Worst things that ever happened to the Old Heroes?

[UndeadHalfOrc]

The lack of care H3 expansions had... PoL might have not added a lot of content but at least i don't recall being able to tell the difference between the units in the vanilla and the exp by the quality of the animation...

100% agreed. Even Shadow of Death, which is lauded for the quality of its campaign, didn't impress me. I noticed some bugs in the campaigns actually.
And aside from the AB debacle, one of the biggest offender are the Heroes Chronicles. I didn't buy any of them and feel sorry for those who did - it was a last resort cash grab during the downtime before H4 was released. As JVC said in that posted interview from 2004, 3D0 wanted new products, constantly. They oversaturated us with poor products.

And if you really think that the lack of upgrades is what was wrong with H4 you're delusional.

Don't worry, I'm not delusionnal, I know some of the biggest flaws are the balance problem of pitting STACK based monsters vs individual heroes in battle, and the awkwardness of potions and spell casting creatures abuse.

And yes, I was very bitter back then, because I could see the decline of the company back when everybody else was stlll enthusiastic about H4 and MM8 & MM9.

[ThunderTitan]

No, the biggest flaw was releasing it at least half a year too early... it's not like the previous games had great balance either.

[Deadguy118]

Heroes IV is actually pretty decent with Equilibris, but that still doesn't excuse the fact that the AI is fairly retarded, the game shipped a few months too early (and had tons of bugs as a result), and both expansions were fairly lackluster (although I am actually going through the Winds of War campaigns right now. Megadragons are brokenly awesome)

As for the discussion on Heroes III expansions, I can agree that when we look at them now it's not much content, especially in SoD which added about as much as Price of Loyalty.

In fact, I will go on a controversial limb here and say that HV had the best expansions as far as content goes. HoF added caravans and dwarves, and TotE added alternate upgrades and Orcs.

[Shyranis]

Heroes Chronicles were overpriced. IMHO they should have been released in jewel cases for 9.99-14.99 price range each.

Heroes 4 was terribly rushed, so it just didn't play as well as the others (in multiplayer anyway).

Heroes 5 claims to have killed Sandro.

[Midas]

there's an artifact in HV called "Sandro's Cape"? Where'd Sandro go?

I have all of the heroes on my computer. And just a tip of advice.
If you have HII, don't bother looking for the first one. THE SLOWEST HEROES GAME EVER! Period. (though i know its because its old, i play it with DOS box)
they're like snails on steroids...

HIV has THE best music. (not counting town music)
especially if you, on the world map, get close to a river. It turns into the most soothing song that even H3 music can't beat.

[GreatEmerald]

If you have HII, don't bother looking for the first one. THE SLOWEST HEROES GAME EVER! Period. (though i know its because its old, i play it with DOS box)
they're like snails on steroids...

HIV has THE best music. (not counting town music)
especially if you, on the world map, get close to a river. It turns into the most soothing song that even H3 music can't beat.

Not if you are a historian, like me. I want to see just how Ironfists started ruling Enroth.

And I wouldn't say H4 has the best music. It's really good, especially Sea Theme that you mentioned, BUT everything sounds pretty much the same. You can't tell if you're on snow or on grass or on sand... Only lava is a little different... That's why I like H3 terrain more. You just can't beat the Snow theme...

[Midas]

Actually... I agree

Terrains were best in H3

From H1-H4, there's not only Ironfist, but Alamar has been in all of those titles, (only mentioned in the first one)

Sandro is dead! the only reminder of him is his Cape that's so scary it... what does it do again?

[Kristo]

Internet message boards.

The Forge Incident made it very apparent that a small but vocal group of fans could easily generate an enormous amount of negative publicity - enough to cause 3DO/NWC to drop all the work on the Forge town and deliver a meh expansion that doesn't fit within the MM universe. And we wonder why nobody seems to do anything original.

Almost a decade later, we're still wondering what could've been.

[GreatEmerald]

Almost a decade later, we're still wondering what could've been.

Indeed... I always wonder why companies don't release beta versions of their products, they don't need them yet the community could bring some more interesting ideas back.

[ThunderTitan]

Internet message boards.

The Forge Incident made it very apparent that a small but vocal group of fans could easily generate an enormous amount of negative publicity - enough to cause 3DO/NWC to drop all the work on the Forge town and deliver a meh expansion that doesn't fit within the MM universe. And we wonder why nobody seems to do anything original.

Almost a decade later, we're still wondering what could've been.

What it made very apparent is that death threats work... and that the HoMM community is nuts...

[Avonu]

Destroying World of Enroth. How many times we saved that planet from evil tyrants (H2, H3:SoD, HC:RotB, HC:CoD) or from being destroyed (MM6, H3:AB, MM8, HC:MotE) and what for? Only to be blowed up by two stupid leaders.
I know that NWC needed new world but they didn't need to destroy previous.

Also plot of HCs and HIV - didn't get me wrong I love they stories, characters and dialogs but there are thing that don't match to previous games' (mainly MMs) lore.

[lotusreaver]

I know we saw a lot of the Kreegans in the later games thanks to the Inferno faction. But it would have been nice to have some Ancients or CORAK cameos in the Heroes games.

[Kristo]

Heroes 2 had random towns named Corackston and Sheltemburg.

[Midas]

Were never gonna see Gelu again are we?

Ooh... Those memories... And Why V has no Connection to the earlier titles?

[GreatEmerald]

Heroes 2 had random towns named Corackston and Sheltemburg.

Heroes II had a whole lot of references, especially to MM games

Ooh... Those memories... And Why V has no Connection to the earlier titles?

Because it's made by Ubisoft, not NWC with JVC...

[klaymen]

Actually Heroes V is made by Nival.
Ubisoft is just a distributor.

[GreatEmerald]

Ubival, whatever But don't Ubisoft have the MM rights?

[Avonu]

It is Ubisoft who invited new world and story (and its "bible") - Nival was only developer.

[Kalah]

I'm finding it hard to come up with anything - principally because although the different controversial moves were silly, they didn't really ruin the game. I suppose mixing demons and Undead might be pretty high on the list, or perhaps failing to balance the H3 Conflux town. For the franchise, though, I still feel that moving the series into an extremely resource demanding 3D animation engine did not offer value for money.

[ThunderTitan]

Were never gonna see Gelu again are we?

Ooh... Those memories... And Why V has no Connection to the earlier titles?

Getting vaporised tend to do that...