Preview - Heroes of the Storm (PC)

I recently had the chance to participate in Blizzard Entertainment’s ‘Heroes of the Storm’ Technical Alpha. I’m not a huge MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) player, I like to dabble in one every now and then but never play regularly enough to excel past standard knowledge. Although I would like to become more skilled at titles such a ‘League of Legends’, the entry barrier is so high & the time requirement is often too much for those with other commitments. Never the less, here’s my first impression of ‘Heroes of the Storm’.

‘Heroes of the Storm’ is Blizzard Entertainments take on the successful MOBA genre; it sticks close to the key pillars of gameplay but offers enough twists to the formula to make it unique.

Players choose from a pool of familiar faces from various Blizzard games to represent them on the battlefield. Heroes fall under one of four specific classes:

• Assassin
• Warrior
• Support
• Specialist

Each character has five abilities that are locked to ‘QWER’ on the keyboard. The majority of which can be activated while some are passive skills that are specific to that particular character. For example Raynor: The Renegade Commander is a ranged assassin, who has three activate & two passive abilities. Every hero has a mixture of both active & passive abilities that are unique their skillset. The specialist class however, is quite different in comparison to the other classes. They contribute to the match in a much more subtle way. I won’t go too far in-depth but think of them as having the ability to control certain aspects of gameplay in an indirect way.

As mentioned previously, all of the standard MOBA elements are present in ‘Heroes of the Storm’. From what I’ve played, gameplay focuses on frantic team battle situations rather than buying items, levelling up & slowly pushing the lanes towards the enemy’s base. Don’t get me wrong, destroying the enemy’s base is still the aim-of-the-game but from the matches I was involved in, I’ve seen players grouping together and engaging in all out team combat scenarios from the get go which allows for some extremely hectic on-screen visuals. This moment-to-moment gameplay is a direct result of the exclusion of items. Other MOBAs like as ‘League of Legends’ & ‘DotA2’ have in-game stores where players can buy & sell items with gold. In place of this feature is the ability to choose from a handful of ‘talents’ at different level intervals. Think of the talent system as a skill tree for your hero with each level barrier having the choice of five options that alter abilities and stats.

On top of these features, Blizzard has incorporated two very different elements to the genre. One of which is the ability for every hero to use a mount. Players begin matches with a mount; it’s used to traverse the map much faster than on foot. Skins for those mounts vary from a standard horse to a dire wolf and even a rainbow unicorn.  All skins are purely cosmetic and can be obtained through a quick microtransaction. Players begin matches with a mount, it’s used to traverse the map much faster than on foot. The second feature, in my opinion, simplifies the game and lowers the entry barrier almost to the point of a ‘casual’ experience. Instead of each individual player levelling up his or her character, the whole team levels as one. This allows teams to engage in more enjoyable scenarios where everyone is able to be of some help in one way or another without the risk of being killed instantly by a higher-level hero. This is a fantastic way to bring in new players who may not be as skilled as others but I feel that a more skilled mode may be necessary to maintain a more hardcore following. Possibly a mode where team levelling is disabled and players level up their hero by themselves, much like ‘League of Legends’.

Maps are fantastic… that being said… there’s only five. Matches are played out on one of a five of maps that have multiple objectives on top of the standard ‘destroy the enemy base’. One map sees players fighting for control over two shrines in order to gain access to the statue in the middle. Once activated by the team who control both shrines it unleashes the mighty dragon knight that one player then controls. Another sees players killing minions in an underground section part of the map to collect one hundred skulls. Once all of the skulls have been collected two cave trolls will appears on the map (one for each team) and how many skulls each team collected indicates the strength of that teams troll. The maps are well thought out and add plenty of variety to keep you on your toes during a match.

That leads me to my one issue with ‘Heroes of the Storm’; there just isn’t enough depth at the moment to keep the hardcore fans invested. At this stage, the game has a much lower entry barrier than other MOBAs, which may be enough to establish a fan-base but certainly not enough to maintain one. There’s nothing addicting about the gameplay, no in-game shop and small hero roster. That’s not to say that I don’t like ‘Heroes of the Storm’ because I do, there’s just nothing to keep me coming back. Other MOBA’s like ‘League of Legends’, ‘DotA2’ and even ‘Infinite Crisis’ are appealing in their own way but they also hold onto those core MOBA values. Developers drip-feed the community new characters, tweek the stats of characters & items and generally patch the game on a regular basis and this consistent re-evaluation just isn’t there for ‘Heroes of the Storm’ yet.

At the end of the day, ‘Heroes of the Storm’ presents a fresh take on the popular MOBA genre. It’s too early to make an overall judgement especially since it’s in its technical alpha stage. With Blizzard accepting sign-ups for the Beta stage and wiping the player accounts hopefully for the last time, I know I’ll be coming back from time to time to check out any new features or updates that pop up. Like a smooth bourbon, a MOBA should be sipped & tasted… not pumped down the back of your throat in a matter of seconds.

Remember, if you liked my preview and you want to see more, follow me on Twitter @DylanPerrett or subscribe to my YouTube channel, 'The Quiet Gamer' for some fun and sometimes inappropriate Let’s Play videos.