BlizzCon 2014: Heroes of the Storm Panel
At BlizzCon 2014 Blizzard held a Heroes of the Storm panel that went over where the game is now and where it's going in the future. Instead of a live blog I'm going to give the bullet points of each segment.
What's happened since BlizzCon 2013
Talk-home alpha started immediately after BlizzCon 2013. Internally only, just employees, who played from home.
Blizzard used the take-home alpha to "find the fun" of the game, and make sure that the designers could play the game, as well as work on it.
Technical alpha started in March 2014. It's a very small test group. They're using this group to learn how to refine their team and learn about the development of this particular game.
Patches every 4 – 6 weeks, constant evolution. Lots of smaller chunks, much more often.
Everything is fair game for improvements.
Technical alpha is the core gameplay, a lot more will come in the future
Added Garden of Terror battleground
Added a lot of heroes. Murkey, Brightwing, Zagara, Rehgar, Azmodan.
Invites
Currently adding 15x the number of players than were initially invited to the alpha
Closed beta starts on January 13, 2015
Draft Mode
Teams take alternating turns picking heroes. Coin flip determines which team goes first.
No duplicate heroes.
Battleground selection is known, allows for better hero picking.
Used by all ranked modes.
Provided as an option in custom games.
Heroes matchup added to loading screens for unranked and ranked play
No hero bans initially – you won't be able to say no to certain heroes.
Leagues
Hero league – any number of heroes queue up, matchmaker system fills up the rest of the team.
Team league – premade 5-man teams.
Ranked Play
Based off of Hearthstone, StarCraft, and other games.
Rank starts at 50, you go up to 1.
Winning game earns points, losing games you lose points
Points determine your rank. This is also called personal rank.
Number of points you earn depend on the difference in skill level.
Each season ranks will start new.
Retain points based on last season's rank.
Skill rating – algorithm that tries to calculate how good of a player you are. Hidden score. Persists season to season.
Hero League
Parties of any size can queue up.
Fills your team with players of similar sizes.
Favor matches against parties of similar sizes.
Personal ranking and skill ranking are your own.
Must have reached player level 30.
Team League
Team leader pre-create a team with a unique name.
Total of 9 players on your team, only 5 can play at once, however.
Can be a member of up to 3 teams.
Team has a ranking and a skill ranking. This is different from the hero league.
Must have reached player level 40.
People Who Leave
If you leave a game early, you'll be flagged as a leaver.
If you're flagged as a leaver, Blizzard determines that you enjoy that style of play.
You'll get matched with other people who leave games early.
You can get out of that group by not leaving games.
If you play a ton of games and then have to leave one all the sudden, you'll be forgiven. Graces leaves will be given.
New Heroes
Jaina. Massive amounts of burst damage.
Thrall. Burst oriented assassin character. Shaman.
Sylvanas. Dark archer. Mind Control is her signature ability.
The Lost Vikings. Best way to play them is to spread them all across the map.
New Battlegrounds
Sky Temple. Capture the temples at top, middle, and bottom. It's a super high-fantasy desert kingdom.
Tomb of the Spider Queen. Kill minions, collect gems, summon the spider queen and kill her.
End of Season Awards
They will exist.
Blizzard doesn't have the rewards locked down yet.
Notable Q&A Answers
It's "definitely an option" to bring in Heroes from the books.
Absolutely will add Overwatch heroes (eventually).
Blizzard is still looking at talent gating.
It's "definitely a possibility" to add in different types of game modes, like PvE. Not something being actively worked on.
