Talk:Dark Messiah of Might and Magic

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Great effort, but rather questionable objectivity, parts of it sound more like an advertisement than providing real information. Could the author please review?

  • I'm not the author, but considering that most of the information about the game was gathered from publisher announcements and game previews, it's hard to write something that would be 100% objective. Angelspit 12:32, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
    • A more objective wording would help though: "The publisher claims...", "according to the developer...". At the moment this article sounds too much like an advertising flier. Beef
  • This is a wiki: there is no "the author". If you think that the text is too advert-like, go ahead and change it. BreathingMeat 01:21, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Release Year

Someone got the release year wrong. It came out 2006 not 2005


[edit] Game release date

I see that October 2006 is listed as a release date. If I'm correct that is the Steam release date but Ubisoft's website lists the release date as 12/10/2006. Is this valid data or not? Vgamer101 05:02, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

The game just launched yesterday, October 25, 2006 (in North America). I think it's to be released worldwide tomorrow, October 27.

[edit] Continuity

Does anyone have any information yet on plot continuity between DMoM&M and the original M&M series? BreathingMeat 01:21, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

There is no plot continuity at all. Ubisoft has transferred MM (includes HOMM) into another world, Ashan. The storyline of MMIX and DMoMM don't match, and neither does the gameplay. DMoMM only allows control of 1 character, while the previous MM games allow control of a whole party. Hobowu 10:35, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stop crying. Get over it.

The "Release Problems" and "Critical Reaction" sections were a farce until I added some NPOV sense into them. And they were written by someone with an obvious agenda. The following text was posted to User talk:141.154.246.40 who seemed to enjoy skewing the article to suit his views:

“ "Do your research", what kind of cheek is that when you insert absolutely unsourced weasel words such as "most people..." into the article. You ignore the fact that the majority of publications have given DM a positive review, choosing instead to lead with the Gamespot review. The score, 6.7 is actually classed as fair, but following your absolutely biased quotes, it absolutely distorts the nature of the review. Maybe if you weren't so blatantly trying to rail against Dark Messiah, I'd refrain from things like calling you an ignorant cretin, but you even replaced the 2 IGN scores with the only one you liked. And then instead of quoting the PCZ and PCG scores directly, you just dismissed anything over 80% as rubbish. If you were actually familiar with PCZone, then you'd know that they don't just ignore bugs, they do not bow to the dictations of publishers, it's not like the Official Nintendo or Official Xbox magazine, they have no party line to toe. - Hahnchen 03:50, 28 October 2006 (UTC) ”

The post concerns the following diffs [1] [2] - Hahnchen 03:55, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

--- Those are valid complaints. Even Ubisoft have acknowledged all those problems in their forum (which are full of complaints both tech and gameplay wise by their customers). The problem is that overzealous fans like you are skewing the overall quality of this broken product in a positive light in order to justify your year-long deluded hype. Guess what? This type of action by fans happen to every game that failed to live up to their hype (brute force, killzone, etc), but eventually their poor quality are accepted when the pre-release fans die down. It is pathetic that you had to resort to the 4 or 5 questionable foreign sources (including PCZone UK, which you happen to swipped with PCGamer UK) for the positive reviews, all of which oddly did not mention the technical problems at all. Early print review standards perhaps? And to think these 4-5 sources are what you consider the majority of reviews. Gamespot said they tested the games on many of their machines, all displaying the major technical problems. Also, the 7/10 score from IGN is the official score from them, so don't try to treat the other foreign one as an equal counter-part. Gamespy also gave this game a poor review as well. You overzealous pre-release fans need to get over it and accept that this game just isn't as good as you all hoped it would be.

