I was involved in this project for several months back in 2000.  On the one hand it is sad to see that it has not yet been finished, particularly for the fans not involved in the project who wanted an opportunity to play the game.  On the other, the story of Hero6 IMO is less about the making of a game than the ability of the internet to bring together a community of talented individuals from all over the world to work together on something that was, for a period in time, important to them.  For all those that have been involved over the years, I believe it has been a mostly positive experience in their life, however small.

In retrospect, I believe the project was initially too ambitious given what we had to work with, both in technology and personnel.  A polished, professional-quality game created from scratch in the QG4 mold was, IMO, a much larger undertaking at the time than people wanted to admit.  Progress reports were IMO generally overly optimistic and underestimated what still needed to be done.  At the time of my involvement, the development was largely democratic.  We had "leaders" or "directors" over certain aspects of the game that were responsible for organizing what we had, but nearly every decision was put to a poll/vote.

On the one hand, this fostered good will among the project members and gave incentive to stay involved.  On the other, with 50 different people come 50 different opinions.  We had no one to enforce decisions, no stylistic standards to which members were forced to adhere.  Nor is there incentive to continue to participate when you eventually get displeased with the direction things are going.  People in a professional gaming company will comply with the wishes of their project managers because it is in their financial interest to do so.  In a volunteer situation, people who are unhappy with the decisions regarding the direction of a project will eventually end their involvement; some will decide to start their own project with which they believe they can have a bigger influence on the project's direction. 

The end result for Hero6 back in 2000 was that we ended up depending on individuals to do too much.  We voted for the features of our game engine, but we depended on a single programmer to put it together.  We voted for art styles, room layouts, and even individuals screens, but we didn't have the people interested in emulating or adhering to those decisions resulting in one or two people being forced to work on hundreds of pieces of artwork, in what could only be hoped was a timely fashion.  It was, IMO, too much to ask.

At the time I ended my involvement, I remember thinking the game was maybe 2 or 3 years away.  We had the characters, the story, a number of the puzzles and quests worked out.  We had people who began working on the dialogue trees.  I believed the art and music, and the completion of a polished engine would end up being the primary time factor from then on out.

Inevitably, as the "staff" turns over new people bring new ideas which require revisions in story, style, programming, etc.  I imagine the game today has very little in common with the one I worked on ten years ago.  We are now further away from the start of the Hero6 project than the founding of it was from the release of QG4.  For many people, even those who were involved in the project, I imagine it's been years since they played anything like the old Sierra adventure games.  What we actually had planned in 2000 was a slightly progressive take on those games IMO, but now even that is quaint by today's gaming standards.  With the number of game development suites and mod-able games out there, people who would have gotten involved in Hero6 because they saw it as a way to apply their skills and interests to a game now have hundreds of other avenues to do so.

Hero6 really would have benefited IMO from thinking much smaller scale, even if it doing so would not have met up to the expectations of awaiting fans.  It would have been better I think to have released a tiny game with only one or two monster types, a handful of rooms, and a half-dozen or so NPCs with only a portion of the story.  Future releases could have added to what was already released, like releasing chapters in a fanfic a month or two at a time.  Sometimes getting something done is much more important than trying to do everything all at once, and to perfection.

At any rate, I suggest that, unless there is a true expectation of the project being completed "soon," most of the general Hero6 material be released to the public domain so people can get a more complete idea what the game might have been like -- perhaps it will provide creative inspiration for other projects.

Good health to all,
The Centaur of Sifnos