Heroes Of The Storm Preview

Blizzard is an odd company. A company that has, over the last twenty years, made and maintained three separate IPs to the point of their global dominance in their respective genres. So many companies have attempted to recreate their success, yet most can only ever manage to be great at one genre at a time. Diablo 2 is still considered the greatest dungeon crawler of all time and Diablo 3 is, with the latest expansion, starting to get into a state that resembles a sequel to such a title. Starcraft is arguably the only RTS left from the age of great RTSs like Command & Conquer and Age of Empires. And, well, everyone knows about Warcraft. World of Warcraft is still the most popular MMO and has been throughout an era of AAA MMOs, seeing off contenders from every IP going, including two separate Star Wars attempts.

Not content with being the supreme power in three genres, Blizzard have taken it upon themselves to reinvent the MOBA/DOTA clone genre. Now they may have more of a claim to this than any other developer, what with the original mods that spawned the whole scene coming from Warcraft and Starcraft custom games. But all that aside, can Blizz do enough differently to, firstly, stand out and secondly, get people wanting to shift from DOTA 2 or League of Legends.

What has to be said is that this is a technical alpha at this moment, so things are set to change, most probably in a huge way before any public beta or full release. With that said, this is one of the most polished alpha versions of a game I have ever played. Regardless of the awesome stylised cartoon look present in all their games, it also seems to have very little in the way of in-game bugs which may very well be due to its extremely long development time. Having been around in one form or another since 2010 Heroes of the Storm is standard Blizzard; give the public a taste and say nothing for four years. This time, it appears to have paid off.

The first huge departure from most of its genre brethren is a tutorial. And not a slow, awfully patronising tutorial but one that is welcoming and full of the familiar humour always brewing under the surface of the trinity of games the game takes its characters from. Yes this is the whole Blizzard universe pulled into one game to battle it out over who’s the most powerful. Also, remember Items? Good, now forget them. There aren’t any. Items have gone the way of the dodo, been thrown out with the bathwater and all those other good analogies. You get the picture.

This immediately gets rid of that huge barrier to entry most other games of this type have: builds. Not having to remember what items your specific character needs depending on the situation at hand, is one huge weight off the shoulders. Also, there is no last-hitting of minions to gain gold or XP but this is tied into a larger overall mechanic within the game: Shared XP. No longer can you shout at someone for doing so poorly when they are six levels behind the rest of the team as everyone shares XP and levels up at the same time.

While seeming like an odd change to the formula this is what Blizz hope will cause the game to play so differently and stand out from the pack. Because of this mechanic, games are over much faster than your standard LoL or DOTA games, racking in at about the 20/25 minute mark. This is a nice change of pace (literally) as it helps make that ‘just one more’ feeling, so prevalent with the genre, even more of a pull.

Heroes still gain abilities when they level up and they’re based more around passive benefits but you only gain these every few levels, spreading out more as you level higher. But you’ll be lucky to see level 25, the max leve thoughl. With all this new thinking another idea was added which is yet another genre breaking one. Every level has quests associated with it allowing your team to gain the upper hand in some way such as collecting coins for a pirate king to gain his favour and bombard your enemies with his cannons, or collecting tributes for the Raven Lord who will curse your enemies giving their buildings and minions half health for 90 seconds.

All of this comes together to create a hybrid that is simultaneously fabulous fun, continuously rewarding and yet still tactical. None of the team-based elements taken out with all the innovation though; in fact I would say team play is more important here than anywhere. Without the ability for one individual to snowball, every teamfight is a potential game changer and not your typical dreaded stomp waiting around the corner.

Blizzard are trialing quite a few things here, but so far it all seems to work quite nicely. I have only the highest hopes for this game and all its game changing ideas. Will the rest of the MOBA community? Let’s wait and see.