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Heroes of Might and Magic V

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Heroes of Might and Magic V
DVD box cover
Developer(s)Nival Interactive Freeverse Software (Mac Os X Port)
Publisher(s)Ubisoft Entertainment
Designer(s)Nival
Platform(s)Microsoft Windows Mac OS X
ReleaseMay 16, 2006 (UK, Russia)

May 24, 2006 (US, Canada)

June 8, 2006 (Poland)
Genre(s)Turn-based strategy game
Mode(s)Single player, single-system multiplayer, and network play

Heroes of Might and Magic V (sometimes referred to as Heroes V or HoMM5) is the fifth installment of the Heroes of Might and Magic computer game series. It was developed by Nival Interactive, under the guidance of franchise-owner Ubisoft. It was released in the United States and Canada on May 24, 2006. The Russian version, distributed by 1C, was released in Russia on May 19. A worldwide release continues.

Features

  • The game is rendered fully in 3D, unlike previous installments.
  • A new skill/spell/creature system is used.
  • There are six town types: Haven, Inferno, Necropolis, Academy, Dungeon and Sylvan.
  • Players can see their opponents' tracks on the ground. They get deeper and last longer with size of the army. Each faction has its own distinctive 'trail'.
  • Multiplayer has a "fast mode" option, where it is possible to set a limit on turns so the pace will be faster.
  • There are four skill levels: Easy, Normal, Hard and Heroic.
  • The set of resources are the same as previous Heroes games, the fog of war acts like Heroes III, as does the retaliation. However, some creatures have the ability of ranged retaliation.
  • There are four magic schools: Light, Dark, Destructive and Summoning Magic. (As well as four 'Adventure Map' spells)
  • Creatures are upgradeable.
  • Creature generation in town stuctures is on a weekly basis, like in Heroes III.
  • The game's music is composed by Rob King and Paul Romero.
  • The battlefield is divided into squares instead of hexagons, like in the fourth game and unlike all the previous ones.

WHAT IS THE BLUE MINERAL?!?!? SOMEONE TELL ME PLEASE?!!


Factions

Haven

A land populated by humans and ruled by religious warlords, the Holy Griffin Empire propogates "Law and Order" as their supreme goal. Arising from their military tradition, they have the ability to train their soldiers, promoting them from one level to another. They are the primary protagonists of the game's campaign missions, led into battle by Queen Isabel.

Inferno

A dark kingdom of demons from the underworld, the Inferno is a faction which uses "Gating", a method used to teleport additional reinforcements onto the battlefield. Making their infernal abode on blasted lava terrain, the demons are the primary antagonists in the game, led by their evil overlord, the Demon Sovereign Kha-Beleth.

Necropolis

Once a secret cult flourishing within the dark underside of the Empire, the Necropolis is ruled by corrupted wizards who worship a twisted version of the Dragon of Order, seeking to find everlasting peace and beauty in death that has been denied to them in life. They can use the dark magic of Necromancy to re-animate slain enemies and fill their own ranks with shambling corpses.

Dungeon

Hailing from the underground empire of Ygg-Chal, the dark elves are a group of fallen elves whose society is built around secrecy, plots, betrayal, and occultism. They were once in the Sylvan faction, but became renegades when they made a pact with the mysterious Faceless. They mastered the ability of "Irresistable Spell", which made their spells so powerful that even the strongest has little chance to resist.

Sylvan

The old Rampart faction from Heroes III in spirit, the Sylvan faction is more distinctly Elvish this time around. Their heroes focus on archery, and so do their creatures, who can finish off their enemies without touching them. They are the counterpart to the Dungeon.

Academy

Academy is a town predominated by wizards and magical creatures since its debut in the beginning of the series. Not much difference is found besides its base moved from snowy mountains to a vibrant desert scene, filled with middle-eastern dress. Most of its heroes focus on magic, and their army comprises mostly shooters and flyers. It is comparable to the Tower city from Heroes of Might and Magic III.

Skills and abilities

A hero can learn a new skill, upgrade an existing one, or gain a new ability upon gaining a new level or visiting special buildings on the adventure map. There are two sets of skills available to heroes: racial skills and regular skills. A hero can have up to five regular skills and always has the proper racial skill.

Skills are divided into three levels: Basic, Advanced and Expert. Each skill is associated with three to five abilities, depending on the race of the hero. Each level of skill gives the hero a chance to learn one ability under the skill. That is, a hero with Basic level of a skill can learn one ability, Advanced level two, and Expert level three. An ability is not immeadiately learned when the hero increases the cooresponding skill level.

The racial skill that a hero learns is dependant on their native faction. All heroes from a faction learn the same racial skill and racial abilities. Each racial skill culminates in an 'ultimate ability' that can only be gained by learning a very specific set of regular skills and abilities. In addition to the three levels of skills that apply to regular skills, the racial skill can reach an ultimate level when a certain artifact is worn by the hero.

Timeline

In August of 2003, Ubisoft acquired the rights to the Might and Magic franchise for USD$1.3 million after 3DO filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Ubisoft announced their plan on developing the fifth game in the series under the direction of producer Fabrice Cambounet. This news bred controversy as New World Computing under 3DO had already started making the fifth Heroes game. Although, along with the Might and Magic brand, Ubisoft gained access to NWC's developments on Heroes V (which envisioned it as an isometric 2D game on the Heroes IV engine), it was decided to throw them away and create a completely 3D game.

