Highly recommended if you want to play MOBAs. Just download
Heroes of the Storm and play if you want to try out a MOBA, it is a good game! The rest of what I want to discuss and get off my chest is inane, hardcore-gaming type rantings. I'm not going to be overly technical and thoroughly research my opinions, I'm just going to lay down where I think
Heroes of the Storm fits in the oeuvre of RTS gaming and MOBAs.
But before I do that, I want to say that you should seriously go play this game! Just go download it right now because it's free! No money! That's what "free" means"! It costs no money because money is actually an important factor to having any kind of fun, so the less of it you spend the more fun you'll have! But then maybe you're wondering "
how do the high-class computer janitors who code these cartoons eat food after slaving away all day if you are not paying anything to them?"
To which I would say:
"You are playing a free game! Who cares! Go have fun!
"
Heroes of the Storm is easy to get into exactly because it is free! How can you say no to a free game? Who cares about those computer janitors! Maybe that seems dubious and heartless to you but it's OK because they're not actually giving you the full game! I forgot to mention that! You can spend your money on cosmetics and new heroes and all that stuff! You can play a small portion of the hero pool (and thus a small portion of the game) for free! You can buy the rest of the hero pool later! You can a portion of gameplay for free and if you like that small portion you can spend a disproportionate amount of money and/or time to access the full portion of
Heroes of the Storm's gameplay!
"It's like a Western version of Smash Brothers except you're spending even more money (if you want) and playing for longer (but for an unrealistic amount of time!...probably!...). Have you been to Blizzcon?!
"You're certainly not giving your money and time to a soulless husk of a video-game company/publisher who will probably just want more of your money and time. Y'see they don't really make games so much as create franchises that you
must be a fan of and put money into. But you know that is the price to pay for having fun. You should go to Blizzcon, it's coming up soon. Book off some vacation time and sort out your life because pain and anxiety are key elements to how fun works. That anxiety and pain will go away once you are immersed in the corporate, high-fantasy world of Activision-Blizzard. You spend lots of money to have fun and you spend lots of time progressing very slowly to arbitrary goals...like going to Blizzcon and seeing the beautiful women dressed up like Kerrigan. Blizzcon...that convention in the United States somwhere where all things are trademarked Blizzard and you will meet your wife whom you met online.
"Activision-Blizzard, free games, microtransactions within free games, Blizzcon, girls-dressed-in-weird-outfits., you, the other average putzes around you...
"All these things and more are why you are attracted to
Heroes of the Storm in the first place! Because it's a free game that you don't have to spend money on, but probably should, and will also spend money on! "
Wait, wait, that sounds a little deragotory, I wouldn't really say that last part let me rephrase:
"You, the average lower-middle-class citizen, are attracted to
Heroes of the Storm because it's a free game but you can pay lots of money to experience the full depth of the game! It's the best of both worlds because you get to give Activision-Blizzard your money (because money is the only way to have fun)
and you don't have to give any money! Because without giving money you're not really able to have fun! It's the best of both worlds!"
Something like that is what I'd say, yea. In order to convince you that the free, small portion of
Heroes of the Storm is worth playing. I'd probably say it better though...with less confusion.
-------
Maybe whatever words I use to describe
Heroes of the Storm will always sound really confusing...? And maybe the game I describe will always seem fraudulent in a way? "It's a free game but really limiting until you unlock a lot of really fun stuff by spending an almost irresponsible amount of time and money"; that sounds almost like gambling. I don't think a lot of people spend their money through gambling addictions right?
Gambling on things: only a small portion of the world's economic activity.
The majority of people invest in companies and products they have confidence in.
In fact, most of the richest companies and people get to where they are by working hard in the "lumber yards" (I think). I'm sure, in my heart-of-hearts, one of the richest video-game companies, Activision-Blizzard, was formed by hard-working Americans who used their hands and stuff. Bobby Kotick, the head of Activision-Blizzard, worked his way through a college degree and found himself a valuable place in the working-class economy buying other companies and retaining those companies in terms of how much profit they would generate over long periods of time. Who wouldn't want to work for Activision-Blizzard and get a piece of the hard-earned working-class dollar this company offers!?
Maybe Activision-Blizzard develop social phenomena, like Blizzcon, and in-universe culture in the form of derivative games, like Heroes of the Storm, more than they do innovative games of the past? And perhaps they shirk this innovative process by creating these derivative games in order to please us in an entirely Pavlovian way?
Who doesn't want to be one of Pavlov's mutts?!
What better way make that hard-earned working-class dollar that they are given to by you (only sometimes and only when you feel like playing the full portion of a game), the average putz? Perhaps this all perpetuates the valuable lesson that spending lots of money and time on derivative products is the way to be a Rich Dad like Terenas Menethil II who lived a prosperous and war-free life reigning over the Alliance until the future when the Alliance suddenly disappeared and everything became
StarCraft?
Oh wait, is that my bias coming through? I should stop confusing this game featuring characters of other games with those games themselves. I can't tell what's what anymore and I'm rambling! Oh no! Let me get back to basics here, in effect, my opinion on
Heroes of the Storm! That's what I wanted to really talk about!
-------
I really enjoyed
Heroes of the Storm for the first week and found nothing to gain from it after that first week.
This game barely has competitive teeth. More people play and watch
League of Legends and
Dota 2 because those games produce unique "highlight plays" and team strategies much like physical sports do. You can't really micro complex heroes efficiently in
Heroes of the Storm because you can't set custom hotkeys. No one who plays this game fervently would want hotkeys either I suspect; there aren't complex abilities or other units across the map that you need to precisely control. There aren't strategies that require you to be anywhere other than where the game says you are supposed to be: "go stand under this totem", "go down into this mine and fight things", "watch out for these plants!".
Similar to
League of Legends, Blizzard presumes most players want less freedom and less dynamism in how their competitive MOBA matches progress. I suppose this presumption is actually fact. A less competitive and complicated game is usually a more fun game.
For instance, "Collect the loot from the pirate ship so that it can blow holes in the enemy base" is a kid-friendly and less oblique interpretation of "Get
GOLD and do....
SOMETHING WITH IT so that you can ransack the enemy base while killing the other heroes!". League of Legends is developed in the same iterative vein where many of its once complicated game mechanics are becoming less stringent and more overt over time. At one point you needed
GOLD to see beyond the classic "fog of war" mechanic I believe that has changed; it is much easier for League players to "ward for vision" to see beyond that classic "fog of war" mechanic.
I suppose what I'm getting to in a very long-winded way is two specific mechanics which
Heroes of the Storm lacks that intentionally give the game less dynamism:
1)
Heroes of the Storm does not have items which supplement your heroes abilities.
2)
Heroes of the Storm also has an overtly linear progression for its heroes/champions
Item builds and the ability to freely choose which abilities your hero has at given points of time during a MOBA match add much more spontaneity and emergent behavior than you think. And understanding why that is the case, has more to-do with an in-depth discussion of other MOBAs, namely
League of Legends and
Dota 2. It would also thus involve a huge run-down of the history of MOBAs which isn't particularily relevant to the current game we are discussing,
Heroes of the StormAt the end of the day, if
Heroes of the Storm wasn't populated with fictional Blizzard characters it would be another run-of-the-mill MOBA with zero influence. The ability to play The Lost Vikings competitively against other money-spending Blizzard fans is the emotional and design crux of
Heroes of the Storm; everything else about the game is secondary.