Greetings, Commanders!
Since the start of Men of War II’s development, we have focused on creating a game with extensive single-player content, while also emphasizing the ability to play any campaign, mission, and mode cooperatively with your friends. And of course, we also wanted to provide as much content to the PvP enthusiasts among our fans. However, as with every endeavor, we had to choose a priority – have all those options available at launch and provide the most expansive gameplay experience yet in the franchise, or make the game available offline, sacrificing some of its scope.
Looking back, we understand that we have underestimated the value you, our community, places on having the single-player part of the game available offline. We started working on it even before the launch, but it is not an easy process. The online features permeate almost every part of Men of War II – changing this takes time and needs to be done carefully, but we’ve already completed most of the necessary work and are making steady progress towards fully implementing the offline mode for single-player. Currently, we are aiming for release in late September or early October.
What functionality have we already developed?
- All content necessary for the offline mode to work has been moved to local storage.
- The ability to turn offline mode on and off in the interface.
- Added loading/saving player data feature from their offline profiles.
- The ability to create more serious mods for the game, including full-fledged campaigns and new content for the "Conquest" mode.
What are we still working on?
- Fixing various technical issues and bugs, implement loading and saving of all data on local computers, and polish the process to reduce loading times as much as possible.
- Once the offline mode is finalized, every single game mode, mission, and feature needs to be tested.
How will it all work?
After the implementation of the offline mode, Men of War II will work as follows:
- The game will launch and work even without internet access. You will be able to complete training, all story campaigns, and additional missions, edit available battalions and play with bots, check battle statistics, and organize a lobby for one person.
- Cooperative, multiplayer, matchmaking, and social functionality (statistics, the ability to connect to friends, dedicated servers, etc.) will normally work only in online mode. In offline mode, these elements will be blocked at the level of the general interface. In addition, some Steam achievements will be unlocked in offline mode, and some only when connected to the Internet.
- You can switch from offline to online mode directly from the game interface (by default, if you are connected to the internet, it will launch in online mode). Your offline data will be stored in your profile on your PC, so you can safely transfer your data to another computer using the same Steam Cloud, if necessary.
The release of the offline mode is our top priority and while we are working on completing it as soon as possible, we are also not neglecting fixing bugs and improving the overall technical state of the game. As always, if you encounter any issues or have any suggestions or other feedback, please let us know either here in the comments, in Steam Discussions, or even better, join the conversation on the the Men of War II Official Discord Server.
As a reminder, if you are experiencing problems with the game and are receiving an error message you are unclear about, we have prepared a troubleshooting guide explaining the most common errors and hints for how to remedy them here.
Thank you to everyone who has already purchased Men of War II and is fighting in the trenches of World War II with us – our journey is just beginning, and we can’t wait to share more info and updates with you.
