impressions

hasenmann

Sorry, I meant "heroes of might and magic online". Duh

 

First thing I noticed was:

• 
  any account using capital letters in name or pw doesn't work. Yep, that's gonna get fixed sooner or later I guess, still horribly annoying as of now
• 
  the graphics are... not so great, so far. They look a bit... uhm... very simple, like in a browsergame, sometimes pixelated. Some of the graphics are directly recycled from older HoMm versions
• 
  the setting doesn't fit at all. Like, as town I chose swamp fortress. As in HoMM3, of which this version even took some graphics directly, I wanted to be the evil ruler of a filthy stinking swamphole and conquer the world with my ugly angry beasts. Chose the swamp town, female beastmaster, chose a portrait of an ugly female gnoll. I enter the game, and my character looks like a cute princess. And I'm not in some swamp, but in a shiny polished town. And to top it off, the 2nd quest is sending me to a hair dresser! I want to be a stinking filthy slime-dripping swamp ruler, and not a girl that runes around in a shiny castle on the search for a hairdresser!
• 
  Interface is annoying too. Scrolling around in the screen of my fortress is a pain. When I did the hairdresser quest, my character was in the center of the screen (obviously). And the window for choosing the hairstyle was in the center of the screen too, mostly covering my character, making it hard to choose anything obviously. Some windows are sometimes hiding other windows.
• 
  auto-walk, I hate it. I think it was invented in some asian MMOs and is now standard there: I can't stand it. It's like the devs saying "creating cities and places that have a structure that makes sense? No way. Writing descriptions that tell you how to get to your place? We don't do that. Trusting that the user is intelligent enough to find his way? Of course not, the users are too dumb, we have to walk them automatically to their place". It kills any sort of immersion, if my character goes somewhere, and I can alt-tab out, do something else, and 5 mins later check back in if the game has finished doing it's stuff.
• 
  the fonts are annoying to read in matters of color-choice and color of background
• 
  in combat you can't change the camera angel

I didn't play a lot yet, but that's just my first impression.

Makurina

If you’re looking to sate your MMO hunger with a deep, visually robust game, or if you’re a beginner seeking an intuitive game to introduce you to the genre, look elsewhere. Hero Online is more likely to confuse than to wow and impress; there’s really nothing here that hasn’t been done better elsewhere, with the possible exception of Hero Online’s RMT (Real Money Transactions) scheme. But if you’ve ever pined for a risk-free way to dabble in an authentic Korean MMO, or if you’re afraid to try out MMORPGs for fear of being roped into a subscription, definitely give Hero Online a try. The business model alone (or lack thereof) virtually ensures a vibrant long-term community.