Might & Magic X - Jon Van Caneghem Interview

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Might & Magic X has another update in it's meet the ancients interviews this time with Jon Van Caneghem. You should all know who he is, and if you don't shame on you.

Can you tell us about the genesis of the Might & Magic series?

I wanted to make a party based RPG that was very strategic, had a free open world to explore and lots of fun puzzles to solve.Wizardry I, Ultima I and Dungeons and Dragons were the initial influence, but I wanted to go further and express my style of play in the design.Learning to program and figuring out all the technical barriers was just a means to an end, creating the best game possible was my driving force.

What does Might & Magic mean to you today?

It’s always a great feeling to know millions of people have enjoyed this series and it makes me very happy to know that new games are still being made.!

As a fan of the series, here's something I always wanted to ask you. What were your plans for the storyline of the series? Would we have discovered the secrets of the Ancients and the Kreegans? Anything you can share with us?

Originally, the Might and Magic story ended with World of Xeen.

But with the popularity of Heroes and a demand for new MM games, we started it all up again and took things in many directions.

And yes we had plans to finalize the Kreegans story and visit the Ancients home world… :p
More information.
 
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Come back JVC and get your game back. What is been made made now in an abomination, there is absolutely no Might and Magic feel to it. There's no might, no intellect, no personality, no endurance, no accuracy, no speed and no luck. The spells are crap. The combat is wank. The classes are shite. The inventory system is ridiculous. The weapons and armour are rooted.

They've already screwed over Heroes and now they have moved onto Might and Magic. I've lost my second favourite game of all time, I don't want to lose my favourite.
 
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Nah you don't want JVC to make a game now....heard him interviewed a few years ago and he said Mmo's are where its at. Love the early games though
 
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I actually have the official Might & Magic 1,2 and 3 strategy guide where they have a VERY lengthy interview with JVC. I always loved the guy and Might & Magic was one of my favorite RPG series growing up. Was still more of a Goldbox guy, but M&M3 was a sick obsession of mine. I used to beat it marathon style on the weekends just for fun.

He never sold out the way his contemporaries did.
 
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I love Gothic and I love Skyrim. And both are probably now rated higher that M&M, as far as my top 5 games of all time goes. However, I just played M&M 7 and 8 this year and finished both and had a blast with both of the games.

I just love the color palate of those games. While they are far more cartoony looking that my other favs, M&M are just as, if not more fantasy immersive than most any game.

Also, why is it not tedious to beat down maybe 100 or so baddies in one Might and Magic area and yet yell at any developer that spawns "just one iddy bitty" little monster by that oak tree in back of the tavern every so often . . . . go figure.

I would just love to see another M&M game by JVC.
 
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Interview is too shallow. I was expecting few words on new M&M project rather than just "cool". Anyway i hope this is a sign that we can see him again in a new M&M game in the future. There is a much detailed interview with him at RPGCodex if any of you interested: http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=8379
 
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Interview is too shallow. I was expecting few words on new M&M project rather than just "cool". Anyway i hope this is a sign that we can see him again in a new M&M game in the future. There is a much detailed interview with him at RPGCodex if any of you interested: http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=8379

Yea wasn't really an interview. It was more of a Hey we ran into JVC, cool!
 
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Amazing to me people rate skyrim so highly. I mean i enjoy it and all but putting it in a top 5 all time list is just silly to me. I would rank the first M&M game higher by far and especially in its influence in the rpg industry. Skyrim is a nice sandbox but its very consolish and bland and more of an action game. Now mm1? That was an rpg! You had to map or you get lost, you could die in the opening city and turn based combat!
 
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Amazing to me people rate skyrim so highly. I mean i enjoy it and all but putting it in a top 5 all time list is just silly to me. I would rank the first M&M game higher by far and especially in its influence in the rpg industry. Skyrim is a nice sandbox but its very consolish and bland and more of an action game. Now mm1? That was an rpg! You had to map or you get lost, you could die in the opening city and turn based combat!

No not silly, simply one's taste. Just like a favorite ice cream or a favorite piece of meat, a favorite car, a favorite TV show, or a favorite color. There's no right answer, it's simply one's preference.

Additionally I have been computer gaming a long long time. JVC even came to my apple computer club to pitch Might and Magic 1. I had finished the game by the time he visited and stood in front of the club proclaiming it a million times better then Wiz 1. He sold all the games he brought with him and sometime there after he sent me a tee-shirt that I still proudly wear.

It was made of high quality material and I work out a lot, that's why it still fits :)

Skyrim fits the way I like to game now. I don't need a story just a full and vital world where I can make my own story(s).

Still, if JVC were to jump back into the CRPG world, I would find myself doing a PREORDER the nano-second it was available.

