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Heroes Community > Heroes 3.5 - WoG and Beyond > Thread: Forge mentality
Thread: Forge mentality This thread is 10 pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 · «PREV / NEXT»
artu
artu


Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
posted July 15, 2017 03:01 PM
Edited by artu at 15:04, 15 Jul 2017.

Xfing said:
artu said:
No, lore didnt push anything. Game lore is not like some book that has value in itself, inspiring a film director. They made that lore up because they wanted to have a setting with hybrid elements and when the idea backfired, they changed the lore accordingly and nobody got upset because the story got scrapped, even people who were pro-forge were not upset because of that, were they. They cared about their town, not their story.


Nothing about the lore got changed, except that the plot builds off the light ending of MM7 instead of the dark ending. Which objectively made for a worse ending, since the MM7 ending basically became a red herring with no connection or consequence for future titles (while otherwise it would have carried the plot onward), the Kreegans were played up to still be a huge threat, even requiring the Armageddon's Blade to defeat, while previously they were established to have been completely defeated with the death of Xenofex. Creating the new, rushed plot of AB required retcons and broke consistency, which had been pretty solid up to that point.

So it's not like the pro-Forge people cared just about the town, and not about the story. It's in fact the anti-Forge people who cared more about the LACK of that town, than about the story

In one version we had Forge and then we didn't so of course the story was modified, you confirm this even in your post above. The sci-fi elements stood hidden (exclusive to the lore and subtracted from game play) and as long as they remained hidden, most people didnt give a crap because, once again: Most people dont give a crap about the story, it's just an instrument to present features of a game. I don't think you grasp the point here: Defending the Forge based on the elements of the story is irrelevant because the story doesnt mean much, it is not real literature, it is certainly not literature for the sake of literature. They will take the story wherever the game takes it, when they thought they could pull off a hybrid game, they constructed a story FOR that. Once the idea backfired, they modified the story once again. The story is not determinitive in anyway here. Nobody likes or dislikes Forge in the game because they are so impressed or so irritated by the literary qualities of the story. The story is just a minor tool and if you happen to think of it as something more, I suggest visiting the library every once in a while and get a taste of something real for a change.
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fred79
fred79


Disgraceful
Undefeatable Hero
posted July 15, 2017 09:41 PM

artu said:
I suggest visiting the library every once in a while and get a taste of something real for a change.


and i suggest opening your eyes to the life going on outside the libraries and properly assimilating what is going on around you, instead of burying your head in books and thinking that that is in any way, shape, or form, reality.

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artu
artu


Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
posted July 15, 2017 10:12 PM

Is it that time of the month again, fred? Do you need your pills? The subject in that sentence is the significance of game lore, hinting that there is no point in treating it like Tolstoy. The lore will be what the game needs it to be. What does that have to do with spending your life buried in books, which would be a well-spent life, btw.
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fred79
fred79


Disgraceful
Undefeatable Hero
posted July 15, 2017 10:22 PM

whatever, artu. you're so full of yourself. and like i said, get out of the library and live life. you'll see what you're missing in your equations on reality.

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EnergyZ
EnergyZ


Legendary Hero
President of MM Wiki
posted July 15, 2017 10:26 PM

Objectively, the game was missing a town. And I am pretty certain I read somewhere that Conflux would've been added later on, if the Forge hadn't been scrapped.

Lore or not, it still is a shame that so much effort went to waste.
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Baronus
Baronus


Legendary Hero
posted July 16, 2017 10:52 AM

Shadow of Death dont add any city and think real: all "addon" after AB was worst than addon before. HChronicles "6 addons" are totaly cash grabbing. In late 1999 NWC made MMVIII, prepared to HIV and crapping HCh. New city its minimum 2 months (or 3 months, remember that in conflux you have really only 3 new models) work of modelling, painting, programming... New Heroes III city was impossible if we see how looks HCh. Theres no new portraits! Only replacing oldest! From this "addons" to new city is precipice. We had only one choice. Forge or conflux.
If second city was plannad it was only misty conception. We dont lost any city, rather we have new city: conflux and forge we have as a mods. Its victory not a disaster.

