Following VI, 3DO mandated a yearly release schedule for the Might & Magic RPG games. The result of this was that the next game, For Blood & Honor, was developed in roughly nine months time. While a rushed development schedule doesn't normally bode well, the fact that I'm obligated to tell you that Majora's Mask was done in about a year should tell how good I found VII to be.
While critics of the time regarded it as fairly good, but not up to the standards of prior games, VII is the game that has aged the best of the entire series. The majority of the class and skill balance issues of VI were addressed while expanding the class system and re-adding race choics, the difficulty curve was made much more smooth (although not perfect), and it actually added branching story choices. Oh, and most of the main quests can be completed while playing pacifist style (although doing so does require a specific party setup).
I could spend a lot more time throwing praise on top of the 7th game, but you get the idea. The downsides are that the short development time forced a lot of the games' locations to be made smaller in comparison to VI, and there were fewer locations overall. And of course, it used to exact same game engine, although this isn't so bad. The graphics, while not perfect, aren't unreasonably bad by modern standards.
And so we come to the eighth entry, Day of the Destroyer, which tried to change up the formula by fusing race and class into one blend - you could be a knight, or a minotaur, or a vampire...these were all mutually exclusive. The plot of this game is actually interesting, because a lot of elements of it would crop up in World of Warcraft of all things - specifically, the backstory behind the character Algalon the Observer is very similar to the main antagonist of VIII, while said antagonist's methods are in line with what Deathwing did during the Cataclysm expansion. (Yes, I know my Warcraft lore.)
Unfortunately, the rushed development time finally showed itself. The difficulty curve is really jagged in comparison to the prior game, alternating between fairly easy at most points and extremely hard at a few critical ones. The lack of sidequests really shows too, with most of your time spent on class promotions or main story quests. It didn't help that RPGs as a genre had made a resurgence at the time, so the game faced poor reception compared to its counterparts.
And then came the disaster known as IX, aka Writ of Fate (the working title, but not actually used for the release). The game was released in an unfinished state with many bugs and quite a bit of missing content, and the story was not well tied into the overall mythology of the earlier games. Combined with poor sales of its other games, this would mark the end of 3DO, which closed its doors in 2003.
The Might and Magic license was sold to Ubisoft, who abandoned the RPG series and the original setting, but continued to release games in the Heroes of Might and Magic series (which they eventually re-titled Might & Magic Heroes). At least, until 2013, when Might & Magic X: Legacy was announced.
This game was released to mixed reviews, but was generally solid in terms of gameplay, although the annoyance of Uplay rankled quite a bit. It borrowed many elements from the prior games in the series, and in many ways was a love letter to the games of old, even if it did have some performance issues. Unfortunately, Ubisoft proved they had no real faith in the game by pulling funding and support soon after release, leaving it with a single DLC and little hope of further bug-fixes.
I sincerely doubt we will get another game in the series, as much as I would want one. (At least, unless Ubisoft sells the rights - ha, almost no one sells rights unless bankruptcy looms). Still, it was a very influential set of RPGs, and I would love to see more like them.
Catch you on the
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