If by "overzealous pre-release fans", you mean someone who hasn't even bought the game, and has neither participated in the multiplayer beta or demo, then yes that'd be right. What I'm not a fan of, is your inherently biased bullshit, maybe had you represented Gamespot's review fairly instead of claiming it smashed the game into pieces. Your "4 or 5 questionable foreign sources" is smack out of order, I did not include the PC Zone of PC Gamer references to begin with, they are not "questionable", they are fully reliable sources. If you look at WP:CVG/M, you'll see that we archive print magazines because of this. You fall flat, by treating the jokeshop half-assed gamespy review seriously, that's just an IGN b-review. No one actually follows the gamespy site for anything, it's used purely to host fan sites such as the 3d action network. You're like one of the jokers that values what playlouder has to say over the NME (because being foreign and in print, it's obviously questionable). For example, Edge have not reviewed the game yet to my knowledge, I would happily include a reference to an Edge review even if it stated that the game was a bag of shit and awarded it 3/10. - Hahnchen 14:38, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for supporting my argument by admitting to be an overzelous pre-release fan who didn't even try the game at all. I have no agenda other than to warn the potential buyers about the product's major problems. Your agenda, on the other hand, is quite obvious. You are just as despicable as those pre-release killzone fans that were flooding the wiki site with BS info on how amazing and flawless that broken game was, and how it was the consensus that it completely destroyed Halo. No matter how much you try to spin the reviews to make Dark Messiah much better than it actually is, the facts remains that the game is broken especially with its numerous technical issues. I ask any potential buyers to check out the official Dark Messiah forum to see how angry its customers are over this unfinished, bug-ridden game.
"Thanks for supporting my argument by admitting to be an overzelous pre-release fan who didn't even try the game at all" - I think that argument pretty much sums up how much of an idiot you are. And for those uninvolved, that's a lot of idiot. Why wouldn't a pre-release fan, who is already a Steam user not buy the game? Maybe these forum posts where I've stated I don't want the game are just the delusional ramblings of a crazed fan-boy. [3][4] I've absolutely shot down your arguments in the my previous post, especially regarding what amounts to a reliable source or not. I don't need to "spin" reviews to suit my view, heck I've linked to Metacritic, you can link to Gamerankings too if you want. My "agenda" here, as you can clearly see from my thousands of edits is to write an encyclopedia, yours is to cry wolf. Get yourself a blog. You pretty much lost me when you thought it suitable to include a disclaimer against the reviews that you didn't like. - Hahnchen 23:48, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
Enough of this. "I think that argument pretty much sums up how much of an idiot you are" is a blatant violation of WP:NPA. - Sikon 03:38, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
There are definite problems with this game. I bought it and cant load anything. The "release problems" section of this article is completely valid and needs to stay. In fact as soon as i installed the game, all my other games started to glitch and have the same problems. When i uninstalled it, the problem stoped.
I have done a major rewrite of the section in question, and thought I should explain my background. I'm an occasional gamer, who has never played an M&M game before, had not heard of Dark Messiah before picking it up as part of a "buy 2 for £25" offer. The game did not work for me when I first tried it and I was quite annoyed by this.
Instead of ranting, as many Ubisoft forum members have, I went and investigated as fully as I could; reading through many MANY posts on the forums, as well as reviewing the tweak guides I have referenced in the article.
Having done this, I made a few simple changes to my system - reinstalling sound and video drivers, and making sure to turn off Norton before playing - and the game has worked absolutely fine ever since at the detail settings recommended by the game for my computer.
I've been back to the forums a couple of times since, and there are so many posts by people who are playing and enjoying the game, that I cannot think that the problems being suffered are insoluble or massively common-place. I've even seen some people complaining on the forums and saying that "why should they reinstall their video drivers" or "why should they not double clock their CPU" when official support and other gamers have all told them that this may be the reason the game is not working. There appear to be a hard core of disgruntled people who will rant for the sake of it.
I couldn't find the references for all of the things I've said about the issues with the game, and the solutions/alternative views, but they are pretty much all there on the forums somewhere. GDallimore 17:29, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm thinking part of the reason they're ranting is because they don't know how to reinstall their video drivers (it is a bit confusing). I've been playing since the open beta, and have had limited success with the game. I got about half way through the main campaign before dubbing it "absoultely too frustrating to play". I played mp for about 5 hours total, but moved on to BF2142 (since I realized it has more depth and is more rewarding). My problems with the game are almost always random. Usually, it's not a video/ in game problem, just bugs, quit to desktop, and various errors that seem to have no rhyme or reason. I for one believe it is a great game, but is severely crippled by its bugs (although the patches seem to help a bit). I have to say, I don't see anything wrong with the articles cited because, for the most part, I agree with them).Echo.brian 22:55, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Personally I feel the current issues section is to skewed towards aggresively bug ridden atm, the game did suffer from major bugs for quite some time and I agree whole hardly that the article should reflect that. It has however been patched and does appear to have a greater level of success rate of working now (the sources I could cite for that would be the only ones avaliable, forum posts), with many complaints of the game not working being resolved by re-install/patching I also realise that in itself should be seen as a problem but not as great of a problem. Also lowering the graphical settings does seem to reduce the instablity of the game and again this could be considered a negative but it is not a scathing *bug ridden* negative. There has also been several offical balance fixes and a mode added to multiplayer adding extra replayability and allowing the multiplayer to become more entertaining then at the games initial release. It's also unclear on how many people the game worked for as opposed to those it didn't, how many satisfied gamers would make posts on forums saying that it worked 100% people will complain a lot more then state that it works. Also the developers are working on eventually getting a SDK out, whether they'll succeed or not is unknown but that seems to be the offical developers standpoint. I feel the article should reflect the fact that several problems with the game have been fixed rather then holding to the ambiguous *It's unclear when or if these problems will be resolved.*.KaL YoshiKa 10:52, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
Are you sure you're looking at the right version of the article? I removed the *It's unclear when or if these problems will be resolved* statement ages ago when attempting to NPOV that section of the article myself. If you feel it needs further amendment, feel free, but I'm not sure what more can be said except that some people are still complaining while some people have had the problems fixed. GDallimore 11:07, 31 January 2007 (UTC)






