Trivia / Heroes of Might and Magic

• Creator Killer: VI, which killed its developer, Black Hole Entertainment.
• Dummied Out: The Sanctuary was considered for inclusion into Heroes V early during development, but was cut. Some concept art◊ (apparently based on India rather than Japan) and references to the faction in the game resources in V are all that was left.
• Franchise Killer: VII's poor sales and reception combined with expansion pack delays pretty much buried the series for good in October 2016 with the announcement that development has ceased entirely. The reason why the overall series is still remembered today is because of fan-mods bringing the older games which has surprisingly aged well to the present, with III being the most prominent example.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The expansions of III were left off the Updated Re-release on Steam and mobile due to the fact that the source codes were lost. PC users at least can purchase the original release with the expansions off GOG.com, but mobile users are out of luck.
• Killer App: Next to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, III tends to serve as the reason to use the GOG.com store. This is mostly thanks to GOG having the original complete collection while places such as Steam has the often considered inferior HD version.
• No Export for You: Funnily enough, the Final Chapters of the Heroes Chronicles weren't released in North America until GOG.com made them available on their website.
• Orphaned Reference: The opening cinematic for Armageddon's Blade has Gelu, Roland, and Catherine running through an underground bunker that's lit with electric lamps and finding the titular blade there. Nothing like this ever happens in the campaign. The cinematic was based on the original Science Fantasy plot where Armageddon's Blade was actually Lost Technology and the heroes were trying to find it rather than stop its creation.
• Promoted Fanboy: Heroes V was developed by Nival Interactive, a Russian company. The game's creators confessed having "grown up" on the franchise and being happy to leave their mark on its history.
  • Several well known fans are actually part of the development team on VI.
• Screwed by the Network:
  • VI did not receive the patch support it needed. The game was released in October 2011; patch support was stopped in September 2013, less than 24 months later, and with outstanding bugs unresolved. With a buggy release plaguing VII, and Might and Magic X's short support period, things don't look good. The fact that Limbic Entertainment is behind all three products ^note Limbic was brought in to help patch VI after the fallout with Black Hole.is another strike against success.
  • Speaking of VII - Ubisoft ending development cycle for the game two months after Trial by Fire was released is a bit of a screwage.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Originally, Armageddon's Blade would have featured a sci-fi town called the Forge as the new playable faction. This was a continuation of Might & Magic VII's Bad Ending, where the necromancer Kastore takes over Deyja with technology from the Ancients. Catherine, Roland, and Gelu would've had to find Armageddon's Blade (originally also Ancient technology) to destroy the Heavenly Forge and end the creation of new Forge towns before Kastore could take over the world. Feelings were extremely mixed, with many fans threatening to boycott the expansion and one even sending death threats. Despite the town and campaign being fairly well into production, the devs eventually decided to scrap it all and replace it with the Conflux and a totally different story.
  • Speaking of the Conflux, it was always intended to be added, but was planned for the second expansion. It's not known what role Conflux would've played in the Shadow of Death campaign or if that even was going to be the second expansion before things got shuffled around. There's also evidence that the tier order of each creature was significantly different shortly before the town went live, since due to a bug Magma Elementals are considered tier 3, Ice Elementals are considered tier 4, and Energy Elementals are considered tier 5, as opposed to the correct 5, 3, and 4 respectively.
  • There are actually two more heroes with original scenarios planned for IV, Genievieve Seymour, a Mage, and Dogwoggle, a Barbarian. Time constraint led them to not get their own campaigns in favor of Emilia Nighthaven and Waerjak, but they still appear as recruitable heroes in Taverns. They finally got their scenarios restored as DLC in VII.
  • The originally planned sequel to IV would have involved Tawni Balfour as the Big Bad attacking the other factions. There would have been a Love Triangle between Emilia Nighthaven, Lysander and Gauldoth Half-Dead.
  • NWC actually had Concept Art for V, rendered in isometric 2D in IV's engine rather than 3D like Ubisoft and Nival's version ended up being.
  • Both Nival and Ubisoft had some thoughts about possible addition of another water-themed faction - the Sea Elves (with sea monsters like krakens and leviathans) for V. In particular, Nival apparently even created a general lore outline for them - they were supposed to be rather aggressive (but not as cruel as Dark Elves) people who lived in Savage Isles and were Ashan's most notorious pirates and greatest seafarers. They also had contacts with both the Sylvan and the Dungeon and accepted dissidents from both. Finally, they actually crossed the western ocean and had a freaking colony in the unknown western land. Sea Elves still exist in the current lore but only as a minor race of homeless nomads who live in ships. The Savage Isles are populated by Orc and Human pirates. The only mention of the distant western land is a tavern rumor in the last mission of Findan's campaign (H5), where some Wood Elves want to leave Irollan to the undead and cross the ocean for a more safe place to live.
  • During production of VII, the Ubisoft blog released the "Shadow Council" voting element, where fans voted for which factions, character and town designs, and Feelies they want. Two factions, the Inferno and Fortress, lost to Dungeon and Sylvan respectively, and while the Fortress was later added in the Trial by Fire expansion, the cease of support for the game meant that the Inferno faction would never be added.

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