GameIndustry.biz reports that "Joss Ellis has joined Nival Interactive, taking on the role of head of studios, to help the Russian-based developer understand the global market more thoroughly." Ellis had worked with Argonaut Games and Virgin Interactive before. He will serve as a liaison between the US and Russian offices of Nival.
Heroes 5 - FAQ about Hammers of fate expansion
The producer of the yet to be released expansion Heroes 5: Hammers of fate, has blessed us with a thorough Q&A session:
Could you please tell us more about the content of this add-on?
The dwarves make their entrance in the world of Might and Magic and bring along a whole new kind of gameplay. There is also a campaign that is worth half the one from Heroes 5, SP and MP maps and all the stuff around that (artefacts, spells, etc.). Furthermore what we wanted to include in this add-on are the features all fans are craving and going around in circles to get. These features appeared secondary to the game experience and couldn't make their way into the development or budget of Heroes 5 but are finally available.
Why did you decide to add only one new faction in the expansion?
That's already a lot! The dwarves come with their own kind of magic, their own skills and their own new artefacts in order to bring some real fresh air so that players can think of new tactics.
Where does the add-on take place in Ashan? Will we have new environments?
Yes, from the screenshots released you see that the dwarves come with their own environment, snow. They mostly live in the mountains north of the Griffin Empire, a fact that was already supposed by the people who looked closely at the Ashan map provided in some game editions. The add-on scenario will bring you there and also underground to settle a few accounts the dwarves have with some of their neighbours.
Lots of players expect the caravans to come back. Will it occur?
Yes, the caravans will be introduced in the add-on. This is actually a feature that generated a lot of discussions during the choice of features for the add-on (and also during the final cut for Heroes 5). We decided to implement them as this is probably the feature marked first in the wish list we?ve found over the net.
Will it integrate a Map Editor and a Random Map Generator?
Yes, the add-on will carry both the updated Map Editor and the RMG. By the way, we will provide this updated editor for free on the net in the upcoming days, to help the creation of maps by everyone. We should also continue improving it after the add-on.
Will you change the general balance of the game?
The balance is being tweaked with each patch, and the add-on will collect all of these tweaks, of course. We will also continue this balance process after the add-on. On the previous patches we were lacking in the description of these balance changes. That's something we had to improve and which is going to be done from the 1.3 patch.
Does the add-on development prevent Nival from working on the patches? When the next patch is supposed to be released?
No, add-on and patches development are done in parallel. Its mostly more producing work for us at Ubisoft. As said in another Q&A, we are still roughly on a monthly patch, and we should keep this rhythm.
What is the expected release date?
We aim to release in the Christmas season (which, admittedly, is quite large for video games).
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