Heroes of the Storm

At this point I think that Heroes of the Storm deserves a place in my top 10 games of all time. I've played over 1100 Hero League games, and if you we estimate each game at 20 minutes, it means that I have clock about 400 hours into the game. And I'm still learning! Granted this was my first MOBA that I really gave a chance, so I had to learn all the basics of the genre and was pretty awful at first, eventually I got good and managed to compete very well. I'm still far away from the top ranks and still have much to improve.

I can't compare it to DOTA 2 and LoL as I haven't really played much of those games to fully judge, but I think the game does everything right. There is no endless laning phases and the action picks up pretty quickly as soon as one of the maps objective shows up. The more I read about those games however, the less I want to play them cause I like combined team experience, lack of items and "last-hit" from HotS. Can't imagine playing a MOBA differently than with those standards. The 4 classes of heroes (Warrior, Assassin, Support and Specialist) are well balanced and all serve their purpose in a team, it's always important to form a good team composition to cover what you need. There is a lot of depth into learning each hero (how to play them, how to counter them) and in what type of team composition they will fit it best and what hero to pick against a certain enemy composition. Actually the Hero selection part is just about as important as playing the actual game, as picking a bad composition might guarantee a lost unless the opposing team is really bad.

I guess that's perhaps one of the faults I can give to the game, is that the game only really start when you reach Hero League. Initially you needed to own 10 Heroes and lvl 30 experience to be able to join, but they've recently changed it to 14 Heroes but with the free heroes of the weeks being counted in there. It can take some time to "grind out" to reach the minimum number of heroes, but if you level up the free heroes of the week to lvl 5 it does give you a quick gold profit. Quick Match doesn't really do the game justice and it just pairs 10 players together with random heroes and none of the fun of drafting, I really can't play that mode anymore unless I need to practice a new hero that I just bought. Team League is the best mode of them all (pairing 5 friends together) as the communication aspect is at its best and creates some of the most amazing moments. It's also the most challenging one as the other team will also have the communication aspect at full synergy. I haven't managed to play many games in that mode cause it's pretty hard to have 5 online friends at the same time that are willing to jump in.

So why is this game so good? It's hard to say. There's the competitive element of always wanting to get better. Then there's the variance of the maps, as each one really plays differently and you must adapt your playstyle to it. There is the variance of the heroes which can be very different, and not just by classes. Even heroes in the same class can be so different, like Diablo and Johanna (both Warriors) play nothing alike, and specialists are pretty much all different. This just gives the game an infinite replay value, as each game is always as good as the last one and feels new. There's nothing quite that matches the satisfaction as winning a close team fight with better positioning and strategy, or slowly coming back from a losing position to winning the game with tiny experience victories here and there. Yes essentially the game always has the same goal of destroying the enemy's core, but there's just so many ways to get there and getting better at it is just really damn fun.

The "F2P" system might throw some traditional gamers off as you can't buy the whole game and have everything (then again in this modern world of DLC, not many games are like that). Each hero must be bought with gold or real money, and the top of the mountain can be hard to see when you are just starting. I haven't spent any money on the game and I own about half the heroes, just getting the gold from level achievements or daily quests but I did spent a huge amount of time on the game, but I can never say that I didn't have fun doing it. Even if you have all the heroes, it doesn't mean that you are going to be good at the game. You really need to be good at the game, so the grinding for gold is just necessary to become good anyway. This isn't "P2W" at all, it's more like a pay-or-grind to be able to compete. But you are going to suck if you don't put in the time anyway. I think it's a fair system and when you start having a decent selection of heroes, you should be able to compete with anyone.

When I start playing HotS it can get pretty addictive. I normally go to bed very late and just sleep 2-3 hours before my real life responsibilities kick back in. This game just wakes me up, and gets the adrenaline going. I could be dead tired and just start one game and suddenly I'm wide awake and fully aware. This is one of those games that I have to stop myself from playing sometimes, or else I don't really want to do anything else. In other words, it's really addictive and just amazing as very few games have that effect on me. I surely would recommend it, but be warned that it might become a big part of your life!