Heroes of The Storm is essentially “Blizzard the game.” It borrows characters and takes inspiration from Overwatch, Diablo, StarCraft and more. But it’s been two years and Heroes still hasn’t given rise to the same following as the company’s most popular games. Why? The community could name a bunch of reasons at launch, but those who have played know just how much the meta has changed. So much so that Blizzard is giving it a new name: Heroes of the Storm 2.0.
“We’re not like a normal box product game that we have at Blizzard where we save everything up and release it as one big expansion. It’s more like we’re continually bringing all kinds of cool stuff and we wanted this name to really reflect everything we’ve done,” Game Director Alan Dabiri said of the 2.0 update.
Hoping to eliminate even more of those reasons and make the running phrase “HotS is a MOBA for people who don't like MOBAs” obsolete with the 2.0 update coming in late April, Blizzard has redesigned the progression system, making it more frequent, meaningful and rewarding. Heroes will soon have loot boxes, sprays, banners, announcers, voice lines, hundreds of hero emojis and even more new features.
Dabiri expanded on the idea of Heroes compared to other Blizzard games and the MOBA genre in general. Talking with players at the Heroes media Summit in Laguna Beach, it’s clear they either love Heroes because certain elements are different and unique, or say it never caught their interest for that very same reason.
“We are doing things that you cannot find in any of those other games. Because of the game designs we’ve crafted, we actually have some of these insane heroes that in the traditional MOBA sense, you just can’t have,” Dabiri said.
“We’ve also kind of really changed the world of games in the genre with our battlegrounds. Between all of the unique aspects that we’re bringing in, I think that’s what’s really attractive for other players in the genre.”
For players who have already tried all other Blizzard games, Heroes is the least popular. Why should they come play? I asked Dabiri this question during the Q&A.
“See whether you like it and then go from there, but we think that with this monument of Heroes 2.0, we can also reach out to those players and say, ‘Look, maybe you didn't have a chance to look at it initially or maybe you did, but this is actually another opportunity to come and check it out because so much has changed. We’re adding a ton of new things. This is literally the best time to play Heroes.’”
Heroes, like most MOBAs, is free to play. You can literally just come in and check out the game with no commitment. One of the biggest changes Blizzard has made to improve gameplay is the the rank and progression system.
“We hit the rank system. We launched with a certain rank system, thought that we wanted to more of a progression based thing. We completely reworked it into a different system that was a little more specific on where you are in that ranking and it just felt better for people who are more at that competitive level,” Dabiri continued.
READ: ‘Heroes Of The Storm 2.0’ Adds Cassia, Emojis, Loot Chests And Updates Progression System
“We’ve got this progression system, it’s working, I really like the fact that there’s hero based progression, personally I like to kind of play certain heroes and level them up, I thought that was cool. But then there were certain aspects where its like, form a reward perspective, are we really giving out the best rewards? The caps, the curve itself was in the later levels awful… very difficult. These improvements, it just another iteration of the game.”
Even with Heroes 2.0 launching soon, Dabiri assured me this is not the end (as recent rumors suggest), but the next chapter.
“This is a new era for Heroes. While we are coming out with a bunch of stuff for release, we’ve got plans.”
Heroes of the Storm 2.0 is expected to release April 25.
