I'm not an authority on the HOMM series, but I'd wager they're saving money somehow...probably one less person to pay if they don't call it "HOMM."

Well, when heroes fans will be all "This doesn't deserve to bear HoMaM name!" they'll get replied that "It doesn't."

I personally don't think any Heroes should have been named Might & Magic. Does that count too? >.<

Have you taken a look at it? It's actually pretty heavily drawn from HoMM5. There are some significant changes in the way heroes are built, and there's a system to allow your "alignment" to factor into the characters you make, but unless you're doing the always-hard-to-catch internet sarcasm thing, it's kind of premature to be hating on the game.

As far as the name change, it may have something to do with licensing as suggested, but I doubt it since Ubisoft did the last Heroes game, too. They've mentioned a few changes in the system, a streamlining of the RPG mechanics and a broader differentiation of races. Not surprising since it's made by a team best known for RTS. It would also better link the franchise if Ubi is planning to come out with another MaM title in addition to the HoMM (MaM:H6) title.

I think cautious optimism might be the way to go here, unless you really hated HoMM5 and the recent King's Bounty games. In which case, go right ahead and hate away. You won't miss out on a good game if you manage to convince yourself it sucks sufficiently ahead of time. =)

edit: typos.

Branding and collocation. For branding, it places the franchise name first so that it will be more easily seen. For collocation, it causes titles in a franchise to be listed together, which is especially important when people are browsing lists of games at sites such as GOG.

This change was made for the Total War games starting with Shogun 2. It sounds better with Total War at the end of the title so the narrator can growl it after the name of the particular installment. Unfortunately, it causes the games to fall all over the place in a list.

So as much as this will pain the entire internet, it is not a cynical corporate ploy to mask incompetence and greed. I'm not ruling out the existence of incompetence and greed, but that's not why this change was made.

I like the new title, it recognizes the roots of the series.

I wasn't completely serious when I started this thread. It just feels strange to change the name of game series. I guess the better linking with M&M series sounds logical, altough they are quite different games.

I actually liked HoMM 5 and the King's Bounty games. I havent followed too closely what changes they are making, but they look great. Reduding the recources to gold, wood, ore and crystals sounds good. Having 4 different rare resources didnt have big purpose. It just pissed you off, when you didnt get the resource what your faction mostly needed. But we'll see how this turns out.

It's just a name. And it's not radically changed. They could have called it "Might and Magic: A Heroic Kingdom Story" and restarted the numbers.

I'm looking forward to VI. I don't think there's anything they've announced that I dislike. V wasn't a bad game aside from how slow it was, and how big of a performance hog it was, so if they can take that framework, add in more King's Bounty unit uniqueness, and make everything tightly packed together I think the game could be great.

Although I wish they'd go back to a hex grid battle map. I'm not a fan of the squares.

huge fan of 2&3 but this one does not look promising exceprt of the visual side

They called Shogun 2: Total War, Total War SHOGUN 2 too.

they should have restarted the series for Heroes V, seeing how that is a reboot.

I wonder if Ubisoft comes up with a new DRM just for this game, seeing as how it probably has a hotseat mode. Perchance every hotseat player needs to type their unique cd-key at the beginning of each turn (with internet checks, but the game is probably always online anyway) to make sure no one's rights get violated ;)

I thought HoMM V was a good game, but II to IV were better. The first one I haven't played. The way they told the story in V was absolutely horrible, though, and I paid so much attention to the said horribleness of presentation that I can't remember the story at all (or maybe the story was just that bad). I preferred the IV approach where I got to read the story in huge pop up boxes, it was dreamy (and I still remember much of the story even though it's been ages since). A knight (that's nearly as big as the castle behind him) wobbling about yelling "MAH QUEEN!" is something that just breaks my immersion completely. I hope they have a better story mechanic thing for the 6th one.

The old pre-V art style/direction was much better, in my opinion. The angels looked like angels and not like some extravagant cosplayers. Other stuff too, the whole cartoony and over the top look just doesn't please me. Actually, now that I think about it, they also changed all those cool creatures into... lizard riders and dominatrixes. There's nothing wrong with riding lizards, or dominatrixes for that matter (though riding one would be unexpected, to say the least), but... meh.

Ubi will start selling mouses with fingerprint scanners. With it you will connect your fingerprints with your cd-key and register to your Ubi online account, so noone without registered key would be able to play. And if they would feel really evil, they might add anal probe to check every player's anus every few minutes, just to be sure.

Are you saying people actually pay attention to the story in HoMM games???