Heroes of the Storm Technical Alpha – First Impressions

Heroes of the Storm Technical Alpha – First Impressions

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Dave Cooke’s First Impressions

November was set to be an easy month, from a gaming perspective anyway. There was only one game on my radar, one that I had been looking forward to for a very long time, Dragon Age: Inquisition. To say I was excited about this game is an understatement. In the lead up to the release I was so hyped that I went so far as to watch “Dawn of the Seeker” an anime prequel to the game, and I really hate anime. I’m not here to talk about Dragon Age though, I’ve actually played surprisingly little of this installment to date, for in the lead up to the release I was reminded that I had, some months before, pre-purchased Warlords of Draenor. So, here was presented the first gaming conflict to arise that month. I had been eagerly anticipating my next trip into Thedas (the world the Dragon Age games are set in for anyone unaware) for so long yet, to date, I had not actually been playing World of Warcraft as an expansion released. I very much wanted to play both, to have my cake and eat it if you will.  This was fine though, just about, so I once again hooked my veins up to the intravenous gaming drip that is a WoW subscription with the intention of alternating between two games. However, my plans were yet again about to be derailed.

As WoW was obviously playable before the release of Warlords of Draenor or Inquisition, I had been playing a bit to get ready and enjoy some of the content added in the pre-expansion patch. However, one day, during the lead up to these two game releases, I open the Battle.net client to access WoW and then to my surprise I spot a new icon. Nestling just below the Hearthstone link, down on the left hand side of the client, is a little white and blue swirl labelled “Heroes of the Storm”. By some crazy, random happenstance (or the particular specifications by which Blizzard decides these things) I had been granted access to the game’s Technical Alpha. So for the last couple of months I’ve been dividing my time between playing these three great games, and seeing as there has already been a great volume written about Dragon Age Inquisition and Warlords of Draenor since their respective releases, and as Heroes of the Storm is about to shift into a closed beta, I thought I’d give you, my dear Voleticans, a small insight into my first impressions of Blizzard’s foray into the world of MOBAs.

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Before I get into my initial impressions of the game let’s first share some information on the game itself. As previously stated, and as you possibly are already aware, Heroes of the Storm is a MOBA. Whereas the other major players in the genre, DOTA 2 and League of Legends, take their selection of champions from their own original IP, Blizzard has opted instead to draw upon its extensive catalogue of established characters from across the Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo game universes. For me, and I would imagine for many others, this is one of the big draws of the game. Though I’ve never really gotten into Starcraft, I’ve been with its forerunner since Warcraft 3, and have since had an on again/off again relationship the behemoth that is World of Warcraft, for many years. My connection with Blizzard’s games goes back further than this to though to the original Diablo, the first RPG I can remember playing and the title that initiated a lifelong love affair with the genre. So, for me, getting to play with characters I’ve been engaging with in some capacity or another for over a decade has been a really enjoyable aspect of the game. The use of well known characters from its own established IPs gives the game a sort of Smash Bros. feel. Though it’s not quite on the same level of facing Mario, Link and Samus off against each other, there is something rather enjoyable about being able to put the Stormrage brothers on the same side or giving Uther and Muradin a chance to get their revenge on Arthas.

...or you could just mash to the two brothers together into one Hero.

…or you could just mash to the two brothers together into one Hero.

The creative source for the game’s characters however is not the only way in which Heroes of the Storm differs from the other major players, in fact it is just one of many ways in which Blizzard has tried to differentiate Heroes of the Storm from DOTA and LoL. Many well established MOBA conventions have been done away with or significantly altered. Gold and items are all done away with entirely. Instead, Heroes of the Storm replaces them with a talent system. As your character levels up, at certain predetermined levels you gain a talent point which can then be used to select from a variety of different talents that in some way modify your active abilities or grant passive buffs. The lack of gold also means that “last-hitting” becomes no longer relevant. Another major difference in character progression is that experience is shared, meaning everybody on a team levels up at the same time. Points are no longer put into leveling up skills either, heroes start with all three basic skills which increase in power as level increases, with a fourth “Heroic Skill” available at level 10. The biggest departure however are the objectives present in each of the maps. Minor objectives, in the form of mercenary camps, are present across all the maps. These function similarly to jungle camps from other MOBAs, but when captured fight for your team, descending down the nearest lane to wreak whatever havoc they are able. Each map then has its own unique major objective, which are essential to compete over in order to win the game. These range from collecting skulls to create a more powerful Bone Golem than the enemy team, to collecting coins in order to pay pirates to bombard your enemy’s fortifications.

