Contrary to popular opinion, nobody official has declared HJ dead. In fact, Simu doesn't even anythign to do with this now, as a new company bought the engine and assests.

At the new forums, a HeroEngine employee has this to say to us:

"HeroEngine and Hero's Journey are now owned by Idea Fabrik Plc."

"Dead?  Who said?

New company, new forum!

We'll pass along more info as we're able"

As a matter of fact, I am logged into a HeroEngine cloud server right now, playing with HJ assests.

Check it out: http://www.heroengine.com/

I only really cared about it cause it was Simu. So if its not evne them anymore... meh

Originally posted by Nivisiru

I only really cared about it cause it was Simu. So if its not evne them anymore... meh

Well, this is twice they failed to bring this game to market, so I figure it's time to give someone else a chance.

Yeah I wish it the best of luck and hope someone can make good on it. My first love was DragonRealms by Simu. Really wanted a mainstream MMO from them. Oh well, what can ya do.

Originally posted by Nivisiru

Yeah I wish it the best of luck and hope someone can make good on it. My first love was DragonRealms by Simu. Really wanted a mainstream MMO from them. Oh well, what can ya do.

 Exactly my feelings for this project. I wish them the best of luck and hope it turns out well, but Simu making a full scale MMO had my attention. Now, I'm left wondering what could have been... In all my years of online gaming, nothing had a stronger sense of community then dragonrealms and gemstone did. I truly miss that sense of community when it comes to online gaming. Now, everything has turned into 4chan the MMO where everyone tries to one up each other on the dicketry and there is zero policing of the online community. Acting like a jerk back then got you a real quick ban, ahhhh good times.

I don't understand why Simu didn't finish Hero's Journey and work twords launching it. It sounded like it had the most potential out of anything else that was in development at the time. Oh well, I hope this new company does right by it and sees great success!

Also hoping this get up and running one of these decades :) 

Thanks for your post letting us know it isn't dead as I had given up keeping on eye on it.

Pluto is NOT officially a planet, but we all know what's up.

Why are we still beating this dead horse? More importantly, why is there still an HJ forum here?

In their FAQ on the HeroEngine site, they even imply that what they have of the engine is what HJ is (and ever will be). It will never be a game. They made half an engine and decided to call it good.

The reason it was never finished (10 years ago), was because their engine isn't capable of creating a game. Anyone ever heard of a game made with HE? This amazing engine that cuts down development time to a fraction of other engines, yet couldn't produce its own flagship game in over a decade? Anyone?

Here's what you can find out (with a little research); any time a studio announces that they will be using the HeroEngine to develop their MMO, it's usually the last announcement you ever hear from that studio.

Trust me, I've worked with the guys at Idea Fabrik (and they screwed me and my team over for tens of thousands of dollars). Hero Engine was a great idea (back in the days of the original Everquest). It's been surpassed ten times over since then.

HE is a failed experiment that Simutronics was more than happy to unload on someone else.

Right from their site:

Q: "If HeroEngine is so great why haven’t you shipped Hero’s Journey?"

How is HE dead or failed if Bioware is using it for SWTOR and not to mention Bethesda, well ZeniMax Online studios is also using it for their upcoming MMO.

Originally posted by khanstruct

Why are we still beating this dead horse? More importantly, why is there still an HJ forum here?

In their FAQ on the HeroEngine site, they even imply that what they have of the engine is what HJ is (and ever will be). It will never be a game. They made half an engine and decided to call it good.

The reason it was never finished (10 years ago), was because their engine isn't capable of creating a game. Anyone ever heard of a game made with HE? This amazing engine that cuts down development time to a fraction of other engines, yet couldn't produce its own flagship game in over a decade? Anyone?

Here's what you can find out (with a little research); any time a studio announces that they will be using the HeroEngine to develop their MMO, it's usually the last announcement you ever hear from that studio.

Trust me, I've worked with the guys at Idea Fabrik (and they screwed me and my team over for tens of thousands of dollars). Hero Engine was a great idea (back in the days of the original Everquest). It's been surpassed ten times over since then.

HE is a failed experiment that Simutronics was more than happy to unload on someone else.

Right from their site:

Q: "If HeroEngine is so great why haven’t you shipped Hero’s Journey?"

A: "Haven’t shipped?  What do you think HeroEngine is?"

 

Admins. Please remove this forum. HJ does not exist.

