King Bounty Online

[pavned]

Wow, I've been a regular on this forum and don't seem to recall ever saw this one pop up!

Heard rumour about it tough...

But here it is:
http://kranx.com/

I'm kinda of sad tough, hate MMO games. Well looks like CW will be the lat KB experience for me!

[DGDobrev]

Hmm... I went through the press-release, and I wonder what will this project look like. I sure applaud their idea. In theory, successful game series should go online sooner or later, but I hope they did their fair bit of marketing before launching this project. They need to compete with some truly awesome MMORPGs and they must really put their heads into it, create good graphics, make it easily accessible for people with moderately good computers, create tons of content, create tons of monsters, a great big world in which the players could thrive in, and of course, a good story-line based on good NPC characters.

I never played WoW online, but it is a good example. Everyone would want to meet Arthas, Thrall, Jaina Proudmoore, Kel'Thuzad and the multitude of unique characters that popped up in the Warcraft series. I'm sad to say that King's Bounty doesn't have as much chars that capture the attention - the few most notable are Amelie, King Mark, Bill Gilbert, and my personal favorite, Lew Klisan.

I'm also way past my MMORPG time. I had enough of Lineage 2 as an MMORPG game - and once you played one, the rest are pretty much the same.

[Renevent]

Wow! Interesting direction to take the series to say the least. I just hope they don't turn KB into somekind of online casual facebook game :-P

[Dwagginz]

Rough translation:
Company KranX Productions, founded by the famous Russian game-inventory Andrew "KranK" Kuzmin, and Nival Network, one of the leading Russian companies in the field of online games, led by Sergei Orlov, announce a joint MMO-project King's Bounty Online.

Nival are... Oh, HoMM V, right? Or is that a different developer?

[axelle]

any real fan of the series won't even bother to touch the online-version.

when you go online, you go straight to video.

[BB Shockwave]

If the designers and programmers of the original game will be doing it... I'm all for it.

It can only be better then the horrible Heroes of MIght and Magic Online game. (There are no enemy heroes or castles or mines on the adventure maps, and you actually have to lose battles and get your units killed by the thousand to upgrade them! Pity, because I liked the graphics).

[pavned]

I'm just wondering what part in the development of this game, the Katauri team will play. It seems that it might be a little one base on the tiny bit of information you can get from the web!

Does that mean that Katauri is actually working on a whole different game?

I hope!

Hello MR Katauri, any news?:)

[BB Shockwave]

The info says it's a joint project... that's already better then Heroes Online which neother 3DO nor Ubisoft had any hands in.

(I wonder what Jon Von Caneghem is doing these days.)

[Dwagginz]

The info says it's a joint project... that's already better then Heroes Online which neother 3DO nor Ubisoft had any hands in.
Which one is the rebranded Asian MMO? Kingdoms or Online?

[Zechnophobe]

Well, I don't really know what to think. If it is just a multiplayer version with glorified matchmaking that makes it 'massive multiplayer' then I'm okay with it. But I'm not really sure what I would expect from a game like this. I just hope it remains strategic and fun, and not some wierd over the shoulder RPG thing more like Kingdom Hearts.

Keyblade = I will NOT buy it.

[BB Shockwave]

Which one is the rebranded Asian MMO? Kingdoms or Online?

Online. It is essentially Heroes III with 3D graphics, and slightly rewamped skills and units (somewhat stealing the unit experience system from WOG, and doing the same for spells). There is also Leadership, KB style.
The problems are, as I stated above, stupid unit level raising system - you have to offer "souls" of your own fallen units to raise their levels, and it's like 10.000 dead Centaurs to raise them to level 1, with the upgrade happening only on level 3. (to Centaur Captains, FE). Add to this the insane grinding and that you can only adventure with a select few units, on maps where there is nothing else but random resources and enemy troops (no castle building, you have just one main castle on the main map). PVP would be fun, but due to the leadership system you have no chance to defeat heroes more then 5 levels above you, so it's unbalanced. Worst of all, for a mage hero - spells at best, last for 3 rounds only... And that's with a very high spell power. I played throughout the open beta, until it became known that non-asian players will not be able to play it... but we helped them test this bugfest for free. [/rant]

Kingdoms is the official Ubisoft game. Sadly, it has absolutely basic combat, very primitive. It has nice building functions and conquer systems, but the heart of Heroes was always combat, and they messed that up.

[Metathron]

I am not pleased at the sound of it, unless this is some kind of side project and Katauri will be called back to work on a full blown sequel.

I haven't been a part of any Heroes of Might and Magic (my favourite series) MMORPG, and I'll be damned if I start with some dumbed down KB.

[DrAtomic1]

(I wonder what Jon Von Caneghem is doing these days.)

Works for EA and is responsible for the Command and Conquer series...

[BB Shockwave]

Works for EA and is responsible for the Command and Conquer series...

From Turn Based to Real-Time... odd...

[joasoz]

The MMO scene is tough and unforgiving. I would much rather that they made Kings Bounty 2, with more flexibility in the stories, better editors, better graphics and such. That I would buy in a heartbeat. Kings Bounty Online, color me uninterested :(

[onepiece]

If done correctly (which surely wouldn't) it could be like the single player campaign but with battles between a lot of players (imagine a full battle royal between 50 people XD).

Just plain crazy but could be very interesting (if done correctly)