Tag: Gods & Heroes

The Current State Of Gods & Heroes


godsnheroes2

I’m writing this in response to a comment recently left here at MMO Fallout by user Sapphic about the game Gods & Heroes:

Well the servers went down in September and according to the website still haven’t come back up, the forums are still down I can confirm. No reply from trying to contact them, no update or reply to messages posted on their facebook page or twitter. Also their other game in development, Minis with enemies has, even tho it was promised in a video on the front page, not been updated since June 2012. Heatwave have gone totally silent in any form of communications about any of their released or in development products. Though I would reply to this in case anyone found this and thought of putting money down for GnH. As I would recommend not doing until Heatwave at least update in some variety of what is happening.

As many of you likely know, Gods & Heroes doesn’t have developers. It hasn’t since January 2012 when everyone was reassigned to other projects at Heatwave Interactive, none of which have show any activity since around July. So what has happened since then? On September 27th, the Gods & Heroes game servers and website went offline for maintenance with no estimated downtime and with the possibility of extended maintenance. As of December 2nd, the Gods & Heroes Facebook still had players reporting the servers as offline. I did my own investigation and found that the servers, when accessed through the game client, are indeed online. I have no method of pinpointing exactly when they came online, but it appears to be sometime in mid-December. They are still online as of this writing.

Heatwave Interactive has been completely silent since September 2012, as far as I can tell. As of this publishing, the forums are not just offline, the URL forwards to a Verizon “page not found” error. The game’s website is woefully out of date, still listing the game as sold via Steam, Gamestop, and EB Games when it was removed from those stores around a year ago. The download client that the website provides via the account management page is completely broken and will return an “out of date” error and instruct the user to download a newer version from the main website.

If you’re still interested in giving Gods & Heroes a play, it costs a $9.99 one time fee on the Gods & Heroes website and doesn’t have a subscription or cash shop, be aware that the active community is just about nonexistent. There are three servers and they are all pretty quiet. So if you do take Gods & Heroes for a spin, bring a few friends or you’ll be going solo.

Gods & Heroes Doesn't Have Developers


Gods & Heroes has had a rough life for an MMO. Back in the day the game began under Perpetual Entertainment which turned out to be not so perpetual and went bankrupt in 2008, orphaning its two MMOs. Already hit with a setback, Gods & Heroes was bought up by Heatwave Interactive, developed further and released in 2011 to almost no fanfare. The game was fun, but riddled with bugs and containing very little content outside of questing. Heatwave came out shortly after with a blunt announcement: The game wasn’t running up to par.

This January, Heatwave stopped charging subscriptions in favor of a buy to play system, with the promise of an upcoming free to play system. In an announcement today, however, Heatwave has announced that there isn’t much of a development team left, and won’t be until the game finds funding.

However, at the end of 2011, it was clear that we would either have to let the team go, or find another way to keep them around. So, in order to keep the game alive and have a real chance at getting the free 2 play effort funded, we’ve reassigned the majority of the development team to new projects and made the service free for everyone. The game will have to remain in this state until we find further funding. I hope my honesty and transparency about what has been going on with G&H communicates our commitment and belief in the project.

Gods & Heroes isn’t shutting down any time soon, however. There is enough funding to cover hosting.

There is definitely no expiration date on Gods and Heroes and funding for that is not an issue. I want to make it very clear that we have no intention on shutting Gods and Heroes down and we are committed to the IP.

Gods & Heroes is still available via digital distribution for $10 with no subscription fees.

(Source: Gods & Heroes Forums)

Gods & Heroes Doesn’t Have Developers


Gods & Heroes has had a rough life for an MMO. Back in the day the game began under Perpetual Entertainment which turned out to be not so perpetual and went bankrupt in 2008, orphaning its two MMOs. Already hit with a setback, Gods & Heroes was bought up by Heatwave Interactive, developed further and released in 2011 to almost no fanfare. The game was fun, but riddled with bugs and containing very little content outside of questing. Heatwave came out shortly after with a blunt announcement: The game wasn’t running up to par.

This January, Heatwave stopped charging subscriptions in favor of a buy to play system, with the promise of an upcoming free to play system. In an announcement today, however, Heatwave has announced that there isn’t much of a development team left, and won’t be until the game finds funding.

