Hi Councilors,
The journey is almost over. Heroes VII will release on Tuesday, September 29th 2015, at 2pm CEST!
Almost three years in the making, 50+ developers both at Limbic and Ubisoft, 50+ testers, millions of code lines, thousands of art assets, terabytes of data, 223 Shadow Council posts and counting, 12 important votes… A lot of people have poured their souls, sweat and blood into this new episode.
We had a great time (and sometimes great headaches) developing it. We are both impatient and a bit anxious to press the big red button on Tuesday, and see the first streams on Twitch, the first comments on forums and the first love/hate comments from our fans.
It has been quite an arduous journey, full of high points, traps, mishaps, U-turns and surprises, both big and small. And this journey would have not been possible without you, our dear Councilors. Your passion, your commitment and your relentless enthusiasm have fuelled our work. Sure, we had (and still have) our disagreements, but we hope the end result will please (almost) everyone, and that Heroes 7 will be remembered as a great episode in this venerable series. So, once again, thanks, from the bottom of our hearts.
As we said, September 29th will see the release of Heroes 7 on all channels, both digital and physical. It is quite a big baby, clocking in at 13.2GB. That being said, and with our apologies, unfortunately, physical retail players will have to go through a mandatory day-1 patch after installation before enjoying the game. And it is quite a large one: 11.5GB.
There is a very simple reason for that. Our manufacturing deadline was quite aggressive and in order to hit stores on September 29th, we had to send our game into duplication around mid-August. But that doesn’t mean game development stopped at that time. Quite the contrary! We doubled down on feature implementation, debugging and polishing every bit of the game until the very last moment. We are still doing some minute adjustments to the build as we speak. And in videogame development, the final weeks are ALWAYS the most crucial ones. This is where a game is made or broken. And boy, the game did make tremendous progress in the past few weeks. It really feels like the real thing and we are quite excited by the results.
Forget Closed Beta 2, we are now way further in terms of polish and bug fixing. But that means disc owners will have to apply this massive update, as otherwise they would miss all the good things we managed to squeeze in. Patching procedure is completely automated and the day-1 patch will download and apply by itself through Uplay once you have installed the game. Just go through the download and you will be able to launch the game with the latest patch applied. Again, we apologize to our fans for this situation, but game quality is our absolute priority. So please bear with us, as we believe it will be well worth the effort.
Of course, digital players won’t see a difference, as they will get the final version directly. By the way, the game is available for preload if you want to be sure to start playing at 2:00pm CEST on Tuesday J
Official day-1 version is named 31865 in the main menu (revision number subject to change until Tuesday)
But release is only the start for Heroes 7. A page is turning, but a new journey begins. Release will see the start of the post-launch phase of this epic tale. New patches, new free content, balancing, fixes and more will be made available over the next few months. The Lost Tales of Axeoth have already been announced, but we have some other surprises up our sleeves. We are committed to supporting this game in the long run and we will continue to work on it and improve it for a long time.
User maps and modding will also be a big focus for us, as Heroes 7 will ship along a powerful set of map editing and modding tools, the very same we are using to develop this game. We can’t wait to see what you guys will produce. We are also looking at ways to support and help you master those tools, along with some detailed tutorials from the team if time allows. Those tools will also be improved and updated on a regular basis.
As you saw during our latest stream on Twitch, we’ve made good progress on AI, both in terms of play time and challenge. We will go through your feedbacks, along with balancing, to adjust and finely tune the game. Heroes specializations are also on our mind, as you have been quite vocal about it. We can’t promise anything at this point, but it is a topic that is definitely on our priority list regarding the future of Heroes 7.
Do not hesitate to communicate your feedback to us. There are many ways to do it: live streams, YouTube videos, posts on the SC, messages on our forums or yours, FB posts, and of course, the ever important customer service (support.ubi.com). You can send your bugs through it but also feedback.
Thanks again Councilors for your patience and your enthusiasm!
We hope you will enjoy this game and we can’t wait to continue this journey together.
See you on the battlefields of Ashan!
Your Heroes 7 team.
