Heroes of the Storm

[Roxas65]

I got into the alpha. Anybody else have the pleasure?

[MstrCorvus]

You seem to be getting into every Alpha these days.

[Roxas65]

I know where to look.

[Roxas65]

I just remembered that if I get to level 20 before November 18th there's a chance that all the people on my friends list are invited to the alpha. So if you want a chance to get in you can either PM me your battlenet tag or just post it here and I'll add you. Then on the off chance i get to level 20 fast enough you'll have a chance to be added. I also suggest checking out their Facebook since that's probably where I got in.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[KomodoTheCashew]

I've played DoTa and LoL pretty equally with a bit of Smite here and there.

I like my MOBAs so I'm curious, What do you think about Blizzard's take on it from what you've played, if you've played any?

[Roxas65]

Yes, I've played a couple of games. Having played played a fair amount of LoL I found it to be very different, but most of the changes are ones I find to be more fun than anything.

It's obvious that Blizzard has aimed at fun more than anything else which is seen the best in their maps I think. There are several battlegrounds to fight on and each of them have a sepcific event that happens from time to time. In the haunted mines, for example, the path will occasionally open into the mines, opening a new area that's full of neutral mobs and when you kill these neutral mobs they drop skulls that you collect. After a set amount of time both teams will receive a powerful minion called a golem and depending on how many skulls you collected, the more powerful it becomes and since there's a set amount of skulls one golem is always more powerful than the other one. The next time you collect skulls to raise the golems, they'll rise where they got killed so they'll creep closer to the opponent base more and more every time they go up. Since these skulls are pretty valuable the teams end up fighting for them. All the maps have their own different thing, but they always create conflict between teams since the advantage they give is -huge.- I mean, one of them causes the opponent team to be cursed so their minions have 1HP and their turrets can't fire for like a minute straight. Like I said, it creates conflict and it makes the matches shorter, but it kinda throws the fair battle competitive games usually have out the window. It's kinda like playing Super smash Bros. with items on.

Another thing I noticed is that your entire team has a single EXP bar and you all level at the same time and instead of picking abilities to unlock and spend points in, every level you get a choice between talents that either affect you passively or empower a specific ability. The D3 Demon Hunter, for example, at one point gets the choice between her vault having two charges or causing increased damage to slowed and stunned enemies. At level 10 you also have to choose between ultimate abilities instead of just having one. A lot of these talents are initially locked and are unlocked by playing that hero since all heroes have an experience bar now. so there's two kinds of levels; player level and hero level. The former one is like in LoL--it goes up every game and stays the same--and the latter is individual to a hero and raising it unlocks additional talents and skins. There are no items, so these talents are all you got in the way of builds.

I think my two main complaints about this game are the region lock and the currency. The region lock prevents players from EU to play with people from NA or Asia and there's no option to change it like in D3 or Hearthstone and quite frankly it's an outright archaic mechanic that fills no purpose. I've friends I can't play with because of that BS.

The currency is also gradually starting to piss me off. There seems to be three price levels for heroes--4,000, 7,000 and 10,000 gold--and you get 30 gold tops from winning a versus game. It's true that you get 1,000 gold when you reach some levels, but the low gold gain is just absurd. It takes ages to unlock just one hero. The real money pricing seems very similar if not identical to LoL but I don't like that they're already asking for real money for heroes during alpha. At least HotS let's you try out a hero before you buy them in a mode where you have access to a lite version of the develop debug mode so you can quickly try out the heroes abilities and whether you like them or not, something LoL has needed since forever.

The community is a bit weird if you're used to other MOBA games. Whereas communities in LoL and DOTA 2 have a habit of being toxic, the community in HotS seems to prefer to... Just not talk. During all my games I haven't seen another player say anything except for "GG".

In short, I found it to be very fun although not as appealing to competitive players as the other MOBA games out there.

[MstrCorvus]

I'm a pretty big League fan so I'm totally in for trying this out. My Battle.Net tag is the same as my forum username. MstrCorvus

[Roxas65]

I'm a pretty big League fan so I'm totally in for trying this out. My Battle.Net tag is the same as my forum username. MstrCorvus

There's supposed to be a couple of numbers after that name too.

[MstrCorvus]

Ah. It'd MstrCorvus #1397 then

[Roxas65]

I'll go ahead and add you then.

[Erynn]

Erynnus#1878 here.

[Roxas65]

I went ahead and added everybody who contacted me today. Let's see if I can hit 20 before November 19th.

[Aphetoros]

What level are you at now?

[Roxas65]

Only 4. I haven't had much time to play the last couple of days.

[Aphetoros]

I volunteer as tribute.

(jk)