Blizzard has been doing interesting things lately, where they seem to be improving their games by listening to the community. World of Warcraft and Overwatch has been getting quite a lot of requested updates, and while WoW certainly seems to be more favored than other games, the fact that they are showing some sign of care is great!
Blizzard acquiring smaller studios
For those who have not caught up with the interesting news about Blizzard and their most popular game, World of Warcraft, they actually increased the number of people working on the game by one hundred people. That happened by Blizzard acquiring Proletariat, a company that is full of MMORPG veterans that worked on some amazing titles.
While this, unfortunately, has nothing to do with Heroes of the Storm, it is certainly a good sign that things are happening within the company. Is this just the beginning of what is to come from Microsoft buying Blizzard back in January (to be concluded next year in June)? We do not know, but we are glad this is happening.
While Heroes of the Storm is not really as popular as WoW, the game has great potential as it features so many characters from beloved franchises. It might take a lot of work to revive the game and bring it back on par with its competitors like League of Legends and Dota 2, but it is not impossible.
Where is hots?
Before we can discuss how HotS can be revived, it is very important to understand where the game is at the moment. Let us first talk about the elephant in the room, which is the HotS competitive scene that has absolutely no support from Blizzard since they officially dropped the game in 2018 from esports as they moved developers to work on other projects.
The esports scene mostly consists of fan projects, which are the only thing keeping the game alive. However, their success is not something astonishing, as they are more or less equal to the Warcraft 3 scene, which is a game that is over twenty years old and has had a horrible re-release with Warcraft 3: Reforged (or as many like to call it, Warcraft 3: Refunded).
The second thing about HotS that is a major issue is that it is extremely unfriendly towards newer players, it can take quite a long time to grind out heroes for F2P players, and for those who want to unlock them by paying with real money, their wallet will take quite a beating.
Until these two things are fixed, along with some core gameplay mechanics that bring it closer to LoL and Dota style of MOBA, there is quite a small chance for HotS to get back on its feet and get the title of a popular game.
With that said, it is even more unfortunate that in order for that to happen, Blizzard would have to take a few more losses on the game before they would be able to turn it into the profit that they care about so much. While Blizzard does seem to be assuring that the quality in their non-mobile titles is met to their older standards, we are not quite sure that HotS is on their radar just yet, nor that it will be any time soon.
Blizzard has announced it will end development work on the multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game Heroes of the Storm, seven years after it first launched. The title will no longer be receiving major updates, with the focus of development shifting to minor bug fixes and in-game rotations as the action is finally sunsetted. While disappointing, this phase is part of the natural cycle of online games, which typically receive maintenance over a number of years before developers must make tough decisions about their future.
Updates for the game have slowed to a crawl over the last few years, so the announcement isn’t too surprising. Blizzard has also recently announced a major shift in its development ambitions overall, with development resources now being fed into World of Warcraft and its upcoming Dragonflight expansion. Priorities are changing at the company, and it appears Heroes of the Storm is an unfortunate victim of this shift.
