Heroes of Might and Magic III Troubleshooting Guide.
If you're having troubles playing Heroes in Microsoft Gaming Zone, it could be due to several reasons.
Version. You and your opponent must have compatible versions. See our VERSION page for instruction.
If you and opponent have same version, but still have problems, some possible causes/solutions are:
No Disk. Person hosting game should have disk. There are "no disk cracks" out there, but I don't really deal with cracks. Check the Version page for some sites that might help.
Game seems to open, but can't start, or freezes up. It is VERY important that the host of the game not have TOO MANY MAPS in the map directory. The game comes with too many maps, if you haven't already thinned them out. To thin out maps, go to MAPS directory, in the game folder inside 3DO folder, which should be in your PROGRAM FILES folder. Once there, you may select FILE, NEW FOLDER, and drag all but about 10 maps into that folder. You can always then pull a map up and put it back in the "play" area. If you get into the tournament play, which is best thing to do, just delete the extra maps, cause tournament players pretty much all spurn all 3DO made maps, and have map pages at their sites where you can download more popular maps.
The reason you are getting rid of all these maps is that the Zone wants to exchange too much information with your opponent, and will take so long trying to read the maps you have to choose from that you will either lag to the point of freezing, or your opponent will THINK you did and leave.
A common problem that people have is zone being unable to find their game...the message usually reads something like "Zone is unable to detect Heroes, please install game". Well, you KNOW you installed it, so what's up with that?
This can be the toughest problem to solve, it can be the easiest. I suggest the following attempts be made, in this order, which is pretty much from "easiest" to "hardest". If none of these work for you, I'm afraid I've offered all the advice I can offer, unless some regular reader out there wants to write a registry editing tutorial specifically aimed at a fix that I can publish.
1. Try this site: Wizards and Warriors upgrade page . Use the link at the BOTTOM of the page, run the program linked there. It is VERY IMPORTANT that you download the program into your HEROES FOLDER for this program to work. Right click the link, choose "Save as" and save it into your 3DO/Heroes folder, then run it.
2. If that didn't help, play a couple games by TCP/IP. Sometimes that helps the zone "find" your game.
3. If that doesn't help, try this, but you MUST follow the instructions EXACTLY as I lay them out.
a. Reboot computer.
b. WITHOUT re-entering zone, use ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS feature in CONTROL PANEL to remove the ZONE FILES.
c. Use ADD/REMOVE again to remove HEROES FILES.
d. Reinstall Heroes. Upgrade Heroes using upgrade program at the bottom link on this page.
e. Start the game in single player mode, let the "movie" at the beginning run all the way through, play the first couple days of a game.
f. Reinstall MSN Gaming Zone files.
g. Reenter Heroes room in zone, and try again.
If this hasn't helped you, I'm sorry, man, it's the best I can do, but you SHOULD be able to play TCP/IP games with just about anybody, nonetheless.