However, at the end of 2011, it was clear that we would either have to let the team go, or find another way to keep them around. So, in order to keep the game alive and have a real chance at getting the free 2 play effort funded, we’ve reassigned the majority of the development team to new projects and made the service free for everyone. The game will have to remain in this state until we find further funding. I hope my honesty and transparency about what has been going on with G&H communicates our commitment and belief in the project.

Gods & Heroes isn’t shutting down any time soon, however. There is enough funding to cover hosting.

There is definitely no expiration date on Gods and Heroes and funding for that is not an issue. I want to make it very clear that we have no intention on shutting Gods and Heroes down and we are committed to the IP.

Gods & Heroes is still available via digital distribution for $10 with no subscription fees.

(Source: Gods & Heroes Forums)

Gods & Heroes: Subscriptions Rescinded


I like Gods & Heroes, in fact it was the game the spurred on the “Why Aren’t You Playing” editorial series I’ve been neglecting. Despite how I feel about the game, Heatwave Interactive met with a rather low reception since launch last year, and mentioned in July that the developer was considering a free to play option at some unknown point in the future.

Well January 2012 is that unknown point. In a post today, Heatwave Interactive announced the end to Gods & Heroes subscriptions. Until the full free to play launches, subscription fees are being removed.

The Gods & Heroes team has been working hard over the past few months to secure the future of the game by taking it to a free-to-play model. Such a change is a significant undertaking; one that requires a large investment in time and resources to make this major transition a success. In the interim, we have made the decision to eliminate subscription fees and offer G&H players immediate and unlimited access to all areas of the game until the new Free-to-Play model has been finalized and implemented.

You will still need to buy the client, however, and Heatwave Interactive will be bringing the price down starting next week to $9.99.

(Source: Gods & Heroes website)

(Additional: Why Aren’t You Playing?)

Week In Review: Tardiness Is Not Tolerated Edition


здравствуйте! I’ve been spending the past few days not on homework or work-work, on figuring out exactly how I want to inject videos into MMO Fallout, as I’ve promised many times in the past. My first video, that I’ll hopefully release in the next week or so, is a quick look at the Sony Authenticator. Since my skills with improvisation in front of a microphone are essentially zilch, I’m taking the old fashioned model of writing out a script.

Needless to say, what did I miss?

1. There Was No Ganking In The Old Republic

Any game with player vs player of any kind faces this issue: How liberally do we allow ganking? A majority of games take the approach of rule-bound servers, where players can choose from PvE (only in certain areas) or PvP (virtually everywhere). A select few, including Darkfall and Mortal Online, have mandatory PvP all over, with the exception of small safe zones. Bioware’s statement on the matter:

To put it bluntly: If that is your fantasy, you will have to find another game, because The Old Republic will not cater to that. For every player who enjoys that particular fantasy, there are a lot of players that don’t enjoy being on the receiving end of it. That’s a fact, a business lesson learned from existing, still running MMOs.

Good.

2. Dungeons and Dragons Online: The Offline Novel

The Shard Axe: An Eberron Novel is hardly out of the ordinary if you’ve read a Dungeons and Dragons book before. The story follows Sentinel Marshal Sabira d’Deneith, and surprisingly requires little knowledge of the world inside. The story does a great job of explaining places and people, in great detail, to newcomers of the series, and doesn’t tie-in with the game at all aside from a few locations. The action is quick, brutal, and author Marsheila Rockwell does a wonderful job painting believable characters in mythical situations that are just magical enough to still be grounded in some sort of realism.

The Shard Axe is a decently sized book at 352 pages, and is a must for any fan of Dungeons and Dragons novels, fantasy novels, or the MMO. You can buy it in paperback for around $7.99, or through your favorite ebook app for a minor price decrease.

Amazon

3. An MMO Coming To WiiU and Wii? Dragon Quest X

Now this is a surprising story. As a fan of the Dragon Quest series, the announcement of Dragon Quest X on the WiiU is about all the incentive I need to buy the console when it comes out next year. To add icing to the cake, however, the news feeds are buzzing that the game will feature persistent online multiplayer with components reminiscent of an MMO. The game, developed by Square Enix, apparently pairs up to the title enough that the game will carry a subscription fee in Japan (although this will likely be changed for American/European releases).

All I can say is where do I sign up?

4. Book #2: Book Series Based Off of Gods & Heroes

As it turns out, Heatwave Interactive has more plans for libraries than simply burning them down while murdering your family and leaving you for dead. Announced last week, Gods & Heroes is exiting the digital world and entering the world of paperback novels. Book I, titled “Blood and Laurels” is set to release at some point in the future by a nondescript author who has won an award. You can read an excerpt with the rest of the announcement here, with another excerpt to release on September 16th.

