Hail friendly HOMM•V / OSX fanatics! I’m taking off for a short ski vacation for a few days, but will be back with lots of good stuff as promised, including a big “review” of King’s Bounty, the game that launched 1000 sequels (well, five, but hopefully we’ll hit 1000 in my lifetime). Hopefully we can get a status update from Freeverse too (if there is any status to update with the beta delay). I am also greatly intrigued by the new Nintendo DS game Age of Kings, a turn-based strategy adaptation of the Age of Empires RTS series. It is getting favorable reviews in the 80% range, so I might pick it up and review it for you in comparison to the HOMM series.

As most of you already know, SaveHeroes.org is a coalition of major fansites dissatisfied with the apparently woeful state of the open beta. They are concerned that, a la HOMM4, Ubi is going to rush HOMM•V out to meet their March 31st fiscal quarter deadline instead of taking the time needed to polish the game up nice. If HOMM•V fails to be a critical and commercial success, the fear is that the franchise could die-off altogether.

I was thinking about giving them the support of HOMM•V for OSX, but was wondering a few things. Is the open beta really so buggy, incomplete, and weak in the AI department that another month and a half of work won’t be good enough to whip it into shape? Does an additional delay in the release of HOMM•V really effect the Mac port that much?

A lot of PC gamers don’t seem to understand that the beta they are playing is purposely stripped down in order to primarily test multiplayer and server loads. Are they over-reacting?

What do you guys think we should do?

UPDATE: Whoa damn, things move fast on Teh Intarwebs. SaveHeroes.org is reporting that indeed Heroes•V has been saved: Fabreeze Fabrice has announced that HOMM•V will be delayed, and that there is no firm release date at this point. And the News Suppression Pact has been lifted too.

I shall resume eating my Cheerios in peace.

I was blown away today when I checked the webstats for HOMM•V for OSX. Since going live on January 15th, we’ve already had 2500 unique visits and average 150 unique visits a day. I guess I should have asked Freeverse how big a spike in web traffic they’ve had since announcing the HOMM•V port, and if there has been a “HOMM Halo Effect” on sales of their other games!

So whats in the pipe for us the next couple of weeks?

Since launching this site, I’ve made contact with some Wise Sages of HOMM Mac Lore, and have learned even more about the ridiculous and operatic history of our favorite game on our favorite platform. In the next week or so, our HOMM Lore section will be getting a complete overhaul to reflect what of this information I can print without getting myself (or my informants) sued. I’d probably be more scared, but 3DO did us all a huge service in this regard by going bankrupt last year. And also, I have a law degree. So bring it, yo.

I’ve also gone back to our roots by playing the Sega Genesis version of King’s Bounty from 1991. It’s a pretty amazing game actually — possibly the best PC–>console strategy game I’ve ever played! — and is testament to Jon Van Caneghem’s design brilliance that most of the core concepts remain the core of HOMM•V. So I’ll be giving you a huge review of that game with lots of screen shots and game design philosophy. It’s a really fascinating comparison.

The HOMM•V Release Date Pool also has about 20 registered players already, and dates are going fast! The general hope seems to be for an August release, but who knows how the news of the Save Heroes! petition will effect the PC release date (and hence when Freeverse gets final code to begin the port). I’ll be updating Ye Offishul Poole Calendar in the next couple of days, and will be contacting those registrants who have not received their ticket yet.

And finally, we’ll be having an updated interview with Freeverse in a couple of more weeks.

As always, if there is something you know or would like to see, email hambone@utopos.net.

Somehow we managed to get Bruce Morrison and Colin Smith of Freeverse to give us their first interview since announcing the port. Are we all just a little too fanatical about this game? Yeah. Should we be worried? Not really. Because when it comes time to diagnose our collective pathology, the standard deviation for comparison is going to be these two “wing-nuts” at Freeverse.

Read on for the full interview.

Heroes of Might and Magic has a long and storied history on the Mac platform befitting its famously operatic theme music. After a less than spectacular fourth installment, the bankruptcy of 3DO, an asset purchase by Ubisoft, a long development cycle at Russia’s Nival Interactive (they of the critically acclaimed Etherlords and Silent Storm games), and the incredible, unexpected footwork of Freeverse Software, OSX users can rejoice at the miraculous reappearance of our beloved strategy super-hit in its fifth iteration.

This site hopes to serve as a one-stop shop for all things HOMM•V Mac, and thus to help a strong community grow. We’ll keep track of the port, host patches and add-on files, collect the collective wisdom, advocate for an open-beta, digest the news from Ubisoft, and just generally enjoy the game. We also hope to have interviews with our Heroes at Freeverse as well as feature articles on whatever interests the masses, including the crazy and exotic history of HOMM on the Mac platform.

HOMM•V for OSX is intended to be a collective effort, and will be better the more people contribute as commentators, authors, critics, map designers, reviewers, news hounds, and guide writers. Anything that isn’t pathetic or offensive will get its due. Hell, we’ll even post fan fiction if you’ll put your real name to it.

Until I can start assigning content privileges to others, please email comments and submissions to obiter@gmail.com.