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Xfing
Xfing


Adventuring Hero
I like Forge
posted July 16, 2017 12:26 PM
Edited by Xfing at 12:27, 16 Jul 2017.

Baronus said:
Shadow of Death dont add any city


Because they didn't have any more cities in the works except Forge and Conflux. We would have gotten Forge in AB and a more polished Conflux in SoD, we only got a less polished Conflux in AB in the end. The tradeoff is quite obvious here.

Quote:

and think real: all "addon" after AB was worst than addon before. HChronicles "6 addons" are totaly cash grabbing.


They're not addons, they are basically single additional campaigns, which were sold separately and use Shadow of Death mechanics. They were basically glorified, entry-level promo demos for Heroes 3: Shadow of Death. Also, they honestly weren't quite that bad, not to mention the campaigns are possible to find online and just be played using SoD like any other freakin' campaign.

Quote:

In late 1999 NWC made MMVIII, prepared to HIV and crapping HCh. New city its minimum 2 months (or 3 months, remember that in conflux you have really only 3 new models) work of modelling, painting, programming... New Heroes III city was impossible if we see how looks HCh.


What the hell does HCh even have to do with it? Again, Chronicles are SoD campaigns. What looks bad to you there? Also, the whole problem is that we got the Conflux in AB, but it was still in like, alpha or something at that point. Still being worked on, intended for SoD release (which was 4 months later). Instead the work had to be finished super-fast, that's why the town reuses existing neutral unit models from Restoration - to minimize the amount of work necessary. I have no idea how you can think "goblins in Deyja" in MM7 are a sign of rushed work, and the Conflux town somehow isn't.

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verriker
verriker


Honorable
Legendary Hero
We don't need another 'eroes
posted July 16, 2017 01:11 PM

bear in mind it was confirmed of the devs that the Conflux was the plan for second expansion but was shoved forward to be ****** and rushed when Forge was trashed due to the death threats etc lol
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Stevie
Stevie


Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
posted July 16, 2017 02:13 PM

EnergyZ said:
Objectively, the game was missing a town. And I am pretty certain I read somewhere that Conflux would've been added later on, if the Forge hadn't been scrapped.

Lore or not, it still is a shame that so much effort went to waste.


That's very much correct. It is really a shame that despite knowing the discrepancies between the fantasy theme and the sci-fi lore in Heroes 3, JVC and Gregory Fulton still decided to push the Forge for an expansion. Wasteful effort indeed.

Gonna drop this insightful comment from a CH user back in 2011 as well:

hellegennes said:
I am not a forge hater either and I love the MM storyline. This isn't a personal view. NWC announced that they would cancel the forge in order to match the views of the fanbase.

No one would take seriously one death threat from a letter. No company would scrap so much work because of a letter. 3DO for one wouldn't have let NWC throw away so much money because of a single death threat. They allowed it because they knew this meant that the fanbase was unhappy, hence bad publicity, discontented fans, lower sales. This is statistics we are talking about. 200 letters is large enough a number. They scrapped the storyline, all the campaigns, the work on the forge, etc.

And, the reason, Fulton gave was not the death threat but "Reason One: As much as I thought the actions of many fans showed a lack of vision and an inherent distrust for a company who have given them hundreds of hours of quality gameplay, I still didn't want to fight our fans. Reason Two: There wasn't enough pro-Forge activity"

This is crystal clear.

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Baronus
Baronus


Legendary Hero
posted July 16, 2017 03:07 PM

"Plans". I means nothing. None ,,plan" after AB was realised all games are cutted MMVIII,HIV,MMIX, Legends of Might and Magic.
If they dont realised plans its nothing to tell. If they would worked on forge they wouldnt work on conflux. Forge needs more work because they didnt have done elemental models. 4 models from zero and maybe machines because ballista and catapult looks stupid in techno city. In AB we would have forge no conflux and rest will be the same. Where was time to built forge? Reality.

