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Introduction Might & MagicŪ IX wasn't finished when it went gold a month before its release in March of 2002. The release date -- the last business day of 3DO's fiscal year -- could not be pushed back any further. Work on the game continued and a patch to version 1.2 was available when the game hit the shelves. Still, lead designer Tim Lang says that the game needed about two more months of work -- and that would have been another two months of 12+ hour days by some of the most experienced RPG designers in the industry. In the end, the over-riding consideration was that 3DO could not afford to put any more resources into the game. Two thirds of the development team members were invited to resign or accept re-assignment to 3DO's home office. There would be no more work on further MM9 patches -- nor on a proposed MM10. However, while it's true that the dev team didn't have time to finish the game as they wanted to, they left the game open for future development as much as possible. This means that knowledgeable fans can fix many of the deficiencies of the game -- from annoying glitches to game-killing bugs. The most widely known of these efforts is kingkongcobra's 'Unofficial Patch' which corrected several errors in the NPC dialog system. The folks at MM-Worlds had a much larger task addressing extensive errors that crept in when the dialog was translated into German. These and other efforts have spared countless fans from hours of frustration and helped them enjoy MM9. TELP will be releasing at least two series of patches. Our 1.3 series is designed for compatibility and is intended for people who are playing version 1.2 and want to prevent many potential bugs. Our 1.4 series is primarily intended for people who want to play (or re-play!) MM9 more in keeping with the game the designers wanted to make. Use the links at the left to learn more. Bones June 14, 2003 |