The intention is to create a 'spiritual successor' to MOM.  It is NOT a sequel, but it is heavily inspired by it.  It does have heroes, character creation and unit creation.  The spell system is yet to be fully revealed, but I doubt it will be exactly the same as MOM's.

If you've played Galactic Civilizations 2, its a similar sort of thing with that and Master of Orion.

Master of Magic is still one of my favourite games from why back on my old 486DX2 66MHz, from what i have read about the beta if they can get the playabiliy with out a nice shiney GFX engine, i will hope it have the feel of MoM. Thankyou for the responces.

I have some high hopes for this game. And I really think that (from all I've heard) this game will final be the game that finally puts MoM to rest. As despite being a great game MoM is ancient and needs a replacement.

The spell system hasn't been revealed yet, but there is a very neat tech system with infinite research. And the unit desinger will probably be one of the best parts of this game.

@ NachoAdept, I don't think heroes are implemented yet.

I remember a review of GC2 TotA which said, referring to MOO (1 and 2, not 3) saying 'The king is dead, long live the king!'  So if SD keep up their record MoM will finally get a true successor, if only after a couple of expansions.  Of course the legiions of beta testers are here to make sure we don't have to wait for expansions before having an uber mega game.

Agreed Tormy-. MoM will never "Die". It will always be recognized by us old schoolers as a Classic and Legend in it's time. It's very true that AoW2 was a good successor, just as Elemental will be a even greater successor to both Mom and AoW2. I do believe Elemental will be the new King of this genre, but people will never forget the classic that started it all.

I'm sure someone will eventually mod in the MoM races, units, spells, etc. (or maybe that's wishful thinking!).

Yeah, all I really want is MoM with really good AI, all known bugs fixed - and there were MANY of them (see section 10.5) and multiplayer.

One of the reasons why I think subsequent games have failed to capture what it is that makes MoM so amazing is because their developers did not truly understand it.

Not to set expectations for Elemental too high or anything.

Its true.  MoM  is  still very buggy   (though in its defense, its hard to say what is caused by it or  by emulation means such as DOS box, which does have some strange speed issues with MoM)

I think its almost to a point where MoM isn't even the target successor anymore.  Just that this is supposed to be in  the same super-sub-genre.  Its just that MoM is one of the examples of a really jaw-dropping experience here, where most of the games that have come after have only been  average at best (there are exceptions of course, but these are often also listed with MoM when comparing this game to other affiliates)

A great many (perhaps a majority) of MoM's bugs would simply not happen today due to modern programming techniques, tools and compilers (static analyzers, modern debuggers, etc).

DOSbox's speed issues have been fixed recently with the release of the dynamic core.

I am not a hardcore-veteran-ultra-skilled MoM player, but I have to say there are quite a few similarities:

• Turn based
• Unit described as simple stats like: attack, defense, move, unkeep (and a couple of special stats)
• Fantasy setting
• 4X
• Develop magic
• Cast spells
• Control a wizard
• Choose among several factions/races
• Explore ruins, siphon shards, fight against monsters etc.
• Upgrade your cities, train units, rise buildings
• Diplomacy

However, there are a lot of differences:

• You can/have to develop non-magical technologies
• Your wizard is a unit
• Units' unkeep is only described in gold (no food)
• Better sounds, music and graphics - who could have guessed it
• Ability to create your own units
• Family tree (I don't like this idea, but it's in)
• Your wizard is the only unit able to build cities (# of cities is limited)
• Simultenously to raising buildings you can train units

I would say this game is really similar to MoM, and if the game is as 'moddable' as Frogboy promisses, making a MoM v. 2.0 shouldn't be a problem at all.

yeah...at this beta stage,  you'd have to be in the game a VERY long time to get a hero.   I'd say forever unless Stardock creates a patching system that updates the game as you play it.   (more than just hotfixes, which I think they already have)

Far as I know, they're not. I'm not sure what beta release those are scheduled for, but I haven't seen a post saying anybody has gotten one yet.

The current beta phase is mostly "does the game run on peoples systems?" We're tenatively scheduled to get another beta version today that may have some new stuff.

Most of the main gameplay stuff (ie: heroes, dynasties, diplomacy) will be in by December.