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Xfing
Xfing


Adventuring Hero
I like Forge
posted July 17, 2017 12:14 AM

Check this out. Someone had an idea of making a 50/50 sci-fantasy setting for a PC RPG at long last. I for one am excited as hell!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzUMUUzXpaM

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AnkVaati
AnkVaati


Famous Hero
Nighonese National Front
posted July 17, 2017 08:51 AM
Edited by AnkVaati at 08:56, 17 Jul 2017.

artu said:
Most people dont give a crap about the story, it's just an instrument to present features of a game. I don't think you grasp the point here: Defending the Forge based on the elements of the story is irrelevant because the story doesnt mean much, it is not real literature, it is certainly not literature for the sake of literature.
Completely disagree (though the H4 campaigns are an even better example of that). These are works of art (both the musical and literary parts) that can have a tremendous emotional effect on people and are part of our cultural heritage. Virtual worlds are important parts of our culture too and they need to be preserved and sustained in some way.

I work at a library btw. and you'd be surprised how many bad books their are that doesn't exactly come up to the literary quality of the Heroes 4 campaigns.

I just don't get why people have to be so narrow-minded and intolerant about the Forge: if you don't like it, don't play it. Like I said before I don't like Castle so I disable it on most maps when I play, same for Necro and Inferno.
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Baronus
Baronus


Legendary Hero
posted July 17, 2017 10:43 AM

Yes Terry Ray campaign texts HCH and HIV is art one of the best modern time. But first is gameplay. And dont like forge? I like this design. We tell fit or not fit. Not like dislike. Likes are subjective. Style is objective.

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Salamandre
Salamandre


Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
posted July 17, 2017 03:03 PM

AnkVaati said:
These are works of art (both the musical and literary parts) that can have a tremendous emotional effect on people and are part of our cultural heritage. Virtual worlds are important parts of our culture too and they need to be preserved and sustained in some way.


While you are right on the substance, you are wrong on the context imo. Very few people -if none- buy video games because they seek for a musical or literary work of art which will enrich their heritage. Even Civilization 3 who had mesmerizing classical tracks is no match to a top quality classical CD, which would require from you some focus and effort to listen while those from CD run in same time that you kill barbarians and stressed about that Indian elephant popping in a corner. A great literary sample popping in a message from some hidden event which will probably kill your hero will mostly provoke frustration and anger. I love musical tracks from MM games but saying those have a tremendous emotional effect on players is much exaggerated imo. Maybe on those who forgot their Prozac.

When you combine art with action, usually art loses it. Quality art requires entire dedication, is not something you can fully enjoy while doing tons of other things.

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artu
artu


Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
posted July 17, 2017 03:42 PM

Computer game stories are formulaic, at best they can be compared to action movie scripts, not real literature. I'm sure some people are carried away by action movie scripts, too. That or the existence of some bad books in a library doesn't change the fact that no one prefers or dislikes Forge in the game based on how the story develops. If someone likes Forge and you tell them, okay, I'll move Forge out of the game but the campaign story will be tremendous, will they accept? If someone dislikes Forge and you tell them, oh, but with this town in, we will have a great script for the game, will they change their mind? In gaming, the lore serves the setting, not the other way around, you can be impressed by the rhetorical devices they use while writing the campaigns, of course but a work of literature is a purpose within itself, not an instrument to present game features. Have you ever seen anybody reading the campaign story of a game they are not interested in.
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AnkVaati
AnkVaati


Famous Hero
Nighonese National Front
posted July 17, 2017 10:21 PM
Edited by AnkVaati at 22:26, 17 Jul 2017.

Salamandre said:
I love musical tracks from MM games but saying those have a tremendous emotional effect on players is much exaggerated imo. Maybe on those who forgot their Prozac.
Lol u.