I have a feeling this is going to be one of those book-learning Week in Reviews.

5. Bi-Weekly Star Wars Galaxies Articles

I haven’t played Star Wars Galaxies since my last article on the game, but with my newly renewed Station Pass, I will be rebooting the previously weekly series as a bi-weekly piece.

Gods & Heroes Trial Extended: 7 Days


Seven days isn’t just enough time for a small Japanese girl to come out of your television and murder you. I’m going to go on a limb and guess that, although appealing to some, the three day Gods and Heroes trial just wasn’t long enough of a sample period for many prospective buyers. As a result, Heatwave Interactive has announced that the trial has been extended to seven days, without the hassle of phone calls or raspy voices predicting your imminent demise.

“We’d like to invite everyone curious about Gods & Heroes to spend a week sampling the brutality and glory of ancient Rome. By extending the trial period from three to seven days, new players will have a chance to really dig into the heart of the game and we know they’ll like what they find.”

If you want to learn a bit more on Gods & Heroes, check out the MMO Fallout “Why Aren’t You Playing,” article.

Why Aren't You Playing: Gods & Heroes


Why Should I Play is a new series where I dive into games and discuss my experiences. This article is not meant to be un-bias’d and due to the intrinsic nature of MMOs, reflects the product at the time of publish but may not reflect the product at the time of reading. As always, MMO Fallout suggests you make use of free trials to form your own opinion of the game.

Gods & Heroes launched back in June to a rather low reception and equally mediocre ratings. A couple of weeks after launch, Heatwave Interactive announced that the game didn’t garner as much attention as they were hoping, and that the company had plans to implement several ideas including free to play at some unannounced point in the future. A few days ago, the company announced the release of the 3-day trial, allowing unlimited access (for three days) to all Gods & Heroes had to offer, along with a price drop to $29.99. I dived in head first into the three day trial to check out what Gods & Heroes had to offer.

Through my first day in Gods & Heroes, I kept asking myself why the game felt so familiar, and it wasn’t until around level six or seven that enlightenment hit me: Gods & Heroes feels like a game that should have come out years ago. The landscape in many places looks stunning, with impressive detail and variation in the flowers and trees that populate the landscape. The armor shows off the multiple pieces that put it together, and the characters look decent, although a bit shiny and emotionless. The buildings, however, are the sore spot in visual design, with a small amount of structures reused to populate the world.

The main advertising points of Gods & Heroes are the estate system and the minion management. Almost immediately, you are introduced to your private, dilapidated estate that must be built from the ground up to its former glory. As you complete quests for the NPCs in your village, you gain access to better perks for your minions, from armor, weapons, etc. The game uses a rather cheap method of having your buildings phase through construction right in front of you when you complete an upgrade quest, but that’s a rather inconsequential aesthetic flaw.

The meat of the game is a been-there-done-that fantasy MMO set in ancient Rome. Your main mode of leveling consists of going around and finding quests that task you with killing a number of NPCs, harvesting nodes, or killing NPCs to harvest things off of them. As you level up, you will follow the basic system of taking your trash to the vendor, buying new armor and weapons, setting up your alternate advancement points (feats) and upgrading your minions. The idea of bringing squad mechanics into a solo-oriented game will make your time spent in Rome a little too easy, however.

Gods & Heroes is funny and charming in parts. In one memorable quest, I had to bust up a multi-day long party by smashing wine vats that we then discovered were spiked with a magical essence. Inevitably, I killed the guy behind the magic and given the confirmation that the party would be broken up as soon as everyone sobered up.

Why You Aren’t Playing Gods & Heroes

You may have heard that Gods & Heroes is on the easy side, and that would be completely accurate. Having one minion makes the game easy enough, and that is before you hit higher levels and your squad increases to four. Now, to its credit, there are supposed to be later sections in the game that only allow for a limited number of minions, but with two sword wielding minions, I was steamrolling over anything that came my way. But you can put minions away if you want to make the game more difficult, there is no obligation to have your minions out.

