Heroes of Might and Magic Online Impressions

After spending over 30 hours in the game's beta, RPGWatch shares their impressions of Ubisoft and TQ Digital Entertainment's Heroes of Might and Magic Online.
The heart of HoMM Online is literally hundreds of quests. They are organized in chapters of 30-40 individual quests. At present there are 10 chapters and 700+ quests. This number appears easily extensible in the future. The difficulty and rewards increase as you move up into the chapters. Most tend to be solo quests, a few are (group) quests (2-6 players with their heroes and armies though you can solo most of these), and a couple are (multiplayer) quests (mostly group quests with time limits that make it impossible to solo). Quests tend to be as fast as 15-20 minutes to over an hour, each.

The quests range from FedEx retrievals (collect 6 Thongs of Pulchritude and return them to El Magnifico) to kill the lackeys and the boss (hunt down 6 to 30 mobs, kill them, then the boss) to puzzle quests (mazes, numbers, riddles.) In most there are also wandering mobs. Most of the groups you fight (at least in the first three chapters) do not have a (hero) so you have little fear of magic use against you.

The quests are somewhat repetitive, but considering the sheer number of quests are reasonably creative. Sadly, there is nothing that even approaches (Elwin and Shaera) or (Amelia Nighthaven) storylines here, but there is just enough variation to keep you interested. Plus, quests are integral to getting skills, spells, and equipment.