Might & Magic: Heroes 8 - to wait or not to wait?

Let's go back to 2006. Heroes V, developed by the Russian studio Nival, was an excellent reimagining of the legendary third installment. The debate about which game in the series is better continues to this day. According to some insiders, the development process wasn't entirely smooth. The concept was changed several times at the publisher's request, which meant the game had to be reworked, and perhaps, just perhaps, without Ubisoft's interference, the strategy would have been even better. I don't know about you, but I've always loved Heroes 5 for its story campaigns. They weren't particularly different from typical fantasy plots, but they were intriguing and interesting nonetheless. Nival didn't disappoint in this regard either. The plot is very good, and it also leaves a curious ending, which continues in Dark Messiah - Queen Isabel gives birth to a half-demon, half-human child from Kha-Bleh, who is destined to plunge the world into darkness. Then, until the fall of 2007, two decent expansions for Heroes 5 were released, which greatly improved the gameplay, nicely deepened the game's lore, but weakly developed the plot. Throughout the two large story expansions, a group of different heroes very slowly overthrows the False Isabel from the throne. The only bright spot is the references to Dark Messiah. The most notable of these is that the main villain and opponent of Messiah, Arantir, the evil necromancer, and so on, is actually "good" and was looking for the Skull of Shadows in order to stop Messiah (although this is actually clear in the game towards the end). Let's not dwell on various side projects like browser games; they didn't do anything bad to the series. They didn't even damage its reputation much. Well, they exist, so what's the big deal? Let's move on to 2011. Or, as I call it, "The Beginning of the End." 2011 was the year that Might and Magic Heroes VI was released. Note the rebranding of the title; now M&M is placed at the beginning, as if hinting that this is an entire franchise. Nival refused to develop the sixth part of the series, citing Allods Online as the reason, so Ubisoft handed over the reins to the little-known studio Black Hole Entertainment. All fans of the Heroes series know that Black Hole turned the game into something that no patches or DLCs can fix. They completely changed the entire game mechanics. And they did it with four simple strokes: 1) They simplified the City Portal. Now, moving between cities requires almost no effort. 2) They allowed conquered cities to be transformed into cities of your race. 3) They gave the ability to quickly buy back all soldiers from all cities in one location. 4) Mines come under the player's control after capturing the city to which these mines belong. As a result, the entire strategic part is reduced to the hero jumping between cities of the same race and accumulating the largest army. That's it. The rest is simply unnecessary. And it seemed that who cares. But with the other strokes, the developers made the tactical part boring and uninteresting. First, instead of 7 levels of units, there are now only 3, and the units are grouped in them. Secondly, in addition to the usual characteristics and a couple of abilities, each unit has grown a thousand different passive and other abilities, resistances, and everything else, which only complicates the gameplay. Magic has become very weak and has moved into the category of more of a supporting role; the days of heroes with small armies destroying enemies with their spells are gone. The battles are arranged in some crooked way, the unit design is not impressive, the balance is questionable, and so on. In general, the game is just bad in terms of gameplay. This also affected sales. However, the game's plot, although of mediocre quality, is not bad in itself. It deepens the lore (for example, angels are just another race, no better than others) and tells about one family. The plot has only one problem - IT IS NOT INTERESTING. And it is uninteresting for one reason - it is a prequel to the fifth Heroes. Prequels can be interesting if they: 1) Lead to some prerequisites for the emergence of the plot lines of the original. 2) Or are written so amazingly that they overshadow the original. Neither of these is present in the plot of the sixth part. It is known that in 2016, Ubisoft fired the developers of the latest Might & Magic Heroes. Ubisoft decided to discontinue further cooperation with the German studio Limbic Entertainment. And this is after four years of work on Might & Magic X: Legacy, Might & Magic Heroes VI, and Might & Magic Heroes VII. It was these games that were mercilessly criticized by the vast majority of fans of the universe, so further unsuccessful development of this legendary series did not fit into any framework. In this regard, further updates to Might & Magic Heroes VII became impossible, and the "Trial by Fire" expansion is the final one. And here an interesting question arises: Do you think there is a chance that Ubisoft will ask Nival to return to developing the 8th part?