With up to six players able to join up, the game was not as extensive as MMORPGs of the time, but it also included 16-player deathmatch, a random adventure generator, and a player vs. monster arena. The game would allow characters to choose one of six classes with differing proficiencies in might and magic before embarking on a quest to collect four artifacts from four worlds to defeat the deranged advisor to the king before he can alter history. The assignments given to the players would depend on their level and how far they had progressed. By the beginning of 2001, however, the game had abandoned the Action/RPG elements and had become a deathmatch game, with six proposed gameplay modes, 25 maps from Might and Magic history, and the ability for weapons, skills, abilities, and equipment to carry over between games. The move was defended by Executive Producer Jeffrey Blattner, who said: "We got to a certain checkpoint some time ago and examined what we had. One thing we pride ourselves on at New World is the gameplay, and we just didn't feel like we would be able to deliver a fun experience for people with what we had at the time, so at that point a decision was made to not proceed in the original direction, and instead we decided to make a different type of game," explains Executive Producer Jeffrey Blattner. "The Might and Magic series is already so varied in terms of gameplay anyway. We have the Heroes strategy series and the tried and true Might and Magic RPG series, and everyone was really interested in branching out into an action style game, so that's how we found ourselves here. The original goal of Legends was to deliver the first online Might and Magic game, and we're still going to do that." A demo for the game was released on April 18, 2001. On June 8 it went gold. The first patch (Version 1.1) came out on July 20. Reception Critical reviews Legends of Might and Magic received "mixed" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. The game was likened to a fantasy version of Counter-Strike by most reviewers; according to Tal Blevins of IGN, Legends "pretty much blatantly rips off Counter-Strike." Blevins also criticized the game for its lack of strategy, lack of differences between classes, and unbalanced weapons. Will Abner of GameSpy criticized the