BTW
My top 6 (order varies depending on time of day) TV shows of all time are:

Startrek the Next Generation
Stargate
X-Files
Twilight Zone
Doctor Who
Tie Between Frazier and Seinfeld
 
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Amazing to me people rate skyrim so highly. I mean i enjoy it and all but putting it in a top 5 all time list is just silly to me. I would rank the first M&M game higher by far and especially in its influence in the rpg industry. Skyrim is a nice sandbox but its very consolish and bland and more of an action game. Now mm1? That was an rpg! You had to map or you get lost, you could die in the opening city and turn based combat!

Well, I guess it depends how you rate them. I suppose if we have to be fair we would not take into account when the game was released nor what it influenced, only how much we liked it. And to be honest, if MM was released today, I wouldn't play it.

Skyrim is still nowhere near my top ten though, to me Morrowind is the Elder Scrolls game that makes the list.
 
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Original G.

Having a great time w M&M X, though admittedly it still needs some more time in the oven.

-g
 
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I know its a matter of opinion, I get it. Its just that skyrim as released was so dam easy and consolized. Do you like skyrim as sold or heavily modified? I love sand box games as well but hated the UI, way to easy combat and blandness. With about 100 'Mods its a heck of a game. It doesn't really feel like an rpg to me either, more of an action oriented fantasy romp…which is fun too though.

Wow Dajjer, JVC came you your computer club? Way cool!

I don't know if I would play mm1 if it was released now or not…interesting question. Granted primitive tech but its a heck of a challenge of a game. Todays games mostly play themselves
 
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I put in over 300 hours with plain vanilla Skyrim. Because of the vast landscape I was never bored. Just so much to explore both over and under land. But, when I restart some time later I will experiment with the mods.

It made sense for JVC to attend the computer club I belonged to. If memory served, the club was called the Original Apple Corp of Southern California (?) and typically the meetings had in excess of one hundred members attending. And just about all of us had an Apple 2. The officers had direct contact with Apple.

I talked to JVC briefly off and on for the next few years (no - we were not acquaintances let alone friends) and right around the time of M&M2 he told me the apple 2 platform was dead and all subsequent games would be developed for the PC.

A crushing blow for an original apple fan boy. And for a while I was anti PC and hated everything about it. I loved those old PC jr commercials (with the faux Charlie Chaplin). because they showed how lame PC's were. Chicklet keyboards indeed . . .

But I soon got over it when I discovered the PC platform grossly surpassed the number of games available compared to the apple 2. By the time I finally got over my ridiculous prejudice and bought my first PC the first game I got was World of Xeen. . . . . "Welcome to the Guild" . . . . . .

My last run-in with JVC was a near miss. New World Computing was right around the corner from my office. I went over there just to bring praise but JVC was out of the office and there was only one guy coding in some dark corner. Unfortunately I got reassigned to another office for a few years and when I came back to the area, New world Computing was no more . . .

Totally different times now, I just can't see someone like me walking into EA offices to shoot the shit with the developers and programmers . . .

GET OFF MY LAWN . . . .
 
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I put in over 300 hours with plain vanilla Skyrim. Because of the vast landscape I was never bored. Just so much to explore both over and under land.

I played 100 hours Skyrim, because of the vast landscape I was never bored. Just so much to explore both over and under land.

But at hour 101 I got bored to play the tourist, to have quote companions and dogs was immortal, to have realize the fights wasn't fun, that no story not even the main wasn't grabbing my curiosity, and NPC wasn't doing a much better job, that I was starting considering dragons as rabbits and that was like a blaspheme. Then I stopped play it.

I think Skyrim was in my top 10 during about 40 hours of play, then in my top 20 during the 40 next hours, and for the 20 next hours it was nowhere.

I still consider it as an impressive achievement, and that some of the modern design difficulties has been targeted in very interesting ways and probably set some future standards.

EDIT: So much to explore under land? I remember only some cool but very linear dungeons.
 
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Totally different times now, I just can't see someone like me walking into EA offices to shoot the shit with the developers and programmers . . .

I tried to visit the office of EA in Cologne, Germany. The tale is somewhere here in the forums. :D

As I learned there, EA's building is a bit like a fortress : It has a few doors (not many), and one I tried to get in was only for businessmen. The other door ... I didn't try there anymore, I was too frustrated. And what I had thought to be the "main door" was basically just the entrance, because there seemingly were a few more tiny firms in that building ...

I tend to believe that nowadays personal contact isn't wanted anymore.
Or, perhaps, it is less wanted the bigger the company becomes.

I once ringed at the door of the Cologne office of of Digital River, an online payment company / firm to complain about something, and I didn't even get an answer or an opened door (again, there were more firms in that building as well).

I fear that online contacts are more and more replacing personal contacts.
 
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