Gaming
Can you get into Blizzard’s new MOBA coming from Dota or LoL? Here’s what you need to know to start.
Heroes of the Storm is gaining some major buzz online, but it’s been in closed alpha stage for quite some time now as the tinkerers at Blizzard get your favourite warriors and mages ready for battle. Not to be deterred, we jumped the velvet rope and swanned into the VIP area to have an early a play around with the MOBA to see how well a League of Legends or Dota regular will fare crossing the void, what they’ll find familiar and what’s new. And with BlizzCon right around the corner, we’ll let you know what you can expect from the exhibition match that has tempted Greg "IdrA" Fields back into the fray with Evil Geniuses.
Starting out
Jumping into the game for the first time will prove familiar for almost every MOBA player: picking heroes, fighting the enemy, killing creeps and destroying the base. But the intricacies and minor differences of each could throw you a bit of a curveball. To start – and we mean, right at the start – choose your hero. Those familiar with any of Blizzard’s games over the past decade or so will recognise a few faces. Even those late to the Dota party will be in company, owing to their shared heritage. Malfurion, for instance, is your Nature’s Prophet (who old-timers will still insist on calling Furion to this day).
Again, you’ll find familiarity in the mix of roles each hero performs. Supports, warriors, assassins and the somewhat ambiguous “specialist”. Supports provide buffs and debuffs for the main damage-bringers, mostly warriors who can tank enemy attacks for their team. Assassins are more useful for ambushing while enemy heroes are preoccupied with warriors. And specialists are, as their role suggests, more tailored to specific tasks within a team. And everything is for the team. Everything.
Teamwork makes the dream work
Once you’re in the game, you’ll find yourself following your creeps into a lane, perhaps with a partner, to fend off the other team’s creeps. Usually, this would result in one of you deferring last hits and the gold and experience boost that comes with them to the other, but not today. All experience earned is split between the team. As long as someone is within range of a creep dying, the whole team earns their levels. And there is no gold.
No gold means no items, which at first, I hear you cry, sounds utterly, UTTERLY bonkers. Heretical, even. But instead of items, Heroes of the Storm has Talents, which are essentially similar concepts, but hero-specific and unlocked at predetermined levels. At alternating levels, you are able to upgrade your hotbar abilities, at level 10 and 20 you choose, upgrade or diversify your ultimate. And at set levels in between you choose Talents.
These range from a passive aura of fire, causing hero damage, to healing abilities. Most are analogous to items you’ll have used before if you’re crossing over from LoL or Dota. But the other advantage is that simplifying the item system makes the game much easier to understand for newcomers to MOBAs as a whole.
Goals galore
Aside from pushing lanes, taking out towers and destroying the final base, Heroes of the Storm spices up the standard MOBA doctrine with a few twists. First, towers (or outposts) have limited ammo and must re-arm periodically. Pushing a lane during this reloading time results in faster progress. There are also jungle camps of neutral creeps, but instead of dropping gold/xp on defeat, they join the team who defeated them and help push the lane.
There are also map-specific events, similar in match significance to Baron Nashor or Roshan. Dragon Shire spawns two shrines that, once captured by one team, turns a single hero into the Dragon Knight. The Haunted Mines offers a series of tunnels full of skeletons to vanquish. Once one team collects enough skulls, a giant undead monster spawns and helps the team attack the enemy’s base.
All of these special events, level alterations and tower changes combine to make games considerably shorter than the average Dota or League game, which has the added effect of making them feel quite frantic. It will be interesting to see how well co-ordinated teams of pro gamers cope with the format, given last year’s developer show match was scrappy but ultimately pretty exciting. The impromptu battles that formed around those environmental events kept tension high, but teamfights felt lacking in synergy of hero skills. We’ll definitely be keeping our eyes on that exhibition match this weekend in Anaheim to see how EG and Team Liquid find the fight.
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