Heroes of the Storm was made seemingly to be Blizzard's attempt at competing with big MOBAs that were gaining a lot of traction in 2015 like DOTA and League of Legends. In 2022, while DOTA and League are having multi-million dollar tournaments regularly, HOTS announced it was effectively entering maintenance mode. The game obviously couldn't compete, but in all honesty, I almost feel like it was never meant to.
Heroes of the Storm is a much more casual take on the formula with shared XP between your team, no gold or last hitting, no item shop, and a talent system in place of leveling individual spells. The simplistic nature of the game is probably more of a deterrent for most players who go after a MOBA style game, as the complexity and skill ceiling leaves more room for expression and improvement. Now, I dont think HOTS is an easy game, there still are a lot of heroes and mechanics to learn, but overall its more reasonable to learn this game while playing only a few occasional games than a game like DOTA. That, along with the games being much quicker, make the game a lot different and more arcade-style with a focus on the moment to moment gameplay instead of mechanics like laning or mastering farming patterns. This is accentuated by the variety of maps which all have different key objectives that both teams play around to gain an upper hand.
On top of being a more straight forward game, its also a good crossover. Genre defining franchises in Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo as well as characters from Overwatch and original characters created for HOTS come together in locations like Hanamura Temple and Alterac Valley. The heroes also talk to each other with unique quips and exchanges so it doesn't feel like any characters inclusion is forced. It feels like a pretty genuine game world with a lot of cool characters. And the last thing I admire about this game is viable to enjoy this game in a PvE setting with a dedicated playerbase of people who enjoy playing cooperatively versus the AI opponents. It's nice to see a MOBA with actually pretty solid bots that are worth playing against, and get in-game rewards for doing so. It is underappreciated by a lot of people understandably, but its nice to not be overlooked as someone who enjoys this type of relaxing gaming environment.
I just wanted to write this review to lament the end of new content for this game. With all the recent disasters concerning Activision Blizzard its hard to be a fan of the universes they created over the years, but even against my better judgement I still hold some of them in somewhat high regard, and I find that I can continue to appreciate HOTS for what it did for creating a game in a hostile genre that is easier to enjoy and experience.
Heroes of the Storm is a much more casual take on the formula with shared XP between your team, no gold or last hitting, no item shop, and a talent system in place of leveling individual spells. The simplistic nature of the game is probably more of a deterrent for most players who go after a MOBA style game, as the complexity and skill ceiling leaves more room for expression and improvement. Now, I dont think HOTS is an easy game, there still are a lot of heroes and mechanics to learn, but overall its more reasonable to learn this game while playing only a few occasional games than a game like DOTA. That, along with the games being much quicker, make the game a lot different and more arcade-style with a focus on the moment to moment gameplay instead of mechanics like laning or mastering farming patterns. This is accentuated by the variety of maps which all have different key objectives that both teams play around to gain an upper hand.
On top of being a more straight forward game, its also a good crossover. Genre defining franchises in Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo as well as characters from Overwatch and original characters created for HOTS come together in locations like Hanamura Temple and Alterac Valley. The heroes also talk to each other with unique quips and exchanges so it doesn't feel like any characters inclusion is forced. It feels like a pretty genuine game world with a lot of cool characters. And the last thing I admire about this game is viable to enjoy this game in a PvE setting with a dedicated playerbase of people who enjoy playing cooperatively versus the AI opponents. It's nice to see a MOBA with actually pretty solid bots that are worth playing against, and get in-game rewards for doing so. It is underappreciated by a lot of people understandably, but its nice to not be overlooked as someone who enjoys this type of relaxing gaming environment.
I just wanted to write this review to lament the end of new content for this game. With all the recent disasters concerning Activision Blizzard its hard to be a fan of the universes they created over the years, but even against my better judgement I still hold some of them in somewhat high regard, and I find that I can continue to appreciate HOTS for what it did for creating a game in a hostile genre that is easier to enjoy and experience.