod is server modification for any game that runs on the Half-Life 2 engine. It is a powerful, highly optimized platform for scripting plugins and handling server administration. The default package comes with a base set of plugins, but there are over 450 plugins in the community."
That means that over two years after its release, Dark Messiah finally gets modding support... the unofficial way. You may remember that the SDK promised by Ubisoft was never released, despite the work that has been done by Arkana. Thanks to Mana who brought me the good news.
After a long period of no news about the free online browser game set in the Might and Magic universe called 
Ubisoft allowed IGN to take a 
Today, Ubisoft announced Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes, a puzzle RPG for the Nintendo DS that will be released in August 2009:
There is a free multiplayer Web game out there, 
Today, on May 7th, UbiSoft 
The word is currently spreading across the web that the former M&M and Heroes designer Jon Van Caneghem has left his role as President and Chief Creative Officer of Trion World Networks.
Bandrobas Took has put together a new 
The