  • October 2003: Development began (approximately)
  • March 30, 2005: Ubisoft officially announced that the game was being developed.
  • A closed beta began in late 2005; it is announced that the game will be released after March 2006.
  • On January 10, 2006, Freeverse announced that the Mac port had been arranged.[1]
  • An open beta began on January 23, 2006 for Gamespy subscribers, with non-subscribers able to join on January 26.
  • On April 5, 2006, Ubisoft debuted a free minigame[2] related to the game.
  • On April 9, 2006, Ubisoft announced the release of a Heroes V Demo sometime in that week.
  • On April 12, 2006: Ubisoft decided to remove controversial StarForce CD copy protection from Heroes V. The company stated they will use another form of CD copy protection instead.[3] The game shipped with SecuROM.
  • On April 13, 2006, Ubisoft released a Heroes V Demo.
  • On April 20, 2006, Ubisoft announced that Heroes V had gone gold.
  • On May 19, the game was released in the UK and Russia.
  • On May 23, the game was released in the US and Canada. (on limited edition DVD-ROM and on 4 CD-ROM's). The limited edition DVD-ROM contains material not included in the CD-ROM release including the complete game soundtrack on audio CD. The Limited Edition also includes Heroes III and IV remastered to work on computers running Windows XP
  • On June 5, the Limited Collectors Edition of the game was released in Poland.
  • On June 6, the first patch was released, updating the game to version 1.1.
  • On July 20, the second patch was released, updating the game to version 1.2, and adding many new features, but still lacking the much sought-after map editor. A lot of bugs were fixed in this version including a bug that would crash the game after playing it for 2 or more hours. Multiplayer was fixed up and some grammar errors were corrected although some still remain. A 'Hall Of Fame' was also added as a high score table for single player campaigns and skirmishes.

To market Heroes V, Ubisoft has also created Heroes Mini [4], a web-based game using the Heroes V units.

Patches

Patch 1.1 was released on June 6, 2006, and contained an auto-patcher and easy difficulty mode, as well as numerous bugfixes.

Patch 1.2 came out on July 20, 2006, fixing multiplayer mode and many minor issues.

Patch 1.3 does not have a release date as of July 2006.

A level editor editor is promised for later release, possibly packaged with the 1.3 patch.

Open beta controversy

After the release of the open beta, a number of concerns arose from the participants. The March 14 2006 version is known to randomly crash during multiplayer sessions, making it difficult to even finish a game, as well as serious gameplay bugs and performance issues.

The perceived poor quality of the open beta raised a concern that all the bugs would not be fixed in the time remaining for the final release, which was scheduled for April 3. This led to twelve major Heroes fansites to form the "Save Heroes movement", an attempt to persuade Ubisoft, using a petition, to postpone the release of Heroes V. The site went online on January 26, three days after the beginning of the open beta, and in less than three days, SaveHeroes.org received 30,000 unique visits, and the petition received 1,500 signatures, 333 of which were made in the first 11 hours.

On January 27, GameSpot published a news entry[4] where it was stated that the game had already been delayed before the beta test even started, which was quietly indicated by the removal of Heroes V from the list of planned releases for quarter 4 of the 2005 financial year, which ended on March 31.

Regardless, the SaveHeroes.org participants were dissatisfied with this silent move. On January 29, the sites' webmasters signed the "News Suppression Pact", which stated that they would not post any news about Heroes V until Ubisoft publicly announces that the game is delayed. The reaction to this move has been controversial, and the announcement-related thread on Celestial Heavens[5] has gathered mostly negative comments. Some readers went as far as calling this move "childish", despite supporting the Save Heroes movement in general.

On January 30, Heroes V producer Fabrice Cambounet announced[6] that Ubisoft would delay the release until Q2 2006 because of the "rising of the community". The News Suppression Pact was lifted, and some links, including the "How can I help?" link, were removed from SaveHeroes.org.

Amid the turmoil, a number of users on the Celestial Heavens forum, the Heroes Community forum, the official Ubisoft forum, and other forums worldwide suggested a conspiracy theory, expressing the belief that the collaborative Save Heroes movement was in fact orchestrated by Ubisoft (and, as some say, Nival) as a PR tactic.

Critical reaction

So far, the critical reaction to the retail version of Heroes V has been generally good, with an average review score of roughly 79%.[7] Positives that have been mentioned include appealing 3D graphics and music, decent AI, and gameplay faithfulness to the traditions of Heroes III, arguably the most successful game in the series.

Noted negatives or disappointments include: focus on graphics at the expense of playability, broken multiplayer, cheating AI (receiving extra resources each turn), a number of minor bugs, spelling/grammar mistakes, too few maps, lack of a map editor and random map generator (although both have been promised to appear in future updates along with additional maps), a cliché-filled storyline with unconvincing voice acting outside of the CGI cutscenes.

References

  1. ^ [1]
  2. ^ [2]
  3. ^ [3]
  4. ^ "Mission accomplished for Might and Magic petition", GameSpot, last accessed on January 31, 2006.
  5. ^ "News: News Suppression Pact", Celestial Heavens, last accessed on January 31, 2006.
  6. ^ "Announcement ! Heroes 5 release", Ubisoft forums, last accessed on January 31 2006.
  7. ^ 79%

Online tournaments

  • Heroes of Might and Magic V : Heroes-fr Ladder
  • TOHeroes.com "Tournament of Honor" - Epic tournament fan-site. Has stood the test of time since the 1990s. Many years with continued reliable service through many versions of Heroes of Might and Magic Ladder-style play.
  • Heroesmini.com "Official Mini game" - A fun java type mini tournament involving a calculation system between characters. It is not a competitive reporting tournament for "ladder compettition" of the actual game. Email can be used as well.
  • Oracleleague.com Up and running for Ladder-style competition. Originally opened in 1996 for Heroes 2 tournament play, but closed in late 1999 with the release of Heroes 3. The Oracle League was resurrected in September of 2005 in anticipation of Heroes 5.
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