The storyline progressed through short animated cinematics, narrated by an unknown priestess loyal to Asha. Four of the Elemental Dragons begin to vanish, leaving their respective children-races to fend for themselves in the now-broken world. In the divergent timeline, Urgash thus escapes, engaging in a second War of the Primordial Twins which ends in Asha's defeat and exile. Kingdoms was set in an alternate reality of Ashan's history, and took as canonical one of the dark endings of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, in which Sareth releases Kha-Beleth and opens the gates of Sheogh. It was possible to subscribe for 1 month (£5), 2 months (£9.50) or 3 months (£13.50), during which period the limit was removed, and additional features were enabled, including an upgraded battle calculator, an improved mailbox, a permanent connection to the game, a "training mode" server and faster artifact unbinding time.
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At one point, the victory condition for all servers was to build thirteen Tear structures and hold them for fourteen real-time days.Īlthough the game was free of charge to play, a restriction to three towns and heroes at any one time was imposed on non-subscribers. Honour players had to fight NPC characters with army restrictions enabled.Īlliances between players were necessary for victory befriending and uniting with others generated a control zone, in which players could control adventure map objects and travel more quickly. Wealth players could synthesise Tears using an oven, which required exhorbitant amounts of resources to build. Domination players had to locate an Obelisk which directs them to a tear, which must be dug up. Each path enabled players to obtain Tears of Asha, a certain number of which were required to win the game. The Domination path entailed construction, expansion and mustering forces, the Wealth path involved calculating the total value of a player's kingdom, and the Honour path required extensive player vs player combat. Three paths to victory were available: Domination, Wealth and Honour. It was a broad mixture of strategy board games like checkers and chess, mixed with the intricate details and options of an RPG. Heroes could also learn spells or recruit by constructing buildings. Towns contained four mines each, producing the standard Heroes resources, and twenty squares where NPCs resided which could be battled for experience or resources. Players controlled one town to begin with, and could settle or conquer new cities by achieving certain thresholds (milestones toward one of the three paths to victory). The number of resources a player invested in the action could reduce the time required to complete it.Ī day/night system existed, with night spanning 22:00 - 08:00 GMT or 11:00pm - 9:00am CST during this period, no armies could move across the adventure map and therefore players did not have to be awake all hours of the night watching for raiders. Actions occurred in real-time, with each taking a certain period to complete, varying from minutes to days. Throughout, only the Haven, Academy, Necropolis, Inferno and Sylvan factions were available for play, with players controlling heroes and towns as in the core Heroes series. Unlike many MMOs, each game was not persistent, but lasted approximately six months.īased on servers with approximately 1,500-2,000 players each, the game was isometric, and was divided into four stages of progression known as seasons, with each season ending when an alliance has achieved a particular victory condition. Kingdoms Heroes was a real-time strategy and massively-multiplayer online (MMO) game playable in web browsers.