Multiplayer games live and die by virtue of their communities. In H-Hour, these communities are supported natively in the game itself through innovative community and clan management tools.

Players with leadership drive can create their own permanent clans with just a few clicks using preset options. However, these leaders have much more customization options at their disposal. These include sending invitations to join the clan, creation of unique clan badges and logos, a dedicated clan page, clan member performance data at a glance, the ability to issue and accept clan challenges, the creation of clan or training games with detailed after action reports, and the ability to tailor a clan constitution to match their philosophy.

Just as players are required to accept an agreement to play fairly and ethically when entering the world of H-Hour, clan members are required to embrace the ethos of their clan. The same technology that measures your performance to help you as an individual helps clan leaders build and better run their clans. Authorized clan leaders have access to the behavior of their members in any match and the ability to give guidance, warn, or censure any clan member. This means that a clan leader doesn't have to watch everything every team member does in a match—the game will create an "after action" report for them.

H-Hour also gives players the tools they need to build a robust community populated by gamers that want to play, not gamers that want to spout grief and irritate. This attitude is reflected in a subset of voting tools available in any multiplayer game that allows players to report cheating or bad behavior.

Offering dedicated servers allows SOF Studios to not only offer you the most reliable gameplay but to maintain a vast database of player metrics that can be used to improve the existing gameplay experience. Just like the "big boys" of the industry, we'll be watching closely to identify issues as they arise. Unlike the big boys though, we can release fixes right away without long lead times.

Ladders have always provided players with an easy way to compare their progress and abilities against other players. In H-Hour ladders perform the same function but in addition to the common focci of most matches won, most headshots and achievements of that sort, the games ladders include more abstract and until now, difficult to track performance. For example, H-Hour offers ladders for "best team player," "good Samaritans" who protect innocent civilians or save teammates, and "best tactical player" for those who apply real world tactics, among others.

Within the game and lobbies, players have access to headset chat with multiple channels so that they can speak directly to their teams. Team leaders can also use the TEAMCOM™ visual interface to send predefined and user-defined text commands to their entire team or individuals—including the AI-controlled civilians that appear on many maps. If you're not comfortable talking out loud in an online game that's okay—you can just choose from a menu of simplified visual commands and your character will do the talking for you.

We believe that players should be able to fine tune their shooter experience as much as possible. This is expressed in the design from the ground up.

H-Hour is a hybrid third person and first person shooter. The third person perspective allows you to view your character and provides increased situational awareness—an intelligence edge in combat situations. The first person view presents you with only a reticle and adjusts the field of view so that you have the feeling of being "in the shit" and a naturally enhanced "zoomed in" perspective that provides a twitch play edge.

The ballistics model is as complete and authentic as any weapons simulation available in a game needs to be, taking into account all the pertinent variables such as stance, weight, character speed, and the particular characteristics of each weapon. Any more realism would just get in the way of fun.

"H-hour" is a military term used to denote the specific hour that first assault elements are scheduled to reach a designated target. The letter "H" stands for the hour operations actually begin. There is but one H-hour for all units participating in a given operation. Figure combinations are used to indicate the length of time preceding or following the beginning of a specific operation. For example, H-3 means 3 hours before H-hour and H+75 means 1 hour and 15 minutes after H-hour.

The earliest recorded use of the term H-Hour is by the U.S. Army during World War I. In Field Order Number 9, First Army, American Expeditionary Forces, dated September 7, 1918 it states: "The First Army will attack at H hour on D day with the object of forcing the evacuation of the St. Mihiel Salient." Additional public archives can be found at the Center of Military history.

During World War 2, "H-hour" was the name given to the joint airborne assault in the Battle of Normandy. This operation included the American 101st Airborne Division and 82nd Airborne Division (Operation Neptune) and the British 6th Airborne Division (Operation Overlord). Consisting of over 50,000 men and 1,200 planes and gliders, this assault took place in the cover of night roughly three hours prior to the famous beach landings on Normandy (H+3). Through speed, the combined assault of these American and British Airborne and glider divisions would surprise German defenders and create enough havoc to prime the beaches for the infamous dawn landings.