Might and Magic Fanday Impressions, New Titles to Be Announced at GamesCom

While a majority of this write-up about Ubisoft’s recent Might and Magic fanday event focuses on Heroes VI, Clash of Heroes, and the forthcoming CCG Duel of Champions, there’s also word that “a couple more M&M projects” will be announced at this year’s GamesCom.  Here’s to hoping that at least one of those new projects is a core RPG installment:

‘¢ As the Heroes VI producer and Might and Magic creative director Erwan Le Breton explained, the new Might and Magic universe has three cycles Chaos, Order and Void. First hints about the Void cycle were already in Heroes VI and now we will see more of it.

‘¢ In September will be released (The Ashan Compendium) a book which will describe the world of Ashan in detail. There’s no news so far whether Ubi plans to publish any other M&M books.

‘¢ If it wasn’t clearly stated before, the old M&M characters (i.e. Crag Hack) that wind up in Ashan, aren’t necessary the same guys more like a tribute to the old legacy.

‘¢ As you may already know, Ubisoft announced a new card game in the M&M universe – Duel of Champions. It isn’t exactly like Arcomage you don’t build towers and walls anymore but you try to destroy the enemy leader and bypass his defenders by lots of cards. It’s really fun. One duel lasts approximately 10 minutes, and right now the game is in closed beta stage in Poland. If anyone is interested, I have 10+ keys up for grabs, just contact me via PM. The best thing about Duel of Champions is that it will be cross-platform and basically that’s why the game will have an install client and not being developed as a browser game.

‘¢ Clash of Heroes soon will be available on iPad and iPhone. I tried to play it on iPad, was quite easy and addictive though some of the in-game buttons are hard to access.

‘¢ Limbic has two guys working on the map editor to make it more user-friendly but it takes time. Julien aka Marzhin has submitted to them a big list of necessary fixes and tweaks, but some of them can’t be done that quick.

‘¢ There are a couple more M&M projects being developed or at least in the planning. You will hear more about it at this year’s Gamescom.

Couple of remarks from Erwan le Breton about Heroes VI:

‘¢ The skill system in H6 felt too complicated and difficult to overview. It’s a shame because on paper it looked very well.

‘¢ The campaign maps perhaps are too big in future Ubi could concentrate on smaller maps with more events but produce more of them.

‘¢ The game interface didn’t work out. Town and skill screens, too small text boxes all of that has been noted. If there’s going to be a new Heroes game, the magic should feel more (magic), more specifically relating to the spellbook. Magic guilds could possibly return, and no more mixing skills with spells.

‘¢ The reputation system didn’t exactly work out as intended though it was a great idea.

‘¢ If there would be a new Heroes game, one thing that would remain for sure is the engine. Area control also proved to be as a good innovation to the Heroes series, and Ubi felt the resource reduction was an OK choice.

‘¢ According to Erwan, Heroes VI is a commercial success otherwise there would be no other ongoing M&M projects right now, including the M&M fandays.

‘¢ Erwan gave a subtle hint that Heroes VI is not necessarily the last of Heroes. Apart from the Crag Hack DLC there are possible plans for a lot more, which you can probably guess…