Player Preview - Heroes of the Storm

Title: Heroes of the Storm
Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Status: Open Beta
Release Date: June 2nd, 2015

Official Site: http://blizz.ly/1Kw95Gk

Hey what’s up, Serpentine here taking a look at the free to play MOBA, Heroes of the Storm, developed by Blizzard Interactive. Blizzard has collected all its existing IP’s and put them all together in a faster, objective based take on the MOBA genre.

The core of the gameplay still remains true to the MOBA genre with lanes that you can push down alongside creeps that continuously spawn. You still have an average of 4 abilities to work with and the character roles are split into fairly common groups like Assassin, Warrior, Support and Specialist. The first team to destroy the enemies home base wins, the usual. But Heroes has made some small changes here and there that have made quite a significant difference, shaking up the formula to give us a more action packed game that lasts around 15 – 20 minutes rather than 30 minute to an hour. The biggest difference from other mobas is the addition of objective based maps, you’re not restricted to the one map, instead there are currently seven different maps with 7 different objectives tied to them. In a couple of the maps you don’t even have to touch the enemies’ base to be able to destroy it and win, purely by playing the objective.

The gamemodes in Heroes can pretty much be split into 2 groups. There are the collection game modes where you have to collect tokens, skulls, seeds or what have you and turn them in to gain a boss creature that in some cases you can take direct control over or have a pirates cannons rain down on your enemies base. This game mode equates for 4 of the 7 maps, the other 3 maps however are based around capturing points to gain a similar kind of reward. The power or bonus that you receive from completing a main objective is extremely important and turns the focus away from winning a lane or getting as many kills as you can to a more team fight focused strategy that has players leaving lanes as soon as an objective becomes available. All of the maps include monster camps situated in what could be considered the jungle. Once defeated you can capture the camp and have the monsters march on with your offensive in a lane. These monsters deal significantly more damage and have a bunch more health, when protected from enemy attacks they can deal a bunch of damage to your enemies structures, especially if you defeat and capture the boss monster of the map.

On the ability side of things you’re given all of your abilities except your ultimate straight of the bat. When you do level up you don’t decide what ability to gain or upgrade to the next level instead you are given numerous options to choose from via the trait system that can be a passive upgrade, for example life steal on attacks, or it can add effects to your existing abilities, for example adding a stun to an ability. Or it can be an addition of an activatable, for example an activatable shield. This gives some room to move and adapt to what would best suit your team and counter the enemy team. When it comes time to pick your ultimate ability you will have 2 choices that are usually vastly different in their functions. One can be an AOE damage dealer while the other can be a skillshot stun and allows you to specialise in the ability that will suit your team composition better.

Some of the more common mechanics that you would expect from a game in the MOBA genre have been tweaked and some just completely removed. Last hitting minions has been taken out and instead you just need to be near a minion when it dies to gain experience however this experience will be shared by your whole team and your team will level up as one unit as oppose to individual levels, so it’s a pretty good idea to have someone in each lane at all times. Purchasable items have been removed so you no longer have to worry about what item to buy next time you visit the store or have to worry about the items your enemy has purchased instead this decision making falls to the Trait system that only gives you 4-6 options each level milestone. Enemy fortifications have also been tweaked significantly with 2 ballistic towers and a gate that will need to be taken down to proceed onto a larger base like structure that has more health, ammo, range and a slow effect on its attacks. To help keep you in the fight there is also a fountain next to the base structure that provides healing and mana regeneration every minute or so making so you don’t have to recall back to your teams spawn every time you get low on health or mana.

Progression outside of the game has you leveling both your account level which rewards you with gold and boosters as well as access to the ranked mode and Team ranked mode. Then there is also hero levels for each individual hero that before you reach level 25 on your account will unlock more trait options for that hero. Later on you will also start unlocking re colours for your hero and your mount, a special Master Skin will also be unlocked for each hero at level 10 respectively.

Other features of the game include 6 alternate match making ques with ranked, ranked team, Quick match, Versus AI, Practice and Custom Matches. Being based off the Star Craft engine there is also a replay system that can save every match you play to watch later on and even import other player’s replays by just placing them in the replay folder. With the current quick play que not having a draft pick, getting a balanced pool of heroes for your team can be hard but there is an option to somewhat fix this in the Looking for Party option that will show you to all players currently online and hopefully get you into a 5 man party and be able to build a better team composition. Lastly, being a free to play game there is a shop where you can purchase heroes from $5 to $13. Skins are also available and offer information about what has been changed with the skin for example if it has new voice overs, new effects or new animations. These skins also come with 3 colour variations to play around with and range from $6.50 to the $19.50 legendary skins. Along with hero skins you can also purchase new mount skins that range from $13 to $26. Every skin for heroes and mounts also come with 3 alternate re-colours for you to choose from before going into battle. Bundles of heroes, skins and mounts are made available however there is no complete bundle that you can purchase that will unlock every character in the game which is a little unfortunate, the closest you can get is a bundle that unlocks 8 of the 37 heroes plus 4 hero skins and 2 mount skins for $52.

Altogether, Heroes of the Storm is a MOBA designed to be more action packed with very few dull moments, at least if you’re on the winning side. The overwhelment that can come from shop items and the focus needed to get every last hit on minions being removed makes Heroes a much easier game to get into and start playing. Traits can still be a little overwhelming to begin with especially due to the speed of the game and team fights happening every couple of minute, but 4 to 6 options is a lot easier to deal with then hundreds of items all at once. If you want to get into a MOBA but don’t want to dedicate too much time into learning item meta, find last hitting tedious or just don’t like 10 minute lanning phases then Heroes of the Storm may just be what you’re looking for especially if you are a fan of Blizzards numerous universes. I will say that anyone trying out the game, understand that Heroes is an objective based game and while kills are important, they aren’t as important as they are in other MOBAs.

Anyway, that’s been my player preview for Heroes of the Storm, the game is currently in Open Beta and will be officially releasing on the 2nd of June via Battle.net. If you want to find out more about the game check out the links below. Thanks for watching, I’ll see you guys next time.