Might and Magic VI's 20th anniversary (30 Apr 98-18) (MM7: 8 Jun 99-19)

[tomchen1989]

30 April 1998 - 30 April 2018

Update: Might and Magic VII's 20th anniversary will occur on 8 June 2019 :
8 June 1999 - 8 June 2019

Edit: the initial (i.e. North America) release date of MM7 is disputed and 8 June 1999 seems now to be the most likely according to TELP. See discussion starting from this post for further information.

[chiyolate]

Wow, 20 years already! and still wanting to re-play for more!

[Coldy]

Hahaha might need to play it again for old times sake

[unknownone]

Wow, time runs fast!

[chiyolate]

I still remember that 20 years ago, I posted my first bulletin board message on an MM6 bulletin board (I can't remember the website, was it the official 3DO website?), and got replies from the community, it was so magical! Talked about spells, etc..

[tomchen1989]

Update : Might and Magic VII's 20th anniversary has just past :
2 January 1999 - 2 January 2019

Btw, I'm not familiar with game development life cycle but 8 months (30 Apr 98 - 2 Jan 99) [correct: ] seems a little short for a major 3D game... Ah okey, MM7 is kind of like MM6's mod right?

[Edited: The interval between MM 6 and 7's releases seems to be 13 months (30 Apr 98 - 8 Jun 99), a little longer than I initially thought]

[Bandobras Took]

There's no shame in reusing an engine if the engine works. Baldur's Gate 2 didn't suffer for essentially being the Baldur's Gate engine with tweaks.

[tomchen1989]

"no shame in reusing an engine" -- Yeah that's absolutely right. However, MM78 are generally thought to be in decline (compared to their respective predecessors) while BG2 might be better acclaimed than BG1. The short development duration of MM78 might be partially to blame. I justed Googled "game development cycle duration", it quotes an answer from https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-typic ... nt-project which says "Most AAA games take 18 to 36 months to develop."

Indeed :
MM6 ---13 months---> MM7 ---9 months---> MM8
BG1 ---21 months---> BG2

[Edited: it seems MM7 was released 8 Jun 1999 rather than 2 Jan 1999, these intervals have therefore been corrected accordingly.]

The short duration of game development and the reuse of the old engine, this could be a bad combination because developpers could seek some "shortcuts" and reuse not only the engine and the system but also many other things which are not supposed to be reused. For example, has anyone here ever noticed the maps of the cave of Stone City in MM7 and Dark Dwarf Compound in MM8 are almost exactly the same?


http://mikesrpgcenter.com/mm7/maps/stonecity.html


http://www.angelfire.com/games/mm8/darkdwarf.html

[Avonu]

Yes

[GrayFace]

IGN and Gamespy and Amazon say VII was released on June 8th. Metacritic says May 31, 1999 (funny: Might & Magic Elemental Guardians was released on May 31, 2018). Russian Wiki page says June 9th, it's probably Russian time, so it's consistent with June 8th US time. IMDB says 1 May 1999.

[Avonu]

According to MM7 TELP game went "gold" 27th May 1999 and was released 8th June 1999:

May 27th, 1999
Woohoo! Might and Magic VII has gone GOLD! Zoop has announced that the game *is* out the door - now we're waiting for the release date, June 8th.

June 8th, 1999
Oh, happy day! The day of RELEASE is finally here! MM7 should be available today in the U.S. - the rest of the world has to wait a little longer, of course.

And when you take difference between time zones in USA and Europe, 9th June indeed could be correct date.

[tomchen1989]

Weird both the Wikipedia (version prior to my edit) and the MM Wiki on Wikia (version prior to my edit) pages claimed January 2, 1999 is the initial release date, which I initially took as the correct one (the Wikia page claimed this is the North America release date and May 1, 1999 is the UK date). Nevertheless I see January 2 has no source at all to support it and among the other versions, June 8 might be the most likely. Thus I've changed the release date in both Wiki pages.

[Bandobras Took]

As far as the Dwarf Maps go, I thought that was deliberate -- "Hey, look! Dwarves are dwarves, hostile or not!"

[tomchen1989]

@Bandobras Took
Guess what, it WAS deliberate. That shape of the two caverns is something like a logo or a sigil to the dwarves across the world and the universe. I found some evidence :