Four years, four long years, that’s all the time it has taken since Blizzard announced at Blizzcon in 2011 his promising free-to-play MOBA , Blizzard DOTA , also known (for legal issues) as Blizzard All-Stars to start calling, just in time for Blizzcon 2013 and already definitively, Heroes of the Storm .
Precisely, in that same Blizzcon were opened the inscriptions for the closed beta of the game, which would start shortly after and that would last almost
a year and a half with a multitude of changes both visually and at the playable level to become, just a few weeks ago, an open beta accessible to all users that has been working almost as if it were a definitive game (in a very similar way to
HearthStone in this sense) until Tuesday, June 2, at which time the final version of the title that we can enjoy on our computers was launched.
But, all this long time of tests, feedback collection by players, changes and their first steps at the competitive level of e-Sports … will have served so that Heroes of the Storm can sneak between two Giants like League of Legends or DOTA 2?
From very early, Blizzard wanted to make clear one thing, and that is that his MOBA was not going to try to replace LOL or DOTA , but was going
to try to complement it, with a closer approach to the casual user, but without abandoning the “core” of the players of the genre who can see how the title can become a real alternative.
But let’s go in parts, first, for the newcomers in this type of games, we will explain in a few sentences the basic mechanics of a MOBA, a game in which two teams of 5 players that control different characters with about specific roles such as support, tank or DPS / killer and different skills that must eliminate a gigantic building, stone, statue or construction in the center of the rival base.
For this they must, together with the help of creatures controlled by the AI, usually called minions, destroy all the buildings, watchtowers and enemies that are on their way in the three different streets where the maps are usually divided,
As we said few lines ago, one of the pillars that Blizzard seeks with Heroes of the Storm is to reach a more casual audience and, for this, has decided to opt, in our opinion,
for two fundamental points at playable level, the duration of the games and the complete elimination of the objects to equip the heroes with whom they count other titles of the sort and that usually take to confusion to the player.
If we focus on the time of the games, in our journey through the Nexus we have found some extremely short, lasting about 12 minutes and with longer ones, which in no case have gone much beyond the 25 minutes of duration, with an average that we can establish from 18 to 22 minutes .
This allows a fairly wide range of players to venture into the game to play a short and fun game, ideal to fight downtime and how well it has worked in HearthStone, the famous card game.
The other of the main points that we indicated was that of the total and absolute elimination of all the objects that can go so far as to complicate
the life of all those who are not experts in the MOBA, but who in turn like them so much. more demanding users. To compensate, Blizzard has opted for talents for the heroes whose mechanics we explain next.