[edit] reply to stop crying. Get over it

I couldn't be bothered to read all your message[too long!!]GDallimore, but I read the first bit and I totally agree with you! I think dark messiah is a brilliant game! crashes are annoying, but you have to look past them[oh, and those guys who said the game was all about kicking, F**K YOU!!!]dark messiah is a good game at heart, and they have software to stop the crashes, just look for it!. user:Dylan 17:39 13 November 2007

P.S Assassins Creed 4ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.187.194.74 (talk) 17:42, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The name - drop the "of"

On the box and in all the official sources, the title is "Dark Messiah Might & Magic", without an "of". 84.10.103.180 16:37, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

The press releases still refer to Dark Messiah OF Might and Magic, so my guess is that the box name change is a purely cosmetic thing. Angelspit 21:06, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Might and Magic Universe

Even though it probably is perceived as a fairly good game by many it probably will be a real dissapointment to MM fans. What used to be a exiting mind bogling game that would steal months of your life has been turned into a 15 hour linear plot. DDiMM does distinguish itself very little from any other first person shoot them up game. People who enjoy this sort of game probably wont be dissapointed. As of me as a fan of the MM univese I set my hope to "Might and Magic Tribute". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.250.201.235 (talk) 05:13, 5 January 2007 (UTC).

  • This game had originally nothing do with Might and Magic. It would have been Arx Fatalis 2 if Ubisoft hadn't changed the game for pure marketing reasons. --Mika1h 21:34, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dark Messiah: Elements

Expansion due September 7. Linl. JAF1970 16:41, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] edits

I made a few changes to the article and as a result I felt it should be okay to removed this:

 This article or section is written like an advertisement.
Please help rewrite this article from a neutral point of view.
Mark blatant advertising which would require a fundamental rewrite in order to become encyclopedic for speedy deletion, using {{db-spam}}. (December 2007)


The only other thing I would question is the list of review scores? Couldn't the article just say that review were overwhelmingly favourable (90%+ gave scores around 9/10)?87.102.17.177 20:35, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Not really, u may have liked it but I die too soon (bloody combat)!!! No, but really some did not like it for various other reasons. Tourskin 02:24, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] question

Probably not related to the article - but can someone confirm that this game can not be played in 3rd person at all? if you answered - thanks

Not in the slightest. --Tom Edwards 16:37, 1 July 2007 (UTC)





[edit] answer

No, you can't play this game in 3rd person. If you could it would completely ruin the game, as Seraph isn't fully shown at any point in the game{it would also totally ruin the cutscenes}. --[user:dylan] 10:07, 1 November 2007

