Revenge of the "of MM" titles (Gamescom 2012)

[Avonu]

Welcome to new-old age of milking money from one franchise, which was present in the "golden" age of 3DO and now is happening again:

Raiders of Might and Magic

Trailer from Gamescom 2012

It's free-to-play online "action-RPG" game, where up to four players come together to fight enemies and bosses.
Set before HoMMVI events in Free City of Hammerfall, player task is to defend city and it treasure - Dragon Blood Crystals - from demons and Holy Falcon Empire.
This hack'n'slash is produced by chinese division of Ubisoft and is planned to release in 2013.


Heroes Online

Trailer from Gamescom 2012

You remember Chinese Heroes of Might and Magic Online game? Well, it has been shut down lately, what a coincidence.
This free-to-play browser game looks very similar to HoMM Online - you move on adventure map with your hero in real time, fight on hex battlefield in turns and build cities and send workes to gather resources around town.
Game will have at start only Haven and Necropolis factions and will tell story about fight with Order of the Void and its mysterious leader (let's me guess: his name start on S?)
Heroes Online is produced by german stuidio Blue Byte (Settlers) and is planned to release in Q4 2012.





And the last thing:
Ubisoft press conferense at Gamescom 2012 - MM titles are presented at 30 min.

____________


Raiders for me looks bad and not promising. Heroes Online looks better but I am not a fan of browser games.
For me these games look like season games - buy it, play once/one season and go to other game. I don't think they will gather players for longer.

[Angelspit]

As someone who hasn't been following the news much recently, I suspect it will be easy for the casual player to confuse Raiders with Heroes Online, or Heroes Online with Kingdoms. Time will tell.

[CloudRiderX]

So we've got a Path of Exile wannabe and a likely inferior version of the games we already have.

I let Clash of Heroes slide because it was a great TBS game, but this is kinda sad. Us M&M fans don't have much left and yet again we are forced to watch whatever is left slip away...

[Korbac]

Well, Clash of Heroes is awesome, so I guess exploring new genres is not necessarily a bad thing.

But isn't the MMO market saturated already? And they release 2 more MMO games. They look very much like already existing MMO's. For example, Raiders looks very much like Diablo.

Let's see how they pull these games off.

[Mozared]

Wait, they actually announced something new? I avoided the Ubisoft stand all together because it seemed like there was zero interesting stuff going on there. Tbf, lookin at those screenshots, I was right - it seems like another money-milking rehash of that Heroes online game that already exists.

I realize Ubi isn't the only company that's hopping on the 'free 2 play, pay for stuff online browser game' bandwagon, but god are they obvious about it. I'll just stick to my Heroes VI.

[Fuddelbaerentatze]

Not the slightest hint on addons for H6?

Browser games don't do it for me, my connection is probably to slow and will stay as slow as it is for the foreseable future. Also I don't like the idea that everthing has to be online-something these days.

Guess I will return to play dice & paper rpgs and tabletop strategie games in the future and hope for the computergame industry in its current form to kill itself of as fast as possible.

[Lomedae]

The Chinese Heroes of Might and Magic Online was a godawful bad game, I ran not walked from it in the beta and was actually pleased to get a mail recently that this travesty was shut down. It's sad to see the reason was that Ubi wants to milk it themselves.

Once they are done with the brand it might be beyond salvaging.
I wash I could still get angry, but I am afraid I won't get past sadness anymore.

[Znork]

i hade a talk withe withe producer of heros online. And from the feeling hade hade they are gona try to make the gamplay as heroish as posible in flash game. But i have trusted ubi before.

I will folow heros online close a posibel, i have a feeling it mgiht be intresting.

[Naki]

For me, end of year 2012 (almost near 2013) + 2D games = FAIL.
Call me when you release a 3D version - there are at least 2-3 ways to do that, and Adobe Flash is just one of them.

[Fuddelbaerentatze]

@Naki For whatever little could be derived from these screenshots, I think the Art Design is actually very good. At least the first and the last screenshot look promising even if it is only 2D. What actual benefit would we get in your opinion if it would be done in 3D?

[Korbac]

@Naki For whatever little could be derived from these screenshots, I think the Art Design is actually very good. At least the first and the last screenshot look promising even if it is only 2D. What actual benefit would we get in your opinion if it would be done in 3D?

Agree, the screenshots look awesome. It's just that "free to play" idea that bothers me. Usually "free to play" means "pay to win".

[Znork]

Agree, the screenshots look awesome. It's just that "free to play" idea that bothers me. Usually "free to play" means "pay to win".

The producer said this was what they would not do. it will be more like pay for time. when you are young you have time but no money. when you get older you money but not time.

[Avonu]

The producer can say whatever he want to sell his product. What we have been told about HoMMVI during it development and how many promises did Ubihole make? And how in the end Heroes Kingdom (another Ubisoft's free-to-play browser game) look like now?

[Znork]

The producer can say whatever he want to sell his product. What we have been told about HoMMVI during it development and how many promises did Ubihole make? And how in the end Heroes Kingdom (another Ubisoft's free-to-play browser game) look like now?

True we will just have to wait and see.

[Fuddelbaerentatze]

... SNIP ... It's just that "free to play" idea that bothers me. Usually "free to play" means "pay to win".

Yes, i agree but there is even more to it that annoys me if my current understanding is right, that is that the game runs inside the browser and is "streamed" over the net. Just off the top of my head:

First I don't like the Idea of running games in browsers. Its a waste of resources in my opinion. Example: When they "ported" many years ago the Quake II engine from C to Javascript to run the game in the browser i found that outright disturbing. A game that just did run fine on a pentium I at 200MHz does now need hardware at least 10 - 15 times faster to be run in a browser.

Second, you always have to run at the latest patchlevel, no matter if you like the changes that come with that patch or not.

Third, even if the game will be totally free without pay to win options in the beginning, sooner or later they will implement a way to make us pay for this service (monthly fees, "exclusive content", advertising, data mining ...)

Fourth, When Ubi ends the service, you can no longer play, or just think if ubi messes with their server infrastructure (again), you may not be able to play ...

Fifth, as a general trend, games are slowly turned from a sellable commodity into something that is rented over time. On top, the basic game data is transmitted over and over and over again, whereas it used to be download the game data once and then apply some patches. I highly resent this waste of bandwidth and I also dislike the amount of control the companys get over my use of their products.

[Znork]

First of all yes you all make good scense had this been heros 7 but this is not.

This is bascaly just a test pailot from ubi. all theier games are going online free to play. The busniss model is realy not that intresting as of right now. And yes i agree we can trust ubi to screw up this model in some way or form.

Yes we got a bad dinner h6, but you are beeing offered free coffy.

[parcaleste]

I swear I read it like "Revenge of the "of MM" tities".

[Pol]

@parcaleste
The wish is father to the thought .
Přání otcem myšlenky in CZ.

[Naki]

I swear I read it like "Revenge of the "of MM" tities".

"titties" has double T!!

Double T or double D?

Hehe, yeah - I thought "titties" has the letter T double, cause there are two of them.

[Avonu]

Double T or double D?