Heroes of the Storm - Blizzard MOBA

Finally, I can rest easy knowing Acti/Blizz has another failures.

Oh that's basically old news. The actual announcement was in July, but the game at least had updates of some substance (either skins or balance changes) around every month until March so the announcement was just saying what everyone was thinking.

I can't hardly fathom how Acti/Blizz could waste MOBA game using famous Blizz IP characters. If you told me 10 years ago game featuring both Arthes and Raynor will fail, I would have a good laugh but here we are.

I wonder how long games are supposed to last. Is the expectation that every game will keep getting updates forever, like WOW seems on track to? It would have been more likely for HOTS than most, I suppose, but it seems like they should have an expected lifetime for most games.

Nothing lasts forever, but I doubt Acti-Blizz meant for HOTS to die as soon as it did when they first came up with the idea.

It was a good run. Shame we never got Leeroy Jenkins vs Gamon.

Well, there is still HS Mercenaries. It has Diablo and Tyrael for some reason. And Murky.

MOBAs have shown that they can last indefinitely providing they keep the content stream going - League of Legends, Dota 2, and Smite are all testaments to that. HOTS could've easily held a similar success but as one of Blizzard's smaller games it got hit the hardest with all of Blizzard's company issues.

It's a shame the game never got to Blackthorne or Rock n' Roll Racing though. Giant missed opportunity there.

Edited by Watchtower on Sep 2nd 2022 at 8:24:20 AM

Hot S also suffered from Blizzard's obsession with pro gaming. Because it didn't get as popular as Lo L or Dot A, the game was doomed to be abandonned as it would never break into the eSport scene.

MOBAs aren't really my type of game, but I've really liked the assets for the game and I've been intrigued by the story-potential with the various AU-alternate versions of the established lore characters. Things like Thrall growing up with the Old Horde, or Gul'dan becoming a genuinely good shaman. Speaking of the assets, those are aesthetically closer to the feel of Warcraft III and WOW than the actual ones we got for WC 3: Reforged, so I hope they could be saved somehow for future use.

HotS Alexstrasza's design is objectively superior to WoW's, you can't change my mind

Though really that's not all that surprising when I say it out loud considering WoW's custom models are probably usually made by the skin of their teeth for their even-more-constantly-updating-and-far-larger game while creating a HotS hero probably has at least a bit nicer of a pipeline that'll just have the character content that's turning out more done first to get prioritized.

I think that there is potential to re-use the models for HOTS combined with the Warcraft-models made for the Starcraft II editor. I'm thinking of either making an improved Reforged or an entirely new Gaiden Game for WOW, or just release the damn things for the WCIII modding community to play with.

Interesting tweet by the Blizzard CEO (art of Blizzcon 2014)

Probably nothing but man, this game deserves a second chance

Edited by fasoman1996 on Jul 16th 2023 at 7:55:56 AM

I huff my copium every time I see about the Blizzard-MS merger in the news

Edited by VutherA on Jul 16th 2023 at 7:44:02 AM

GUYS WAKE UP! PTR updated

Not much but why a patch this late in the game hmm? Don't give me hope...

I have never read the word "reveal" this much in one sitting before

Patch notes?

I was never in HOTS enough to know how a lot of things worked but these actually look significant for a shut-down game? Does that mean anything?

Game won't be complete till they add Leeroy Jenkins

I was told the changes were generally suggested by at least one community member, but all of those bugfixes probably really were a decent amount of effort to fix still since they don't all seem like a "turn off to on" thing to me.

One of the devs managed to sneak into the Hot S room and make changes unnoticed.