[edit] Last call on Release Problems

There has been a chronic lack of sources for this section, and I'm not convinced that the technical problems the game had/has were really exceptional enough to be notable. If nobody can demonstrate the significance of these problems by providing reliable sources, I will be deleting the section. Note that "reliable" precludes forum-user whining, so the couple of sources that currently exist don't really count. Try to find an article that discusses the issues, if you can. In lieu of that, at least provide multiple sources of forum complaints so that it is at least verifiable that these issues were widespread enough to be a big problem. I know, and understand, that these issues are real, but the question is whether they are notable, as it is quite common for such issues to appear on PC titles. Ham Pastrami 04:17, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

To further scrutinize this subject -- criticism of the game's technical aspects has been pointed out and referenced in some of the reviews mentioned in the Reception section. Are the problems so exceptional as to deserve discussion beyond their impact on the overall game experience? Are they worthy of mention outside the game's own context, i.e. did they create corporate or social upheaval on the scale of Daikatana or similar titles? If not, then they just sound like bugs in software, which, while frustrating, isn't all that interesting, and is suitably covered by discussion of reviews. Also see WP:UNDUE. Ham Pastrami 00:57, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Trivia

Is small (only one thing) and is not a fact, but it seems like someone's perception only. "This is likely an homage to Gareth of the Thief games" - says who though?Tourskin 02:22, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Do you have a better theory? In any case, that's the nature of trivia. I don't think it's harmful but if you want to remove it, go ahead. Ham Pastrami 03:47, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Truth be told it seems to be the most likely theory. Iunno, just looking at the stealth elements, and even the way they built the stealth kills (knife to the back of the neck followed by breaking the spine) is pretty reminiscent of Thief in general. I may be biased though, Garrett is hardcore =P 66.109.217.188 06:37, 19 September 2007 (UTC)Shadoweangel66.109.217.188 06:37, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article name

I neither agree nor disagree with the move from Dark Messiah of Might and Magic to Dark Messiah Might and Magic, but, in the interest of English, should we at least put a colon in there? Since it appears that "Might and Magic" has been relegated to a franchise branding (such as with Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War or Dungeons & Dragons: Dragonshard), it isn't really meant to flow in-line, is it? So to me it would make sense to have the title be Dark Messiah: Might and Magic. Ham Pastrami (talk) 07:24, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Seriously, the game's name is "Dark Messiah OF Might and Magic". The game's cover just stylizes the name like that. I have the Xbox 360 version in my hand right now, and while the cover again omits the word "of", the spine reads "Dark Messiah of Might and Magic". Also, Ubisoft's website refers to the game as "Dark Messiah OF Might and Magic" both for the PC version and the Xbox 360 version. So does all of the press material I've ever seen for the game, and speaking as person who's professionally reviewed both of the games, I've seen plenty of it. If the publisher calls the game by a certain name, I think it's reasonable to assume that it's the game's name. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 01:35, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
The legal trademark for the game omits the "of" -- check the fine print. However, I'm not aware of any WP policy that requires conformance to trademarks (indeed, the naming policy discourages trademark stylization such as all-caps). Because the "of" is probably recognized by most casual readers, and is used in the press, I will not contest a move back to the original page name. Ham Pastrami (talk) 05:19, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

According to my UK copy of the original PC game, while the logo is the same as the US version, directly above the barcode it says "Made in EUROPE", and then on the following line (between that line and the barcode itself), "DARK MESSIAH OF MIGHT AND MAGIC UK DVD-ROM". Likewise, in the start menu, the game is referred to as "Dark Messiah of Might and Magic", as seen in this screenshot. Finally, both the US and UK websites refer exclusively to the game as DMofMAM (apart from in the trademark notice at the bottom of the US site, which is a bit more in-depth than the UK one. The UK box is a bit more in-depth than the UK site, but even that only says "Dark Messiah, Might and Magic, Ubisoft and the Ubisoft logo are trademarks" and so on. The actual manual refers to the game exclusively as "Dark Messiah", presumably in order to keep things short, apart from on one occasion where it uses "Dark Messiah of Might and Magic". And Ham Pastrami is right when he says that in general WP prefers popular usage and its own style guides over the trademark owner's recommendations, hence why PLAYSTATION®3, Sony's trademarked spelling, redirects to PlayStation 3. Dreaded Walrus t c 09:47, 27 May 2008 (UTC)