The moat around the fortifications of the Capital of the Lands of Heroes was covered by ice. The snow fell from the gray winter sky. Small orc on the huge black wolf has crossed a drawbridge and appeared in the quarter of nobility and knighthood. “The amount of buildings here has increased” – thought Orc while examining the architecture. He smiled. Indeed, the amount of the registered inhabitants in the Lands of Heroes already exceeds three thousand, and although not all of them live in Capital, usually about 150 persons participate in battle events of each General tournament in the Lands of Heroes (http://heroesportal.net/land/). When he crossed the inhabited quarters, he noticed a big stone building with a signboard "Clans". It was obvious, that it has just been constructed and it is about to open. Orc was moving towards the biggest city area. His way ran through the Market of the Lands of Heroes 3 and 4. The market rustled around the passing Orc. Here he noticed something strange - in the middle of the market area there was a bench with a signboard " Special Artifacts ". Orc was poorly skilful in reading and consequently decided to come closer and look, what is being sold there. Having talked with the dealer, Orc was struck. The dealer sold really special artifacts that operated only in the Lands of Heroes, but were not put in initial saves for the knights.
After visiting the market Orc entered the big city area and saw the warm light, flowing from windows of the Tavern. He moved towards the lights, but has suddenly heard a hail behind his back: - " Sir Gorbik! Will the Supreme Master be kind to talk to me? "
The Orc has stopped the wolf and has looked back. Before him there were two Masters - two paladins, wearing sparkling armor suits and green raincoats, edged with fur and decorated with the arms of the Portal. The one called sir Sargon (the main translator of the Lands of Heroes) said, pleasantly smiling - " Sir! I, just as you, am going to visit the Tavern. Nowadays our population grows very quickly, and as it is possible to notice even from here, the Tavern has also grown in its sizes. From shabby wooden structure it has turned into a reliable stone refuge, and all this due to the diligence of black dragon Pool. But let’s not talk about it tight now. As you should know, more and more English-speaking inhabitants stop in our Lands. Will you be so king to give me the scrolls with amendments to rules that were made during the last month, that I could show to these inhabitants?”
Orc searched his pockets and after a minute took out several little scrolls, curtailed in a tubule. On those scrolls the following was written:
Scroll 1
Dear Sirs and Ladies!
In your requests, we made the following amendments to rules. All of them concern the Lands of Heroes 3.
1) You can dig for the Grail ONLY AFTER you opened all the 100% of the puzzle map!
2) The dismiss/purchase of heroes in the Lands of Heroes 3 is forbidden! Purchase of any hero after dismissal is forbidden within ONE DAY, because the hero appears with a full stock of movement and mana. Other receptions are allowed, as the stock of movement and mana are spent.
3) Results of the SUPREME LEAGUE in the General tournament in the Lands of Heroes 3 will be brought with a priority of SCORE (the Blitz League remains).
Scroll 2
Dear Sirs and Ladies!
The following amendment to Key Rules were made:
*Time, spent on any tournament map, can not exceed more than 1000 game days. This restriction was made because of specificity, grown in our offline tournament – some players started playing specially for the accumulation of huge amount of resources in order to win the special bonuses of the tournament – the mines.
Scroll 3
The Ranks’ rules are changed too!
Now it sounds that way:
Rule 2. It is forbidden to the players to sell their feuds, if it would lower their rank and would cause them to move from the Supreme League to Common League.
For example: Lord is allowed to lower the rank up to Baron and King is authorized to become Lord or Baron,, because and in these cases they still remain in the Supreme League.
But nobody of them can lower his rank up to the Knight, Noble or Landless.
The knight CAN NOT LOWER the RANK by selling his feud!
“That are indeed very reasonable amendments" - told the paladin after he read the scrolls. Orc smiled and asked the second paladin - the Master called sir Logan – “ Sir, what is going on in our library? I heard, that the quantity of maps for our campaigns has grown to 1462"
“Yes, Supreme Master, indeed, but before the New Year's eve a surprise waits al of us! As you know, our dusty archives of maps for all versions of Heroes were not cleaned for more than 3 years. I’ve been rummaging here for a while and as a result have just made a list of 176 maps that are unworthy to be in our great map library! Those are maps, on which the set of the following phenomena is observed:
1) "Square"- looking maps and maps, made on a basis of automatically generated random maps;
2) Randomly scattered resources and bad (if any!) portrayal;
3) Huge empty spaces filled with nothing (the worst violation!);
4) Absence of a plot. But if everything else was okay, I didn’t judge those maps as severely as those having other lacks;
5) Maps, having fatal bugs that prevent them from being completed (fortunately, there were a few maps of that category in our library).
So, after January 1st, we can name www.heroesportal.net as the biggest and best library of maps for the set of " Heroes of Might and Magic " games in the whole network of Internet".