Perhaps the biggest problem with Gods & Heroes is that the game is bugged like a hotel room in a prostitution sting. The game crashed maybe once every two hours, either giving me a “Godsandheroes.exe has stopped responding” Windows error, or simply losing connection to the server. Not that I was at risk of dying, thanks to my two tanks, but that doesn’t ease the frustration of those few moments when you know the game is about to crash, but hasn’t actually displayed the message yet. Otherwise, I didn’t have any lag issues while playing, there was no rubber-banding or jolting NPCs to speak of.

Invisible wall.

Second on my list of three big gripes: The terrain. The terrain needs to be revamped so walking isn’t a fight between myself and my character. Slight inclines or tiny but sharp inclines seem to stop my player in his tracks, and I am fairly certain that Heatwave has installed invisible walls in some areas because I’ve found multiple spots that I cannot pass. In the above picture, you can see my character on pretty level ground, but ground that he cannot pass. It is worth noting that this is nowhere near the area limits.

Third: The game has some issues with lack of context sensitive response, or my character is a pacifist. When fighting, I had several instances where my character would just cancel auto-attack, wouldn’t attack at all, or I would hit something on the hotbar and I would see “queuing quick shot” but my character would never use the power. This isn’t a lag issue, to my knowledge. When using hotbar actions, I also found that there is no context for cooldown. The buttons are grayed out until you can use them again, but the countdown timers always say: 00:00:00 remaining, and the buttons regaining their color doesn’t necessarily mean that pressing the associated button will result in attacking again.

So Should I Play Gods & Heroes?

Gods & Heroes is fun, and its major issues are on the hardware front (performance, responsiveness, and terrain/pathfinding). The estate and minion systems are enjoyable and innovative, but the experience is just crushed under the foot of your minions managing to kill the mob before my scout decides to stop ignoring my button presses.

I’m going to leave this up to the reader to decide, download the Gods & Heroes trial and give it the whole three days before you make your decision, but you may want to wait to activate your key until some much needed terrain/stability issues are fixed. I would buy the game as it is now, because I didn’t find the issues to be game-breaking, if it weren’t for the fact that the Star Wars Galaxies weekly article is my primary MMO right now.

Otherwise, I’d give Gods & Heroes a thumbs up. If you haven’t taken part in the 3-day trial, do so.

http://godsandheroes.com/gods-heroes-rome-rising-free-trial-program-is-live/

Why Aren’t You Playing: Gods & Heroes


Why Should I Play is a new series where I dive into games and discuss my experiences. This article is not meant to be un-bias’d and due to the intrinsic nature of MMOs, reflects the product at the time of publish but may not reflect the product at the time of reading. As always, MMO Fallout suggests you make use of free trials to form your own opinion of the game.

Gods & Heroes launched back in June to a rather low reception and equally mediocre ratings. A couple of weeks after launch, Heatwave Interactive announced that the game didn’t garner as much attention as they were hoping, and that the company had plans to implement several ideas including free to play at some unannounced point in the future. A few days ago, the company announced the release of the 3-day trial, allowing unlimited access (for three days) to all Gods & Heroes had to offer, along with a price drop to $29.99. I dived in head first into the three day trial to check out what Gods & Heroes had to offer.

Through my first day in Gods & Heroes, I kept asking myself why the game felt so familiar, and it wasn’t until around level six or seven that enlightenment hit me: Gods & Heroes feels like a game that should have come out years ago. The landscape in many places looks stunning, with impressive detail and variation in the flowers and trees that populate the landscape. The armor shows off the multiple pieces that put it together, and the characters look decent, although a bit shiny and emotionless. The buildings, however, are the sore spot in visual design, with a small amount of structures reused to populate the world.

The main advertising points of Gods & Heroes are the estate system and the minion management. Almost immediately, you are introduced to your private, dilapidated estate that must be built from the ground up to its former glory. As you complete quests for the NPCs in your village, you gain access to better perks for your minions, from armor, weapons, etc. The game uses a rather cheap method of having your buildings phase through construction right in front of you when you complete an upgrade quest, but that’s a rather inconsequential aesthetic flaw.

The meat of the game is a been-there-done-that fantasy MMO set in ancient Rome. Your main mode of leveling consists of going around and finding quests that task you with killing a number of NPCs, harvesting nodes, or killing NPCs to harvest things off of them. As you level up, you will follow the basic system of taking your trash to the vendor, buying new armor and weapons, setting up your alternate advancement points (feats) and upgrading your minions. The idea of bringing squad mechanics into a solo-oriented game will make your time spent in Rome a little too easy, however.

