Hey all, it's been a long time since I checked into HOMM3 modding, back when Wake of Gods was still being developed.

I got interested due to the announcement of HOMM7 and started looking. The issue is there's so many mods/packages/tools now. You've got WOG, Horn of the Abyss, HOMM3 HD, VCMI and ERA II. From there there's all these other mods that work on the different engines like VCMI and ERA.

Does anyone have experience with these mods and can give a former hardcore player some idea of WTF to use and what's good and what works together?

Resume:

VCMI: very interesting and in my opinion the future of HoMM3 (it even support Linux, Mac and Android natively), but is in an early/mid state and you'll have to deal with some bugs and random crashes.

Horn of the Abyss: very professional work and very stable. Great mod, which can be called unofficial expansion.

HD mod. Good for large screens and doesn't change gameplay. Compatible with HotA and partially with ERA and WoG.

WoG, I haven't tried it personally. Yet. Some people like it, some people don't.
Resume:

VCMI: very interesting and in my opinion the future of HoMM3 (it even support Linux, Mac and Android natively), but is in an early/mid state and you'll have to deal with some bugs and random crashes.

Horn of the Abyss: very professional work and very stable. Great mod, which can be called unofficial expansion.

HD mod. Good for large screens and doesn't change gameplay. Compatible with HotA and partially with ERA and WoG.

WoG, I haven't tried it personally. Yet. Some people like it, some people don't.

What's VCMI?

It's a libre software source engine for Heroes 3. "The purpose of VCMI project is to rewrite entire HOMM 3: WoG engine from scratch, giving it new and extended possibilities."

Check it out: http://forum.vcmi.eu/portal.php

It adds many cool things, you can install mods with a single click from a repository and you can run the game natively on Linux, Mac and Android. But as I said before right now is not very stable. Some things have to be added, some might not work properly and some may cause the game to crash. Knowing that you can still enjoy it right now and even help the project if you want (reporting bugs, for example).

The thing that confuses me, and I haven't been able to find this (looking at heroes community and such) is what the differences of ERA II and VCMI are. They both seem to have adapted WoG into their systems and are platforms for bug fixes & mod creation. But they seem to occupy the same space and neither is compatible with HoTA from what I've seen. So It's pretty confusing since both seem to still be used and have bunches of mods.

VCMI is compatible with HoTA and as far as I know ERA II is not libre software nor multiplatform.