Orc joyfully rubbed his paws - "Îãðððð, it is very good news! It is necessary to ask all inhabitants to vote for maps more actively and to leave their reviews for maps! And then, all together, we can create a really tremendous map library! Well, sirs, it is cold to stand here and speak – so let's go to the Tavern!”
The Tavern, as it always did, met the Orc and the both Paladins with noise and cheerful music. Today it was crowded as never before, but, nevertheless, the place sufficed everyone. The two black dragons, who stood behind the rack of the bar where many visitors sat, waved with their paws to the newly arrived. More precisely, that were the dragon and the dragonlady - Master Pool (the main programmer of a portal) and Master Ornate (conducting tournaments in the Lands of Heroes 3).
" Sit down, sirs! " said the Lady. – “Here we have the unique chat for the fans of Heroes. As you can see, it is yet to be perfect, but it will be completed soon and its design, of course, will change too. We have opened this chat for the sake of experiment, because some of our inhabitants were afraid, that the chat would eventually turn into a usual colloquial chat. But, to our pleasure, here the visitors discuss the game strategy and the campaigns of the Lands of Heroes! And it really pleases us very much! In general, the rack of a bar became a favorite place of heroes, and the Barman here, if he is a bit silent, will (as we hope) become much more talkative in fast future!" Then the Dragonlady winked at other black dragon - the Master Pool.
Orc has smiled towards lady and has ordered beer, but here the paw of the Mantis has lain on his shoulder! Orc has shuddered and sharply turned back - behind him stood the mantis Sombreus (the main designer of a portal).
" Sir, I have brought for you the scrolls with the lands of Heroes mapped on them! They present the current political position and the seized feuds of the Lands of Heroes 3 and 4. Orc unwrapped the maps and screamed - so beautifully they were! Orc couldn’t read, therefore he liked any beautiful drawings very much, and everybody who witnessed his reaction have burst out laughing.
Gorbik was grown shy for a moment, but then he jumped on the rack of a bar, having taken off a red cap with white ribbon from the head of one of the gremlins that were in Tavern, placed it on his own head and said to everyone:
" Friends! All of us gathered here today in order to carry out the old year and to meet the new! For us, the old year was full of events! We have gone through Armageddon and the full destruction of the Lands! But we have survived, and in fact the Lands became even larger and better! Also, there were meetings in Chernigov, Kiev (Ukraine), Omsk (Russia) of participants of our offline “Lands of Heroes” tournaments, and the annually rewarding ceremony, that was conducted this time in Moscow (Russia). You will read the reports about those events in " Events " section of our Portal. We lok in the future with confidence. Now the Portal is completely restored and it is actively developing! More and more new sections are being opened, and it is you that help us to open them! Our Portal becomes really a Portal - an entrance to the community of sites, devoted to great game " Heroes of Might and Magic ". Next year it is planned to open on our Portal a section named " News of the World of Heroes ". News will be published In this section we’ll publish the news from more than hundred sites, devoted to Heroes. We shall open a section “ The Best Heroic Resources " as well – in this section we’ll present a dynamic rating of sites, devoted to " Heroes of Might and Magic "games. The rating will be based on attendance and it will be possible to leave comments and to vote there. On the basis of our project, there were many smaller sites and homepages of inhabitants opened, and there is even a newspaper for the inhabitants of the Lands called " The Underside " (http://news-underside.narod.ru) that is distributed via e-mail (unfortunately, meanwhile only in Russian).
We also invite you to take part in the " Tournament of Century ", in which there will compete teams from such Heroic sites as:
ArchangelCastle ( www.archangelcastle.com)
Behemoth's Lair Empire (www.heroes.net.pl)
HeroesLeague (www.heroesleague.ru)
Heroic Corner (www.heroes.ag.ru)
Tournament of Honor (www.toheroes.com)
You can sign up to our Portal team for the tournament in the Tavern. In the same place you’ll learn, in what nominations exactly will the participants compete in this tournament.
On January 26th it will be two years from the date of official opening of the Portal www.heroesportal.net, and four years from the date, when the basis of the current Postal was created. You can still find the web page, with which all this began four years ago, in Internet – here is the address: http://heroes3maps.hypermart.net/. We invite all of you to the celebration of the birthday of the Portal on January 24th to Kiev (Ukraine). According to the tradition of all our meetings, the representatives of gaming company “Buka” ( www.buka.ru) - the official publisher and localizer of the series of games " Heroes of Might and Magic " in all territory of the countries of the CIS – will come to our meeting too. We also expect the journalists from the Ukrainian game magazines. During this informal meeting they have the chance to interview the representatives of the company, who don’t visit Ukraine so frequently. So, see you all in Kiev!
The team of Portal wants to thank all of you for the feasible help and support of our Portal during this year and to wish you all the success next year - not only in the Lands of Heroes, but also in real life! Let your dreams come true! "- shouted Orc, jumped up on the rack and, having slipped, has fallen from it. The laughter has filled the hall of the Tavern, while behind the windows snow was falling quietly.
The Lands of Heroes continued to live the life, full of events…