Gods & Heroes is funny and charming in parts. In one memorable quest, I had to bust up a multi-day long party by smashing wine vats that we then discovered were spiked with a magical essence. Inevitably, I killed the guy behind the magic and given the confirmation that the party would be broken up as soon as everyone sobered up.

Why You Aren’t Playing Gods & Heroes

You may have heard that Gods & Heroes is on the easy side, and that would be completely accurate. Having one minion makes the game easy enough, and that is before you hit higher levels and your squad increases to four. Now, to its credit, there are supposed to be later sections in the game that only allow for a limited number of minions, but with two sword wielding minions, I was steamrolling over anything that came my way. But you can put minions away if you want to make the game more difficult, there is no obligation to have your minions out.

Perhaps the biggest problem with Gods & Heroes is that the game is bugged like a hotel room in a prostitution sting. The game crashed maybe once every two hours, either giving me a “Godsandheroes.exe has stopped responding” Windows error, or simply losing connection to the server. Not that I was at risk of dying, thanks to my two tanks, but that doesn’t ease the frustration of those few moments when you know the game is about to crash, but hasn’t actually displayed the message yet. Otherwise, I didn’t have any lag issues while playing, there was no rubber-banding or jolting NPCs to speak of.

Invisible wall.

Second on my list of three big gripes: The terrain. The terrain needs to be revamped so walking isn’t a fight between myself and my character. Slight inclines or tiny but sharp inclines seem to stop my player in his tracks, and I am fairly certain that Heatwave has installed invisible walls in some areas because I’ve found multiple spots that I cannot pass. In the above picture, you can see my character on pretty level ground, but ground that he cannot pass. It is worth noting that this is nowhere near the area limits.

Third: The game has some issues with lack of context sensitive response, or my character is a pacifist. When fighting, I had several instances where my character would just cancel auto-attack, wouldn’t attack at all, or I would hit something on the hotbar and I would see “queuing quick shot” but my character would never use the power. This isn’t a lag issue, to my knowledge. When using hotbar actions, I also found that there is no context for cooldown. The buttons are grayed out until you can use them again, but the countdown timers always say: 00:00:00 remaining, and the buttons regaining their color doesn’t necessarily mean that pressing the associated button will result in attacking again.

So Should I Play Gods & Heroes?

Gods & Heroes is fun, and its major issues are on the hardware front (performance, responsiveness, and terrain/pathfinding). The estate and minion systems are enjoyable and innovative, but the experience is just crushed under the foot of your minions managing to kill the mob before my scout decides to stop ignoring my button presses.

I’m going to leave this up to the reader to decide, download the Gods & Heroes trial and give it the whole three days before you make your decision, but you may want to wait to activate your key until some much needed terrain/stability issues are fixed. I would buy the game as it is now, because I didn’t find the issues to be game-breaking, if it weren’t for the fact that the Star Wars Galaxies weekly article is my primary MMO right now.

Otherwise, I’d give Gods & Heroes a thumbs up. If you haven’t taken part in the 3-day trial, do so.

http://godsandheroes.com/gods-heroes-rome-rising-free-trial-program-is-live/

Gods & Heroes: Three Day Trial


Free to play may be coming to Gods & Heroes at some unknown point in the unknown future, but why let that stop you from trying the game now? Launched today by Heatwave Interactive, players can get into the mythological MMO for three days absolutely free of charge. All you have to do is enter your name and email address in this page right here, to be sent your key, and create a Heatwave account to gain access. Simple as counting your bacon before you eat it.

For those of you who go through content like tissue paper on a bad cold, you’ll have access to all content (that is to say, as much as you can get through) in those three days.

For more information on Gods & Heroes, click on the link on the right hand side.

Gods & Heroes: Pricing, Free To Play, Discussions:


Gods & Heroes launched by Heatwave Interactive to a surprisingly small audience, despite the game’s performance on the Steam sales charts. Heatwave, being a small company, came forth over a week ago with some surprisingly blunt admissions:

“We don’t need 500k users to be successful. However, our current growth rate isn’t good enough.”

An article today on Massively boasts an over 50% conversion rate (players who continue to subscribe), noting that although free-to-play is not on the books right now, the model is coming to Gods & Heroes at some point in the future.

“Again, obviously we want as many players playing the game as possible but, from our perspective, we need to get the game where it needs to be and have the right sized audience to go with that.”

The price of Gods & Heroes is seeing a reduction, down to $29.99. I’ll have more on the game as it appears.