It's been five looong years since the release of Disciples II, which was a major improvement over the original and cost me a couple of days of my life playing it. Too bad that Disciples fans like me will have to wait at least another year for Disciples III: Renaissance. Developer Akella - err should i be worried? - who took over from series creator Mistland South, showed off a tech demo of Disciples III at the Barker Hanger at this year's E3.

Disciples III features three different races, each with its own campaign. All three campaigns - The Empire, The Legions of the Damned, and the Noble Elves - will be 10-15 missions long. All three races will be playable online as up to eight players can go at it in multiplayer. But it's far too early for Akella to talk about online play. Akella wants a game as close to perfection as possible and is therefore going to spend at least nine months polishing multiplayer once it's up and running.

The most noticeable change in the tech demo is the switch to a full 3D engine. The Disciples series has never been known for it's visuals, and that appears the case even in the limited E3 tech demo. The creatures, of which there's some 150 varieties, have nice designs, but there's no real visual pop to the world yet. An Akella rep told us that part of the reason for a less than eye-popping presentation is that the engine has issues with NVIDIA cards (on which the demo was run) and looks better on an ATI card.