A sad record in Heroes of the Storm. For 300 days, hardly anything has happened – without new heroes, the MOBA is trapped in a content drought.
Indirectly, Blizzard is the creator of the MOBA genre, after all, “Defense of the Ancients” was a modified map from Warcraft III. However, Blizzard never truly benefited from having indirectly co-created this mode. Their own attempt at a MOBA, Heroes of the Storm, came to market too late, failing to reach a large player base.
The success did not materialize, and immediately after BlizzCon 2018, it was said: The development team shrinks, with only a few employees still caring for HotS. While there are still enough resources to develop something in every area – it is drastically less than before. There would no longer be a reliable stream of content.
That was almost 3 years ago.
300 days without a new hero – Is the oven now out?
The last hero in Heroes of the Storm was the gnoll Hogger from the Warcraft universe. Players have known him since the vanilla days, as he was the first elite quest for many Alliance heroes. The gnoll had claimed countless lives and was thus a perfect candidate for the Nexus, where he has been raging for over 9 months.
However, the date of Hogger’s release also marks a sad negative record.
Exactly 300 days have passed today (09/27/2021) since the release of Hogger. It has been that long since there have been any major new contents in Heroes of the Storm, not to mention a new hero.
What else is happening in HotS? The game is not completely “dead”, as there are minor balance patches every few weeks. Sometimes talents are even generously changed, keeping at least some aspects of the game fresh and continually improving the balance between the heroes.
Occasionally, new ideas also come to light. A while ago, Blizzard began to introduce so-called “Gambit” talents. These are talents that provide an extremely strong bonus, but diminish with every death. Good, cautious play is rewarded here. Those who frequently die forfeit a large part of the talent.
Now and then, a few fresh skins also enter the game, although the amount here has drastically decreased, just like the release of new heroes.
You can simply tell with Heroes of the Storm: The development team is too small to deliver what the game actually needs. More of everything.
The gap between releases is growing: Basically, what the players feared when Blizzard announced to drastically reduce the Heroes of the Storm team has come true. The times between the releases of new heroes have become longer and longer. This becomes clear when you simply list the releases of the last heroes and the time intervals between them:
- Anduin – Qhira: 98 days
- Qhira – Deathwing: 119 days
- Deathwing – Mei: 203 days
- Mei – Hogger: 161 days
Hogger thus arrived comparatively “early” and gave hope to the remaining players that one could still expect 2 heroes per year.
Now, exactly 300 days later, the disillusionment is great. The more time passes, the greater the dissatisfaction among players that hardly anything is changing and that HotS would ultimately die. In the worst case, it even looks like HotS would not receive any heroes at all in 2021.
Will there be any more heroes? Many are also asking whether Heroes of the Storm will bring new heroes in the future. There is no official statement on this, but the community has already found some clues.
If the rumors are true, then “Belial, Lord of Lies” could come to the Nexus – he is a demon from the Diablo universe and one of the lesser evils.
However, this is not confirmed yet.
What are your current thoughts on Heroes of the Storm? Do you still check in on Blizzard’s MOBA regularly? Or have you turned your back on the game a long time ago?
However, some also enjoy the fact that not much changes – Cortyn from MeinMMO loves the game, also because it is stagnant.
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