Lemme give you an example: I played Zelda: Link's Awakening on Gameboy Colour when I was like 7 years. The story (spoiler: it's all a dream and to awake you have to end it all, ending your sweet girlfriend in the process because she doesn't exist in the real world) touched me even if I was a kid who knew nothing about love. Now, many years from that, I can still come back and find the story thought-provoking, and kinda emotional combined with the sad music that came with it. That isn't exactly the case with a game like H5 with Isabel's infinite stupidity or whatever Ubi has come up with since they took over HoMM, pandering to supposed fans who hate originality.

I could say similar things about the H4 campaigns, or ES: Morrowind (the later not because it exactly made me 'emotional', but because it took me to such a fascinatingly alien world and made me curious about mythology in general). Sadly, a lot of developers seem to think like this:

Salamandre said:
When you combine art with action, usually art loses it. Quality art requires entire dedication, is not something you can fully enjoy while doing tons of other things.


artu said:
Computer game stories are formulaic, at best they can be compared to action movie scripts, not real literature. I'm sure some people are carried away by action movie scripts, too.


Actually it's a matter of priority: do you as a game developer wish to purse an original game or do you want to listen to the loud minority who wants everything to be steamlined? Do you want to focus on “cool” battle animations and sexy pixels or something that will have a lasting effect on the players so they wanna come back? The former seems to be popular among the businessmen making decisions at companies like Ubi, but is it really a successful strategy?

Blizzard went the same way. As a result, after Cataclysm when everything was streamlined like that for little kiddos, WoW is dying. Heroes of Might and Magic is utterly dead thanks to Ubi's decisions. Now - how does any of this relate to the topic? Well - it kinda does, seeing how this was essentially the beginning of the end for NWC.

About those prozac's though, seriously: my snowflake-o-meter goes off a little when someone (not anyone in this thread) goes nuts about originality, like claiming we can't mix sci-fi and fantasy or like "noooo lol ofc the good knights need to be good™ period!!!" or "zomg no Gauldoth - undead's need to be eebil give us dragon spider Buddhists!!!!" or whatever. We had quite a problems like this in the modding community of a Civ 4 fantasy mod, when a cool eeebil leader was made for the leader of the Castle-ish faction there. Might be that some people have some sort of psychological problem with art not everything being some precise scientific science. I pity them, but we shouldn't have to give up our art because of it - and the people who act like that are not anywhere near the majority of the players.

What games have become legendary in our culture and are referenced to even by people who haven't played them? Surely it's not the generic and streamlined ones? Those that were harsh to us when it came to difficulty and had original (and often tragic) stories are the ones we'll remember, not some cool battle animation Ubi made for generic elf X. While one might look down at video games as “not real literature/art” or whatever, this is a way many young people take in search for the ageless and the divine in our age, and it's simply arrogant to look down upon them and their immaterial needs.

artu said:
Have you ever seen anybody reading the campaign story of a game they are not interested in.
Have you ever had people cheating like nuts in the game to learn the full campaign story, especially when it was fascinating like in H4? Yeah.. quite a few in fact...
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artu
artu


Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
posted July 17, 2017 10:39 PM

Look, I'm all for content over shiny effects, both Sal and I defended 2D map over 3D because it was better gameplay. But in gaming, the lore is not the determinative content. H4 is still weaker than H3 as a game, no matter how good the story was. Also, getting impressed with something at the age of seven is not exactly a solid example, at that age, anything can feel amazingly fresh and astound you, I used to watch ants carrying over a bee for like half an hour those years. And once that happens, it's natural to feel nostalgic about it years later.
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Xfing
Xfing


Adventuring Hero
I like Forge
posted July 18, 2017 01:05 AM
Edited by Xfing at 01:08, 18 Jul 2017.

Baronus said:
Yes Terry Ray campaign texts HCH and HIV is art one of the best modern time. But first is gameplay. And dont like forge? I like this design. We tell fit or not fit. Not like dislike. Likes are subjective. Style is objective.