Hey, Khanstruct, I'm curious about HeroEngine. Can you give us some more insight?

I want to make my own MMO (lol, like half the gamers in the world do), but with limited budget my options are HE or BiGWorld Tech. And IF just announced a free version of HE called HeroEngine BASIC which is no upfront costs but 30% royalty with limit on world size. But even though I have done a lot of searching on various sites it hasn't been easy to decide which one to go with.

HE is outdated, sluggish and difficult to get the hang of.

My suggestion would be to check out Unity3d for the client, and look into Badumna, which is very easy peer to peer networking with some arbitration servers.

Yes, peer to peer is not secure and your game can be hacked. On the upside, if someone hacks your game, that's great news! That means people are actually playing a game that you, yourself created!

Seriously only focus on getting it done and playable. A buggy, faulty indie game is a million times more impressive than people who simply claim they have a great idea.

Unity basic is free and really simple to pick up. Check out 3dBuzz.com for some great intro videos.

Good luck and have lots of fun doing it :)

Originally posted by graffix_75

How is HE dead or failed if Bioware is using it for SWTOR and not to mention Bethesda, well ZeniMax Online studios is also using it for their upcoming MMO.

You ever see Hero Engine mentioned anywhere on the SWTOR site? Ever wonder why not?

They licensed HE and stripped out some useful tools. The developers themselves said they stopped accepting updates from Simutronics part way into development. Its not being built with Hero Engine, HE was simply licensed and some of its fragments were used in Bioware's own design.

Beyond all that, I never said the engine was dead (just that it should be). I was simply saying the sad dream of Heros Journey is dead. Really people, it's been 12 years, why on earth would you think this is still going to somehow appear out of nowhere?

Wait... leprechans aren't real?

Originally posted by khanstruct

HE is outdated, sluggish and difficult to get the hang of.

My suggestion would be to check out Unity3d for the client, and look into Badumna, which is very easy peer to peer networking with some arbitration servers.

Yes, peer to peer is not secure and your game can be hacked. On the upside, if someone hacks your game, that's great news! That means people are actually playing a game that you, yourself created!

Seriously only focus on getting it done and playable. A buggy, faulty indie game is a million times more impressive than people who simply claim they have a great idea.

Unity basic is free and really simple to pick up. Check out 3dBuzz.com for some great intro videos.

Good luck and have lots of fun doing it :)

Yeah, I had looked into Unity just a bit but on your recommendation I will look into it some more. I was just kind of impressed with BigWorld, and their Indie license is pretty cheap even if you're just a hobbyist.

Edit: Oh, btw, thanks for responding.

The fact that Simu made, and still uses, a little HJ demo to market it's engine product is a far cry from an mmo.  This game is dead.  It has been dead for a very, very long time (if ever alive it was).  I'm not sure what more Simu or the new owner could do at this point to convince the one or two remaining people who don't accept this that it's over. 

Looks like Idea Fabrik and it's newly opened studio Second Star Interactive are working on Hero's Journey again.

Idea Fabrik's website says:
Announcement for these games will be forthcoming…
Hero's Journey

http://ideafabrik.com/games/

"Idea Fabrik’s first in-house game is currently in development and will be launching later this year."

The development time is way too short for a completely new MMO.

The issue is it's been in hiatus for such a long while now, the game started development well before 2005? The game was on my list of top games I wanted to play back when they had shown screens and short videos of gameplay. The game looked fantastic and if you watch any youtube video or look at screenshots the games graphics and environments where really good. The graphics I bet would stand out amongst the top other competitors.

I gave up hope for this game, even more so when a new company bought the rights to it because if Simu couldn't finish it and push it out then what will this new company do, and who are they exactly?

Originally posted by bezado

The issue is it's been in hiatus for such a long while now, the game started development well before 2005? The game was on my list of top games I wanted to play back when they had shown screens and short videos of gameplay. The game looked fantastic and if you watch any youtube video or look at screenshots the games graphics and environments where really good. The graphics I bet would stand out amongst the top other competitors.

I gave up hope for this game, even more so when a new company bought the rights to it because if Simu couldn't finish it and push it out then what will this new company do, and who are they exactly?

I know what you mean. But just take a look at the offical website:

http://ideafabrik.com/company-info/

"In early 2011 a team of experienced online game developers joined the company. Led by ex-Mythic VP Darrin Hyrup, this team is building new games to be announced and launched this year."

I guess they will announce something at E3 or Gamescom.