Blizzard gave us a hands-on playthrough interview with Heroes of the Storm Senior Game Designer Richard Khoo to showcase how Blizzard is trying to rebrand the genre in its own image.

Straight away it’s easy to see that Heroes of the Storm is an entry-level MOBA. Blizzard is obviously targeting new players who don’t currently play in the genre through a series of choices which have essentially done away with the severe learning curve associated with Defense of the Ancients 2 (DOTA), Heroes of Newerth (HON) and League of Legends (LOL).

So here are the major changes Heroes of the Storm have done away with and what they mean for the gameplay.

There are no items or gold. This is a huge fundamental change which impacts this MOBA on so many core levels that I’m still shocked that this is Blizzard’s approach (even though it fits more with their Warcraft style). Essentially this change destroys item builds, the key theorycrafting element in current MOBAs, as well as changing the entire class role system.



Here’s why: When leaving the base you are immediately equipped for battle. There is no concern about what starting items were best for lanes, builds and your team. It’s just you running into your lane. Simple.

This does create a feeling of ‘so what do I do?’ which is hard to shake, since usually in a MOBA it’s filled with other tasks like warding, stopping camp spawns or one of the other hundred tasks. But again it’s those tasks that tend to single out new players for embarrassment when they don’t automatically know – Blizzard has stripped this back, making it so you can just pick one skill and the game begins.

“We really wanted a fast-paced system and that’s why we chose talents instead of items," explains Blizzard's Richard Khoo. "Because now we can have hero-specific content, which you can pick on the fly to make it go, go, go, go, go!”

Essentially the talent path works by allowing you to choose your specialisation, not your abilities. So you begin with all your skills, but you have to choose what you want to enhance.

“You can chose what heroic abilities, also known as Ultimates, which gives you a lot of depth to your strategy," he adds.

Talents are important and can give you an edge depending on your lane, but it’s nothing compared to current MOBA build strategies for complexity. Again, making it more accessible for new players, as I picked up everything in two-minutes (granted, I play a lot of the more core titles in the genre out there).

Since there is no gold, last hits mean nothing as well. This is a huge change in what it means to play a MOBA. But again, its eliminated the need to contest every element of the lane and instead focus on AOEing your enemies mobs and constantly attacking opponents.

“We want players to focus on the battle," Khoo enthuses. "Nuking down your opponent; not worrying about last hitting creeps.”

Here is where you are thinking that experience is where all of this is made up. Well again Blizzard has taken another approach, where experience is shared between the group.

“Its about the group as a whole, so as long as you work together as a team everyone benefits. Healers can just sit and heal and don’t have to worry about anything else.”

This system is called group levelling and means all experience is shared. Basically, there is no reason at all to last hit anything, other than, of course, to make sure it dies. But if the support gets the kill, it doesn’t matter, everyone wins.

Essentially Blizzard has found a way to eliminate contention, and it’s easy to see how much in-house fighting this will stop.



“The group level system allows us to showcase heroes you’ve never seen before," Richard explains. "Heroes that just aren’t there but make up the strategy. We want people to focus on the strategy."

Broken down, Heroes of the Storm has introduced heroes which are able to participate in the game without actually being in lane to contest the fight, adding a completely new strategy dynamic to how you choose your team composition and how you track enemy movements.

The biggest example is through introducing a dungeon component. Blizzard has combined a Diablo experience into Heroes of the Storm by creating a subterranean level (in this case it was the Haunted Mines, although it differs depending on map choice) which sits underneath the normal map and can be accessed through portals.

Essentially the goal is to send down one or many of your heroes to kill NPC skeletons (yes, like a dungeon crawler) to collect skulls. The more skulls you collect the higher level your Grave Gollum becomes once your Necromancer summons him.

The balance here is whether you want to spend more time collecting skulls to have an insanely powerful Gollum helping you later in the game or if you want to just focus on pushing the enemy whilst half their team is below farming creeps. Again remember that there is no gold, so it seems scaled to have at least one hero building your Gollum’s strength who can respond should a fight begin. Although in my case the AI heroes came and ganked me in the mines early on.

This dungeon/summoning experience feels strange in a MOBA, however, it pays to remember that Blizzard is trying to break the rules, not just release a shinier version of what others are doing -- just look at what they've done for CCG with Hearthstone.

“Our other big goal was to make sure the game life was between 15 to 20 minutes," he concludes.

This is under half the average current MOBA game time and redefines every element within the game from a different angle. After just a few games it does appear counter intuitive to their dungeon crawl element, since time is not on your side, however, it may reveal to be otherwise after more games and strategies emerge. But for now, it’s a confusing piece.

But this time change is monumental for Heroes of the Storm. There is no early, mid and late game as with only 15-minutes of play time those strategies go completely out the window. Since you are not building items, the key strategy is engagement, with your focus being to push the lane and kill enemy heroes, whilst trying to level fast to optimise new talents.

Additionally, 15-20 minute games would imply that mistakes are more costly and every decision has much more weight, but I actually found it the opposite. Again it comes back to the absence of gold and items, thus losing one fight was never that costly.

Just to test this I purposely walked straight into the hero towers to die and within a minute I was back in the fray with little disadvantage.



Speaking of towers, there is no tower diving. Correction, you can still get pummelled by enemy towers, but Heroes of the Storm has introduced gates as well as dual towers, ensuring that if your enemy is low and hiding behind their gate, melee heroes cannot get to them. This strategy is obviously targeted to give inexperienced players an opportunity to recover if they are being completely overrun by a more experienced opponent.

This combines with Healing fountains that are located just behind your towers that give you a Heal over time, although they do have a cooldown.

“These are just meant to give you the heal that you need and can then rejoin the fight. It helps keep everything fast,” explains Richard.

One of the big issues plaguing current MOBAs is match-making. Well most of you will be happy to hear that Blizzard is applying the same algorithms they use for match-making in WoW and StarCraft, which are arguably the best in the world. Happy days.

Regarding customisation and hero imports, Blizzard has confirmed they are using heroes and characters from all their realms including, but not limited to, WoW (there’s even a Murlock hero), Diablo and StarCraft.

All heroes come with several customisation sets, which you can view from the hero select screen, as well as viewing skins your friends have available. All heroes can customise their mounts as well, with some really unique skins coming through (like metal sabers).

In all my experience with the game has revealed that Heroes of the Storm is the most un-MOBA of MOBAs. Everything has been redefined to make it sit completely outside the scope of DOTA, LOL and HON mechanics. Players from those games are going to have to completely reevaluate everything they have learnt elsewhere.

Every step is aimed at leveling the playing field to a point where it’s hard to pick up on what the detailed strategies are going to be. There is so much forgiveness in Heroes of the Storm aimed at learning curve issue that a lot of times it felt like I was playing a completely new type of game.

But this is the Blizzard approach. They have definitely put their stamp on Heroes of the Storm by refining what you can do with MOBAs if you decide that the current formula isn’t how you want players to interact with your game. As Khoo explained, “it’s about what type of game you want to make and we wanted something fast paced and easy to get into”. Well it’s definitely that.

Heroes of the Storm is currently available for Beta sign up.