The journey is almost over. Heroes VII will release on Tuesday, September 29th 2015, at 2pm CEST!
Almost three years in the making, 50+ developers both at Limbic and Ubisoft, 50+ testers, millions of code lines, thousands of art assets, terabytes of data, 223 Shadow Council posts and counting, 12 important votes… A lot of people have poured their souls, sweat and blood into this new episode.
We had a great time (and sometimes great headaches) developing it. We are both impatient and a bit anxious to press the big red button on Tuesday, and see the first streams on Twitch, the first comments on forums and the first love/hate comments from our fans.
It has been quite an arduous journey, full of high points, traps, mishaps, U-turns and surprises, both big and small. And this journey would have not been possible without you, our dear Councilors. Your passion, your commitment and your relentless enthusiasm have fuelled our work. Sure, we had (and still have) our disagreements, but we hope the end result will please (almost) everyone, and that Heroes 7 will be remembered as a great episode in this venerable series. So, once again, thanks, from the bottom of our hearts.
As we said, September 29th will see the release of Heroes 7 on all channels, both digital and physical. It is quite a big baby, clocking in at 13.2GB. That being said, and with our apologies, unfortunately, physical retail players will have to go through a mandatory day-1 patch after installation before enjoying the game. And it is quite a large one: 11.5GB.
There is a very simple reason for that. Our manufacturing deadline was quite aggressive and in order to hit stores on September 29th, we had to send our game into duplication around mid-August. But that doesn’t mean game development stopped at that time. Quite the contrary! We doubled down on feature implementation, debugging and polishing every bit of the game until the very last moment. We are still doing some minute adjustments to the build as we speak. And in videogame development, the final weeks are ALWAYS the most crucial ones. This is where a game is made or broken. And boy, the game did make tremendous progress in the past few weeks. It really feels like the real thing and we are quite excited by the results.
Forget Closed Beta 2, we are now way further in terms of polish and bug fixing. But that means disc owners will have to apply this massive update, as otherwise they would miss all the good things we managed to squeeze in. Patching procedure is completely automated and the day-1 patch will download and apply by itself through Uplay once you have installed the game. Just go through the download and you will be able to launch the game with the latest patch applied. Again, we apologize to our fans for this situation, but game quality is our absolute priority. So please bear with us, as we believe it will be well worth the effort.
Of course, digital players won’t see a difference, as they will get the final version directly. By the way, the game is available for preload if you want to be sure to start playing at 2:00pm CEST on Tuesday J
Official day-1 version is named 31865 in the main menu (revision number subject to change until Tuesday)
But release is only the start for Heroes 7. A page is turning, but a new journey begins. Release will see the start of the post-launch phase of this epic tale. New patches, new free content, balancing, fixes and more will be made available over the next few months. The Lost Tales of Axeoth have already been announced, but we have some other surprises up our sleeves. We are committed to supporting this game in the long run and we will continue to work on it and improve it for a long time.
User maps and modding will also be a big focus for us, as Heroes 7 will ship along a powerful set of map editing and modding tools, the very same we are using to develop this game. We can’t wait to see what you guys will produce. We are also looking at ways to support and help you master those tools, along with some detailed tutorials from the team if time allows. Those tools will also be improved and updated on a regular basis.
As you saw during our latest stream on Twitch, we’ve made good progress on AI, both in terms of play time and challenge. We will go through your feedbacks, along with balancing, to adjust and finely tune the game. Heroes specializations are also on our mind, as you have been quite vocal about it. We can’t promise anything at this point, but it is a topic that is definitely on our priority list regarding the future of Heroes 7.
Do not hesitate to communicate your feedback to us. There are many ways to do it: live streams, YouTube videos, posts on the SC, messages on our forums or yours, FB posts, and of course, the ever important customer service (support.ubi.com). You can send your bugs through it but also feedback.
Thanks again Councilors for your patience and your enthusiasm!
We hope you will enjoy this game and we can’t wait to continue this journey together.
See you on the battlefields of Ashan!
Your Heroes 7 team.