In a 1 hour 20 minute session on Thursday, Xavier Penin and Julien Pirou played the demo map and answered some questions from the fans. Here's our roundup of what they talked about:

• Town screens in 2D (3D is too expensive for what you get in return).
  
• Governor feature in towns, so a hero can give town bonuses.
  
• Quick combat is in.
  
• No "Dynasty" online feature as in H6 since the fans hated it. All gameplay features will be available offline. Maybe there will be some other online bonus aspects.
  
• Towns and forts have Area of Control. Attacking a fort (and winning) destroys the fort and the AoC. You can rebuild the fort at a cost. This should give players more reason to defend their forts.
  
• Special resources: Dragonsteel, Dragonblood crystal, Shadowsteel, Starsilver.
  
• H7 demons not related to Kreegans.
  
• Avalanches can create impassable terrain on the adventure map.
  
• No bosses like in H6, custom battles and events instead.
  
• No random skills; players will have control of hero development.
  
• Spells are back in mage guilds and can also be learned in other places.
  
• You can destroy buildings in your towns (1 per turn).
  
• No town conversions.
  
• No eclipse, of course; the H7 story is 10 years after the last one. The story will be about the civil war. Each faction will have its own campaign related to the main plot.
  
• No blood/tear system.
  
• On the shadow council website (still in development), you can find info about the factions and creatures; if you click on a creature and use the Konami cheat code "up up down down left right left right b a" there will be some special animations.
  

That's it for this round, but the guys said they wouldn't mind doing more of these.