Heroes of the Storm Preview: Familiarity Abounds For the Right Reasons

When you play Heroes of the Storm for the first time, and roll up into battle as Jim Raynor from Starcraft -- since you play as him in the game’s tutorial -- there’s a weird feeling that will probably gently wash over you: familiarity. 

This is a multifaceted feeling, as you could get it whether you’re a MOBA player who’s never played a Blizzard game before or a Blizzard fan who’s never played a MOBA before or, more likely, you’ve played MOBAs an Blizzard games before. If you’ve never played any MOBAs nor Blizzard games, then I’d be very curious to find out what made you want to play (and you sound like a cool person!), but you will probably miss that familiar feeling.

That familiarity comes out of Heroes of the Storm being a seeming natural entity. Honestly, I wonder how it could possibly have taken Blizzard so long to make a MOBA, as the genre is so similar to things they’ve been making for decades -- it’s somewhere between Diablo and Starcraft.

And it’s pleasing.

I’m what you would call a MOBA dabbler. I have League of Legends and DOTA 2 on my PC, but I rarely touch them because I’m not a particularly competitive or eager player and those communities are not usually so enjoyable to hang with if you aren’t really into it. They’re notorious for being that way, in fact, which may be why Blizzard let the MOBA concept gestate a bit. They probably wanted to make a game that avoids developing a toxic community. It’s hard to say if they’ve succeeded, given I’ve been playing Heroes in an alpha build in which maybe a few hundred people are ever playing at a time.

But I will say that thus far the experience of playing Heroes does feel more welcoming and accessible, and I would chalk that up right now to its fast-ish pace and my own previous acquaintance with the characters. MOBA battles are always going to be a sort of grind, and in Heroes you do get that classic tug-of-war, beating-your-head-against-the-wall MOBA feel; it just tends to resolve more quickly. 

Your AI minions will rush forward down one of the three lanes across the map, and you will roll with them as you attack those turrets together (you have to because there’s a gate you have to take down before you can continue) until they all die and you/your fellow real people pull back (or the other team is doing that to you) The maps have wild cards like AI-controlled giants who you can beat down to recruit into your team, who are great at taking down buildings and turrets quickly. 

And then, of course, are the spontaneous map objectives -- things that pop up in the midst of battle that you should probably go after or else you’ll end up properly eff-you-see-kay’d very quickly. The game doesn’t really hammer home the significance of these, but when the announcer tells you, say, that new “tribute” has spawned, just know that you should take a break from banging Tyrael’s sword against that gate. It’s then that the grind stops and the fray really begins and the adrenaline pumps.

As I mentioned briefly above, having heroes we already know to mess with instead of ones we don’t like in DOTA 2 and LOL does make it easier to get into the experience I think. I actually like some of these ladies and bros in their proper context, so I have some motivation for picking them in this non-context outside their abilities. Now THAT is a real monetization scheme -- you can unlock each player character with gold you earn from playing, or just pay that cash if you’re eager.

As of today, Heroes of the Storm feel kinda like something I’d come back to with friends or even without sometimes if I’ve got a half-hour to waste. Maybe that’s because of the familiar characters. Or maybe it’s because the really intense MOBA crowd hasn’t moved in yet at this stage. Or maybe it’s the pacing.

Or it could just the sight of Raynor, in all his trademark armor, riding on the back of an animal mount. That very well could be it. 

The author was provided access to a technical alpha version of the game for the purpose of editorial coverage.