It’s finally here: the newest giant game from Blizzard Entertainment and the one that’s about to take the MOBA community by force. Heroes of the Storm brings together all of your favorite Warcraft and Diablo heroes (among others) in this free-to-play brawler. It’s been years since we last saw some of these familiar faces in the granddaddy Defense of the Ancients custom map adaptation of Warcraft 3 – now with all the new characters, skins, mounts, vibrant color variations, maps and enough micro transactions to keep you hooked.
Heroes of the Storm takes cues from other successful MOBAs, bringing its own twist into the nexus. One thing Blizzard is able to accomplish is defusing the necessary evil of a carry hero in all other MOBAs. No longer will one person be able to dominate the map leaving your entire team helpless. Instead, HotS assigns team levels and team share experience, which is gained through hero kills or creep kills. The importance of team unity cannot be stressed enough, while capturing map objectives aids you in destroying your opponent’s base and keeping you in a constant brawl with the opposing faction.
People will be constantly comparing HotS to League of Legends or Dota 2, and while there are a lot of similarities, these games really are completely different. To unlock your character’s ultimate ability, you’ll have to rank up the character on your own Battle.net account – all the while earning their different color variations and player portraits. Heroes don’t buy items or earn currency in the game for any reason. You’ll be focused on building your heroes’ talent trees and selecting new abilities at levels 1, 4, 7, 10 (Ultimate Ability), 13, 16 and 20. This will allow you and your team to design your heroes around each other for the best possibly synergy.
Whether you’re a veteran or rookie, this game is fairly easy to pick up; along with the shorter game times than most MOBAs, it will have you coming back round after round — it certainly did me. Blizzard implemented four different class types to help diversify the game for players. The Assassins are heroes known for their high damage output. November Terra, aka “Nova” the nefarious assassin that will leave you screaming obscenities and throwing your keyboard out your window in a raging fury, is capable of always being stealth with a sort of “permacloak” and takes opponents’ heads off in the matter of two shots with the “ambush snipe” ability. Up next is the Warrior class, which are basically tanks that would lead in each battle. Stitches is by far the fan favorite to play; who doesn’t like being a fat monster that hooks people and swallows them whole? The Support class is the backbone of your team. These characters will heal you and can make grim outcomes look like a double rainbow all of a sudden. Lastly, you’ve got the specialist class. These add an interesting mix to the entire game dependent strictly on their varied and individual abilities.
Hopefully there are a few things that they will patch in, like the ability to concede after 10 minutes when you realize your team is totally screwed. One other annoyance is not being able to access your Battle.net friends list while in game. No one wants to alt tab to the Battle.Net launcher.
The success of this game will rely on keeping it social, building a team of friends and communicating. Rolling solo and going yolo into the que system will leave you in total dismay and leave Illidan reciting his motto, “You are not prepared.” Heroes of the Storm will no doubt bring its own fan base of Blizzard loyalty, perhaps willing to overlook any issues that might be there in the long run. It’ll be interesting to see how many others the company can win over from existing MOBAs as well as bringing new players to the genre. Until then, the game is a success on all accounts, and another well-designed venture for Blizzard’s champions.
This review is based on a personal copy of the game owned by the reviewer. Dan is a prolific Blizzard gamer, focusing on the company’s PC and multiplayer games.
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