Hmm, I think I'll try it see how it feels, and maybe my impatience will lead me to buy beta access.

Thanks for the hasty reply

So many drugs, so little time...

I can't begin to imagine how one could play both a HoMM game and MoM and come away thinking they were alike.

Ohhh, I am making a very astute observation, pay attention now

HoMM and MoM might not be exactly the same in terms of gameplay. But thematicly they are very much alike. You got your elves, dwarves, humans, gnolls, trolls, eggrolls etc. And you have castles as important, not so numerous bases.

I believe that EWoM will be different from the two other games in the aspect that there is only two playable races, humans and fallen. That would give the game a very different feel than the others. In HoMM and MoM everyone had their own favourite races, and what race you were colored the gaming experience to a very high degree. With EWoM there are only the fallen and humans, so you probably won't experience the same kind of diversity. Note I said "kind of diversity", as I am sure there will be diversity. But it would propably give EWoM a different feel to it.

I'd hate to know what you consider a less than astute observation.

The thematic breakdown of MoM is that all races stick to themselves and all sides are led by a powerful wizard trying to become a god and wipe all the other wizards out.

The thematic breakdown of HoMM is a bunch of groupies hanging out based on ideals.  You've got the humans and the undead(not that there's an undead side in MoM), but everyone else is way less bigoted.  The elves are hanging out with dwarves and sprites, the minotaurs are playing footsie with the centaurs, cyclops is trying to keep his eye on orcs, goblins, trolls, and ogres all at the same time, and those poor halflings really have their work cut out with the magi and titans trying to use them for target practice when they run out of golems.  It's all but cheerful until the fifth as well.  Even dark, grim storylines built on bloodshed were laced with humor.  Did I mention that MoM was grim?

Thematically, the only trait they share is that they're both in a fantasy setting that isn't directly ripped from Tolkien.

Gameplay they're even further apart.

HoMM uses stack based combat.  Using the second as an example, you have five slots for stacks of units, a thousand peasants take the same space as a single one.  Armies are lead by a hero, hence the naming convention, it's a spin off from the Might and Magic series, rpg's I didn't like.  The heroes start out all but worthless, but eventually become game changers, might characters give peasants the offense and defense of dragons, still one hitpoint and damage, but much tougher, magic characters kill the entire stack of peasants, and everthing else but the dragons, with chain lightning.  Resources are aquired by fighting guards and capturing pre-placed mines, and the only city advancement is in building a relatively small set of infrastructure.  Those cities are pre-existing as well.

MoM doesn't use stack based combat, one unit is one unit.  You have a max unit count on any one tile, and that's the biggest army possible.  You can obtain heroes, but they are a bonus, not a necessity for an army, and you yourself have a magical presence on the battlefield and main map, as opposed to being a purely imagined figurehead that never acts.  You cast your own spells using your own mana pool, summoning armies, enchanting units and destroying the enemy.  You aquire resources by building roads to them.  Your cities are built by you, and use the tiles around them for your city production levels much like is done in civ.  Also much like civ, there is a lot of infrastructure to build in those cities.  It's basically a fantasy civ with tactical combat.

In short, they are nothing alike.

Hey, don't say HoMM is a spinoff of the Might and Magic series, that isn't the case at all, despite the similar titles.  The Might and Magic games are straight up RPGs, and the HoMM series are harder to classify.  HoMM is based on an early title called 'Kings Bounty'.  They are distinct properties, even if both series were made by New World Computing.

And Master of Magic was developed by Simtex, who are probably more famous for the first two Master of Orion games.  Unfortunately, both of those IPs are now held by Infogrames Entertainment.

Names and labels mostly.  In terms of gameplay, graphics, and target market, they're quite far apart.  They're about as similar as any two titles made by the same company.  HoMM II also came out before Might and Magic VI through 8.. so maybe they're the spinoffs.

/wrists

Too late, I already killed myself.

tell me please, the fight in the Elemental is a real-time or turn base?

Thx for your answer!  Very disappointed, I thought would be like in "master of magic" or "age of wonders".

Yes "real-time" in battles can become frustrating since the computer AIs can provide 100 different commands to 100 units within one second where the human player would be lucky to provide 3 different commands to 100 units within one second.   This then becomes more of a test of how fast you can click the mouse and/or keyboard where careful strategic thinking is sacrificed. 

The only real-time strategy game I know which allowed for fair gameplay was the original Stronghold from Firefly Studios.  Here the game allowed you to adjust the game speed from fast to very very slow which allowed a human player to provide 100 different commands to 100 units within one second of the games time.   If only this game  allowed for larger map sizes.... ugggh!

Because they have given us no info about it really (besides half-statements given by frogboy indicating that it isn't complete yet), we don't know.  I have the same impression as Luckmann, though I can't imagine they would let us fans of MoM, AoW, HoMM style turn based combat down.

Its was suggested that it was a hybrid intended to please all audiances.  (online turn based is kinda lame after all)