Hey,
I'm writing this post because it's really hard to get up-to-date english information on whats going on with WoG because the majority of the community seems to be russian/chinese/polish. So here are my questions, as far as I know this is the official WoG forum, so I guess this is the best place to ask them:

1. What's going on with WoG 3.59? Any progress, expected release dates, feature lists, anything? As far as I know you finally managed to add new towns to HoMM and already have one town (Bastion) pretty much done. Is there anything else I should know?
2. What about HotA? As far as I understand, it's another yet-to-be-released mod for HoMM3. Is there a HotA<->WoG compatibility planned so we can enjoy the features of both mods? Why don't you guys work together instead of working in two seperate groups that don't seem to share much of their progress?
3. What about VCMI? As you probably know, it's an not-yet-finished open source reimplementation of the HoMM 3 engine. Are there any plans to use it? It should be a lot easier than binary editing HoMM's .exe...
4. Finally, could somebody explain me what Phoenix Mod and Era platform do and if they're available in English?
   

I hope you can help me with my questions...
Thanks in advance, mots

Hey! and welcome to these forums

1.WoG 3.59 is a mod of the CoreWog team. There isn't any expected release date [like always], but we fans hope soon. There is a video on youtube that shows that they added a new town [yes. you're right, Bastion].Probably u don't know that other towns are planned of other wog 3.59 later releases like: Haven [water town], Kremlin [Slavic mythology town] and other features, new commanders and level 8s etc.
Bastion Town
2.HotA is another mod for Homm3. Initially HotA team was part of WoG team. They decided to leave because HotA had other ideas.Sadly, after that there was an argue between WoG team and HotA team and they don't even wanna hear about mods' compatibility. Probably some fans will try to make them work together after both are released.HotA will have in the first version the Cove castle [can be found on youtube]. Alex-ander [a very important member of the team] and Docent Picolan left HotA team due to inside team argues. HotA has left with Cove [like i said before] and Alex-ander said that he will continue with Kronwek [dwarf town] and Cathedral [Gothic humans...or something like that].
Cove town video
3. VCMI last released version is 0.8. the version 1.0 will be exactly the same as original Homm3. after that they will start implementing WoG and other features like: addding new towns, creatures etc.
4. As far as i know, a member [here known as Valery, on heroescommunity.com known as Salamandre] has in mind to translate the Phoenix Mod.

So which features does the Phoenix mod add? And what still needs to be done before WoG 3.59 can be released? Also, I think you misunderstood my VCMI Question... I wanted to know if the CoreWoG team has any plans to use the VCMI Engine as the official WoG Engine, as it should be way easier than hacking around with a binary...

No plans for VCMI.
Phoenix has a huge amount of features to be listed here. Try Google Translate on this: http://wforum.heroes35.net/showthread.php?tid=970

when the tools for implementing new towns and creatures and other features will be ready, everybody will use VCMI, ofcourse!

Another question: What is still missing for a 3.59 release? Or is it basically done and its just politics by now?

Anyone?

what do you mean "missing"?

Let me rephrase that: What does still need to be done before 3.59 can be released?

afaik, at least one new town.

Wow, sounds like a lot of work :/ So I guess the wait still goes on with no end in sight?

yep, end of waiting will be known when 3.59 will be done.