Watch Blizzard Devs Play Two Full Rounds of Heroes of the Storm

Steven Bogos

The Taco Man
Jan 17, 2013
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Watch Blizzard Devs Play Two Full Rounds of Heroes of the Storm

Two matches between Blizzard developers show off the new MOBA's map diversity.

What better way to showcase a new game than to have a bunch of developers sit down and play through two full rounds of said game? Well, that's exactly what Blizzard have done with its upcoming MOBA/ARTS/DoTA Clone: Heroes of the Storm. In the 60 minute video to the right, two teams of Blizzard developers play two rounds of the game, first on the "Blackheart's Bay" map, and then on the "Haunted Mines" map.

In Blackheart's Bay, as well as the main objective of destroying the enemy base, players have a secondary objective to gather coins from various places in the map. If any team gets enough coins, they can take them to the ghost pirate: Blackheart, who will summon his ghost ship to rain fire down on the enemy team.

In the Haunted Mines map, a little bit into the game, a couple of mine entrances will open up. Players can then go into the mines and try and collect materials to build themselves a "Grave Golem": a massive siege minion that will try and tear through the enemy's defenses. Blizzard says that this map in particular is the most far removed from the traditional MOBA formula, describing it like a "competitive dungeon".

Both teams chose a nice variety of heroes, which seemed to fall into the same archetypes we've seen in these kinds of games before (ranged carry, warrior, support). It's pretty interesting to see all of these characters from your favorite Blizzard universes interact with each other.

If you're looking to see exactly how Blizzard's challenge to League of Legends and DoTA 2 will play, it's definitely worth watching.

Source: Blizzard [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhf-OVtvML0]

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Jandau

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Dec 19, 2008
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Soooo... Blizzard's current projects are a MOBA that plays on the nostalgia for the old days of their franchises, a CCG that plays on nostalgia for the old days of WoW and a WoW expansion that plays on the nostalgia for the old days of the Warcraft franchise. I can't help but see a pattern here...

Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to Hearthstone and Heroes looks like a nice MOBA-lite that might remove some of the tedium of the genre and provide a fun experience for people who aren't as dedicated to such games as is usually required. It just kinda seems like even Blizz knows their games used to be better, but can't really muster the balls to do anything about it...
 

gibboss28

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Feb 2, 2008
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Desert Punk said:
gibboss28 said:
Heres hoping theres not gonna be any items...but yeah, looks pretty cool.
They have mentioned having lots of different skins for the various characters, like space marin armor for characters, demon forms for Tyrial ect.
Nah thats cool, I was more on about items such as in LoL, Dota 2, Smite and such. skins are cool by me.
 

mrhateful

True Gamer
Apr 8, 2010
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Jandau said:
Soooo... Blizzard's current projects are a MOBA that plays on the nostalgia for the old days of their franchises, a CCG that plays on nostalgia for the old days of WoW and a WoW expansion that plays on the nostalgia for the old days of the Warcraft franchise. I can't help but see a pattern here...

Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to Hearthstone and Heroes looks like a nice MOBA-lite that might remove some of the tedium of the genre and provide a fun experience for people who aren't as dedicated to such games as is usually required. It just kinda seems like even Blizz knows their games used to be better, but can't really muster the balls to do anything about it...
Yup I got the exact same feeling, like I am tired of this nostalgia circle jerk. BE ORIGINAL FOR ONCE PLX
 

Alfador_VII

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Nov 2, 2009
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mrhateful said:
Jandau said:
Soooo... Blizzard's current projects are a MOBA that plays on the nostalgia for the old days of their franchises, a CCG that plays on nostalgia for the old days of WoW and a WoW expansion that plays on the nostalgia for the old days of the Warcraft franchise. I can't help but see a pattern here...

Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to Hearthstone and Heroes looks like a nice MOBA-lite that might remove some of the tedium of the genre and provide a fun experience for people who aren't as dedicated to such games as is usually required. It just kinda seems like even Blizz knows their games used to be better, but can't really muster the balls to do anything about it...
Yup I got the exact same feeling, like I am tired of this nostalgia circle jerk. BE ORIGINAL FOR ONCE PLX
I know, back when I was a lad we didn't have all this nostalgia.

Also, you are forgetting the Diablo III and StarCraft II expansions which are less nostalgic.
 

Ferisar

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Oct 2, 2010
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gibboss28 said:
Desert Punk said:
gibboss28 said:
Heres hoping theres not gonna be any items...but yeah, looks pretty cool.
They have mentioned having lots of different skins for the various characters, like space marin armor for characters, demon forms for Tyrial ect.
Nah thats cool, I was more on about items such as in LoL, Dota 2, Smite and such. skins are cool by me.
I'm on your side of this boat. I honestly think items can and often will detract from real objectives and create a contention with (often) one winning side and one that has to play catch-up. The same happens here, but it doesn't snowball on top of itself quite as much.

Doesn't mean I'm going to stop what I currently play, but it should be a nice alternative.
 

Quazimofo

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Aug 30, 2010
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I like how this game is very focused on teamwork and strategy rather than item builds and strict placement of heroes. Unfortunately items did allow some significant variation on the same champions (e.g ad lulu vs support lulu) so I'm wondering if the HOTS champions will be similarly able to do various things based purely on abilities, or if the lack of items will keep champions fairly consistent in their playstyle.

Not that this is such a bad thing if there is a variety of champions to counteract this (as there seems to be), but it does reduce replayability of individual champions.

I also really like the game being focused around objectives rather than farming up champion kills to increase individual power. It's nice to break up the fairly regular playstyle that comes about with only a couple game modes which are also tied to specific maps. It's also nice to give some control of the minion horde to the players and give alternate ways to break through the objectives besides direct player buffs. Really changes up tactics I think.
 

saltyanon

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Sep 18, 2013
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Multiple maps with different modes? Looks like they finally took a hint from SC/W3/SC2 map makers.
 

Smertnik

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Apr 5, 2010
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I like the casual alterations like the exclusion of items and last hitting, team leveling and major focus on team fights. Makes the game far more accessible both to new players and people like me who are already playing an ARTS game and can't be arsed to learn another. Maybe I can even finally get some of my friends into the genre with this.
 

Elijin

Elite Muppet
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Feb 15, 2009
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So the Blizzard moba lacks items and uses a team level instead of individual player levels?

That just took a huge chunk of the things I hate about mobas (Some of them seem very much about buying the right items in the right order at the right time, and if you arent great falling behind the rest of the players exp wise is brutal)! this actually looks like an interesting spin on the format.