Hero's of the Storm. Blizzard meets MOBA

[Insanity72]

I did a quick search and didn't pull up anything on this yet, so I thought I'd post it.

To anyone who is interested in any of the following games. LoL, HoN, DoTA, Warcraft/World of Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo.

There is a game Blizzard is currently working on called "Heroes of the storm". It's a MOBA game with what seems to be small base building mechanics and the character selection is all of the hero's from the Blizzards games. From Diablo to James Raynor, from Illidan Stormrage to Archangel Tyrael, and all in between.

Cinematic Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ecv0bT9DEo

Gameplay Sneak Peak Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_fAkO3WOSY

 

[Lucyfer86]

I've never liked MOBA games, but somehow i have little bit interest in this game.
Maybe because it's Blizzard we're talking about, good at making easily accessed games.

 

[default]

Oh hey, this is a thing? Could be very cool, and there is a huge variety of diverse characters they can easily turn into MOBA heroes. Not a fan of the plastic looking graphic style personally. I'm getting awfully tired of it. But I guess when they need to blend this many franchises it makes sense to overall go for a safe and basic palette.

They're going to need to do something very unique here to even begin to contend with the League and DOTA 2 behemoths. They ARE Blizzard though, so if anyone can pull it off it's them (and they were the ones who built the tools that started all this to begin with).

Personally with this whole new craze going on I'll be hoping for some unique spins on the formula. Third person hack-and-slash based MOBA anyone?

 

[black_knight1337]

I'm really liking the way it's shaping up. For those that don't know it's not just your typical MOBA like DOTA 2 or LoL. With HotS, Blizzard are combining the typical MOBA gameplay with objective based gameplay. Every map is going to have it's own special objective which each team will have to fight over. To properly illustrate what I'm saying, here's a video of the developer matches that they had at Blizzcon.


The first map, Blackheart's bay has each team fighting to collect gold to take back to Blackheart so that you can designate areas for his ship to bombard. The second map, Haunted Mines has an area which teams fight to collect skulls. Once all 100 have been collected, a golem gets spawned for each time equal in power to the amount of skulls that each team collected. Pretty interesting stuff, certainly going to give it a go.

 

[DoPo]

I've never liked MOBA games, but somehow i have little bit interest in this game.
Maybe because it's Blizzard we're talking about, good at making easily accessed games.

Then you're in luck - from what I know it's supposed to be more casual-like. Also, I don't mean that in a negative sense. Its relationship to DotA and the like would be similar to the relationship between Hearthstone and Magic: the Gathering - oriented towards a more accessible and quicker pick-up-and-play style (matches are shorter, too). So it's a MOBA but it's not actually stepping on the toes of other MOBAs as it targets the more casual audience and not the "hardcore" players. Also, the gameplay is more team-objective oriented - you are not required to kill creeps or anything - the gold and XP are globally shared, so it's actually more beneficial for the team to work together to do objectives. And yes - there are objectives - you can do stuff in order to give your team advantage and win - it's not a matter of "just kill everybody repeatedly and call them names" as that won't really help as much.

Here is a video of Purge talking about it

 

[Smertnik]

They're going to need to do something very unique here to even begin to contend with the League and DOTA 2 behemoths.

The thing is, they aren't actually contending. HotStorm is a very different game and is aiming for a far more casual audience. It's like saying TF2 has to compete with Counter Strike.
I'm sure it'll be successful enough. There're more than enough people who like Dota-likes but hate the downtime or want to get into the genre but don't want to deal with the high information ceiling. The casual nature also allows people who are already invested in a Dota-like to play it in-between. And a lot of people will probably play the game just because it's free and you can be Diablo. My only concern is the possible lack of longevity and variety.