WARNING - The dreaded moment is here: Heroes 6 servers shutting down

[Blake]

Been wondering when this was gonna happen and how it was gonna go.. on jan 2024 Ubisoft will be shutting down the online features of Heroes 6.. effectively breaking most of the game, and knowing ubisoft there's probably no patch planned to fix it all unless the fanbase kicks up a huge fuss like what happened with M&M10. :/

https://www.celestialheavens.com/heroes ... unary-2024

https://news.ubisoft.com/en-us/article/ ... in-january

https://steamcommunity.com/app/48220/di ... 661721770/

The same thing that happened to MMX:Legacy [but worse]
If you think that server decommission affect only multiplayer then you are wrong. Most functionalities are locked behind Online-only DRM:

- Conflux and Dynasty profile will no longer work. Bestiary with artworks and lore descriptions will be unavailable.
- Amount of heroes in skirmish will be limited to 2 per faction
- Dynasty weapons and pets will be no longer available - All swords and Staves will dissappear from the game. Option to level up then will dissappear. People who leveled all of them to level 5 will lost all progress
- Dynasty traits and slots for them will be disabled. Those are a starting conditions like additional resources at the beginning, reduced cost of building, bonus stats etc.
- Achievements will be disabled. For doing achievements you would receive point which are used for unlocking stuff in this game: heroes, weapons, pets, traits, slots, portraits, titles etc.
- Multiplayer will be no longer available - obvious
- You will loose your online saves. Game forces you to cloud saving and limited you to 10 saves. Local saves will available? No idea

Not happy! As someone who still hasn't finished the whole game and wants to play the Xeen DLC content this is not cool. If I recall those bonus DLCs were downloaded inside the game. And there's so much other stuff inside the game linked to online.. if they just switch off the servers the game will be stuffed and I fear we'll lose access to DLC after a fresh install.

[Blake]

Was just thinking.. the only potential positive out of all of this is that IF Ubisoft do get the message and patch Heroes 6 to work better be more featured in offline mode, then that would finally open the doors to the modding community to try and fix other remaining bugs (ie black screen, dark map, buggy dynasty weapons etc) and add more content like we're seeing in the awesome Heroes 5.5 and 7.5 fan projects.

[Tress]

I am wondering about the conflux part. When cracked version started to appear, didnt it had all the stuff unlocked and accesible? Since i didnt took too much intrest in homm 6 until SOD came out , but i can swear i seen the game unlocked, so that made me wonder if really there cant be simple offline mod to unlock all the good stuff for people after servers go offline.
Multiplayer of course is different story as I understand there is no hosted game stuff and Ubi really tried to parrot blizard with their SC2 model (up to point they said design of faction ideology is similar, which arguably is kinda there) of not having normal non - centralized way of playing or some sort of LAN. So probably no real fix there, then again while I like homm6 personally , there isnt really community that would really need it in first place.
Personally i like 6 more than 7 as they tried to innovate, not always successfully but step back they made in 7 kinda lacks any sort of direction of game that would warrant its existence over 3 or 5. 6 like 4 is hit or miss, but is own game.

[Pol]

Personally i like 6 more than 7 as they tried to innovate, not always successfully but step back they made in 7 kinda lacks any sort of direction of game that would warrant its existence over 3 or 5. 6 like 4 is hit or miss, but is own game.

Me too, though I might be biased as was also game tester and lived with different units abilities, until they settled to final form. If the game woudln't be cut down and completed instead, it could been a miracle.

Not sure if nowaday is in the best form. Including special maps and such, visibly on the top.

[Angelspit]

The game we've been involved with will always feel special, no matter how good or bad they might be.

[cjleeagain]

So... 7 weeks after shutting down, how was it? Anybody wants to update on the experience?

I am not an owner of H6. After it came out I played on my cousin's H6 when he was at work, and hated it, so I never bought H6. But I'm asking, because what happens to H6 will happen to H7 in a few years.

[Blake]

Weirdly Ubisuck still haven't shut it down.. considering it went down a bunch of times before the deadline some people are wondering if Ubisoft did a test and realised just how stuffed the game is without it and are working on a patch. Also some players contacted Ubi support threatening legal action saying they're breaking EU law so some are wondering if that scared them into doing something too. However it's Ubisoft we're talking about here so it's also entirely possible that they care so little they just simply forgot to turn it off lol!!! sigh...

[cjleeagain]

"it's also entirely possible that they care so little they just simply forgot to turn it off lol!!!"

This would have sounded like complete nonsense under 3DO.

But with Ubisoft, it's very credible. Some Ubisoft employee just forgot and nobody came after him to remind him.

[Blake]

Wow.. looks like they actually patched the game and gave the fans what they wanted.. the online dynasty features (items & heroes etc), DLC and online saves now available offline via a huge patch that adds heaps of the server stuff to your install making it around 14.5GB apparently.

https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/help/migh ... /000106804

However this is ubisoft we're talking about here so of course celebrations were shortlived when people realised a whole bunch of new problems had arrived.. judging by the threads on Steam some people can't start the game anymore, people lost all their dynasty progression (that one was predictable), you can't transfer your hero progression through campaign anymore (always start at lvl1 making later missions much harder), and people have lost the ability to scroll around the map with the mouse. I wonder if they'll patch it some more! Oh and sadly I can't test the patch myself as I'm using an old version of Ubisoft Connect (as newer ones don't work on Win7) and that is refusing to update the game, I guess I could try reinstalling but I half suspect I'll lose the game altogether doing that! EDIT: Tried the reinstall, worked, now I've got the latest copy, sure enough everything is unlocked, it's as if I've completed the game.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/48220/discussions/

At least now it's content is definitely all in the offline version making it possible for heavier modding now! Maybe fans can fix some of its issues in the years to come..

.

[Pol]

As my current understanding is, they made it offline but broken. So they don't need to refund the game.

How Ubi clever..

[Blake]

Some good news.. modder RedTreant has already found a way to fix the issue with Heroes not transferring/carrying over/progressing between campaign missions and he's also fixed the issue with special heroes like Anastasia, Crag Hack and Sandro not being playable in their campaigns anymore. What a legend.. I was worried no one would be able to or want to fix this stuff anymore.

https://www.moddb.com/mods/additional-heroes/

http://heroescommunity.com/viewthread.p ... 9438#focus
.

[Pol]

And how it works now?

I don't play it anymore and the first time, when I installed Heroes VI it did added some alien version of microsoft C++, so it damaged my Corel X5, which I need for work (sometimes).