Style categories are objective, they have terms to call them by. But saying these categories can't be mixed is anything but objective. Again - modern technology and middle ages technology have been mixed in many video games, a lot of them combat-based. Saying that this being reconciled with gameplay necessarily comes at the cost of believability is just your personal way of looking at it, nothing more.

Salamandre said:
I love musical tracks from MM games but saying those have a tremendous emotional effect on players is much exaggerated imo. Maybe on those who forgot their Prozac.
Quote:


LOL. Play DeusEx and tell me the soundtrack didn't contribute to you being moved by the game. All of history's brilliant video games had at least great soundtracks, and it's no coincidence.

Quote:
When you combine art with action, usually art loses it. Quality art requires entire dedication, is not something you can fully enjoy while doing tons of other things.


Yeah, and which games get remembered for years? Hint, it's those that do at least one of these two things absolutely brilliantly, more likely both of them. Know StarCraft? It would never have become as popular as it has if not for the iconic buildings and unit sprites, as well as the soundtrack. The same's true for the gameplay - it would never have achieved such tremendous multiplayer success if not for how good it works, simple as. Heroes 3 is much the same - it delivers both on the gameplay and on the art. Forge would not have disrupted or reduced the quality of either, the only problem is the inability of a percentage of fans to conceive of a hybrid setting and perceive it as an advantage rather than a burden.


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acidchalk
acidchalk


Promising
Known Hero
posted July 18, 2017 01:18 AM

AnkVaati said:
Salamandre said:
I love musical tracks from MM games but saying those have a tremendous emotional effect on players is much exaggerated imo. Maybe on those who forgot their Prozac.
Lol u.

Lemme give you an example: I played Zelda: Link's Awakening on Gameboy Colour when I was like 7 years. The story (spoiler: it's all a dream and to awake you have to end it all, ending your sweet girlfriend in the process because she doesn't exist in the real world) touched me even if I was a kid who knew nothing about love. Now, many years from that, I can still come back and find the story thought-provoking, and kinda emotional combined with the sad music that came with it. That isn't exactly the case with a game like H5 with Isabel's infinite stupidity or whatever Ubi has come up with since they took over HoMM, pandering to supposed fans who hate originality.

I could say similar things about the H4 campaigns, or ES: Morrowind (the later not because it exactly made me 'emotional', but because it took me to such a fascinatingly alien world and made me curious about mythology in general). Sadly, a lot of developers seem to think like this:

Salamandre said:
When you combine art with action, usually art loses it. Quality art requires entire dedication, is not something you can fully enjoy while doing tons of other things.


artu said:
Computer game stories are formulaic, at best they can be compared to action movie scripts, not real literature. I'm sure some people are carried away by action movie scripts, too.


Actually it's a matter of priority: do you as a game developer wish to purse an original game or do you want to listen to the loud minority who wants everything to be steamlined? Do you want to focus on “cool” battle animations and sexy pixels or something that will have a lasting effect on the players so they wanna come back? The former seems to be popular among the businessmen making decisions at companies like Ubi, but is it really a successful strategy?

Blizzard went the same way. As a result, after Cataclysm when everything was streamlined like that for little kiddos, WoW is dying. Heroes of Might and Magic is utterly dead thanks to Ubi's decisions. Now - how does any of this relate to the topic? Well - it kinda does, seeing how this was essentially the beginning of the end for NWC.

About those prozac's though, seriously: my snowflake-o-meter goes off a little when someone (not anyone in this thread) goes nuts about originality, like claiming we can't mix sci-fi and fantasy or like "noooo lol ofc the good knights need to be good™ period!!!" or "zomg no Gauldoth - undead's need to be eebil give us dragon spider Buddhists!!!!" or whatever. We had quite a problems like this in the modding community of a Civ 4 fantasy mod, when a cool eeebil leader was made for the leader of the Castle-ish faction there. Might be that some people have some sort of psychological problem with art not everything being some precise scientific science. I pity them, but we shouldn't have to give up our art because of it - and the people who act like that are not anywhere near the majority of the players.