Give him coins, he shoots your enemies. Seems like a fair enough deal to me.

Give him coins, he shoots your enemies. Seems like a fair enough deal to me.

So, now we’re caught up with the details, what’s been my impression of the game so far? I’ve been loving it. Heroes of the Storm has been some of the most sheer fun I’ve had in a video game for a long time. Now, I’ll admit a great deal of this is down to what some may see as a simplification of core MOBA concepts which make it more accessible. I’m an atrocious last-hitter in my other MOBA of choice, League of Legends, which is the main reason I tend to stick to the jungle. However the fact that this mechanic is not present in Heroes of the Storm, frees me up to play any role I may chose. That’s a slightly misleading sentence though, for there are no really established roles, at least as far as you see them in other MOBAs. While each of the heroes have one of four designations (Assassin, Specialist, Support and Warrior) these are all rather loose. Furthermore, the major objectives present in each of the maps will more often than not require the full attention of the entire team in order to be fulfilled, and as these objectives start within the first couple of minutes of the game there is no traditional laning phase. All of this leads to a much more dynamic flow to the game, which in turn, for me at least, makes each game much more exciting and unpredictable. In many ways this is similar to what Blizzard has done with Hearthstone in comparison to, for example, Magic: The Gathering. I’m a massive fan of Magic, and though I’ve been getting more and more into Hearthstone lately it’s till my drug of choice when it comes to card games. However, it can’t be denied that Magic is a much more complicated game than Hearthstone, there are a variety of reasons for this which would require a whole other article to do any justice to, but suffice to say Hearthstone is a much more accessible game. Blizzard even allude to this in their marketing: “Deceptively Simple. Insanely Fun.” Deceptively simple is a great way to describe Hearthstone, especially coming to it as a Magic player, where at first I saw the game as greatly inferior to my beloved pieces of cardboard, due to what appeared to an over-simplified approach to the card game genre. As I’ve gotten more involved in Hearthstone though, I am more and more beginning to approach its intricacies. It was, to me at the very least, as Blizzard describe: Deceptively Simple. As I see it, this is the same as the approach they have taken to the world of MOBAs. The removal or adjustment of certain core mechanics allows the game allows the game to be far more accessible, yet the way in which certain things have been adjusted and their own additions provide another, albeit different, level of complexity to the game. It is my personal belief that, if Heroes of the Storm ends up being as successful as I think it may very well be, it will be down to this approach that the developers have taken.

There are a few problems with this game. Balancing of the Heroes is still not quite there; the stealth mechanics very much need a looking at, the ability is a little too powerful at the moment. While stealth in this game is not true invisibility, it is effective still enough to keep the user obscured so long as the enemy is doing anything else other than specifically trying to look for a moving blur. As annoying as it is to have Nova unload an obscene amount of burst damage on you out of seemingly nowhere, the stealth Heroes are reasonably balanced from a PvP perspective. The real problem comes from the fact that these Heroes are able to do things such as capturing objectives while remaining stealthed, which in a lot of circumstances is difficult to find any real counterplay for. There are also a number of graphical and client glitches present in the game. However this game, at time of writing, is still in the Alpha stage and by the time you are probably reading this the game will have only just started its Closed Beta. This is not a finished product and as such there is plenty of time to balance Heroes and fix bugs, that’s what these stages of the development cycle are for.

"FFS, I just got Nova'd!" Probably my most uttered phrase while playing this game.

“FFS, I just got Nova’d!” Probably my most uttered phrase while playing this game.

So overall my first impression of Heroes of the Storm is overwhelming positive. It’s a fun, dynamic and engaging take on the genre that will draw a lot of people in from people new to MOBAs, to experienced veterans seeking a bit of a change. One of the things that has most impressed me has been how much this game already resembles a finished product despite still being in alpha. With many major titles being released with a wide range of bugs, both graphical and game breaking, it’s refreshing to see something with this much polish at such an early stage. If you get a chance to play in any the upcoming beta, I’d highly recommend you give it a go, even if you aren’t usually particularly enamoured with games of this ilk. The only other thing I can really say is that I’m looking forward to the full release of this game so that I get a chance to play it with all my friends, rather than just the lucky few that got on the alpha at the same time as me.

Today, Heroes of the Storm hits beta. I’ll be playing through it and Voletic will keep you up to date as the game progresses.

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