What games have become legendary in our culture and are referenced to even by people who haven't played them? Surely it's not the generic and streamlined ones? Those that were harsh to us when it came to difficulty and had original (and often tragic) stories are the ones we'll remember, not some cool battle animation Ubi made for generic elf X. While one might look down at video games as “not real literature/art” or whatever, this is a way many young people take in search for the ageless and the divine in our age, and it's simply arrogant to look down upon them and their immaterial needs.

artu said:
Have you ever seen anybody reading the campaign story of a game they are not interested in.
Have you ever had people cheating like nuts in the game to learn the full campaign story, especially when it was fascinating like in H4? Yeah.. quite a few in fact...




I know! I swear to god i can still hear the ballad of the wind fish in my head. If i close my eyes i can go back to being a little kid in a dark corner of my middleschool finishing the game.

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verriker
verriker


Honorable
Legendary Hero
We don't need another 'eroes
posted August 13, 2017 12:32 AM

bit of necromancy keeps Steve Zissou away but some polite users such as artu and Baronus had questioned the Cepheus article said the Forge was a campaign faction, so I sent an email to Cepheus asking him to verify that and he replied, I would summarise that but he gave me such nice email that I asked to post it straight cheers lol

Cepheus said:
<Verriker>,

Wow – thank you for your interest in that old article. I'm happy to report that I do remember it well. Probably the only half-decent thing I ever contributed to the Heroes community! And I still have some draft notes buried deep in the archive.

As regards the specific bit you mention, no, that wasn't my own idle speculation at work. I imagine you know yourself how inflammatory and divisive a subject the Forge had been among the community, historically, so as sophomoric as my writing was, and still is, I still tried to take special care with my facts and wording throughout that section. Perhaps I didn't succeed - I see I may have been a little too reckless in my choosing the phrase "campaign-only," but I was primarily hoping to indicate that it didn't quite have parity with the other towns in the game.

The specific information was that unless a player consciously chose the Forge as a faction, or the mapmaker placed Forges on a map, it would not appear in that game. It would never typically appear as a randomly-selected town in single scenarios, nor would its creatures typically be randomly generated. But, if the mapmaker allowed you to, or, indeed, forced you to, it could have been brought into general play. So it would indeed have been available on typical maps, to that extent, but everything from the creatures, to the dwellings, and even to the heroes, would have been locked off entirely if it had no presence in a map.

I remember being quite surprised to come across this, but it was easily verified via multiple sources at the time with a little Google-fu. One of the sources I relied on was one of the earliest iterations of Age of Heroes itself:

"Random towns/creatures will not become FORGE towns/creatures, you will have to choose FORGE if you want FORGE."

There were also a number of old Web 1.0 fansites at the time (akin to Angelfire, GeoCities etc) which mirrored relevant comments and rumours from the official message boards, Astral Wizard's "Stoic Watchman" news and rumours page, posts at the Nether Gods site, and so on. It was covered in a little more depth on some of those. Regrettably, a lot of that material has come offline since 2011, and the Wayback Machine has been of no use in retrieving them. It's a dead end there for current citation, I'm afraid.

So even though it's less optimal than the material I had at the time, I hope that at least helps to settle any dispute! If you do need more, all I can recommend is looking around the old Heroes III webring with the Wayback Machine. It may turn other sources up.

Anyway, sorry to ramble on. I did tend to spread lots of incorrect rubbish theories about Might and Magic ten years ago, so I don't blame those you mention for their scepticism. But in this case - a published article on Celestial Heavens - it would have been particularly irresponsible to make anything up, and I always like to talk about the provenance of these things if it can help, so thanks again for your kind mail, and of course feel free to ask should anything similar arise again.

All the best
<Cepheus>

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