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Heroes of the Storm: New hero announced
Today a new hero option was announced for Blizzard's MOBA Heroes of the Storm: Rehgar Earthfury. I'm not surprised that Blizzard is giving us a shaman hero--after all, shaman are an iconic group in WoW lore and gameplay--but I am surprised that they've chosen Reghar as the shaman's representative. Compared to more well-known shaman in WoW such as Thrall, Rehgar tends to fly under the radar. He does, however, have his own history and tale to tell. Rehgar is one of the older generation of orcs and was born on Draenor. When Thrall came to power he eventually served as one of his advisors but before that Rehgar was a slave master who owned a particularly infamous gladiator: Varian Wrynn. Rehgar is a support character who posseses an ability set that goes along with his shaman class: he can turn into a spirit wolf, drop totems, and call upon the elements to aid him in battle. He seems to use a fist weapon for his basic physical attack, and I'm certain he'll have a range of fun shaman specialist attacks to go along with that. Frost Shock had better be on the cards! I'll also be interested to see what additional skins he gets--maybe a Thrall makeover, complete with epic braids? The announcement of Reghar as a hero makes me very sad that Varian isn't a playable hero option. If you've been playing the alpha or watching streams, you may have noticed that heroes with lore connections in their respective franchises often have more personalized banter when they interact on the battlefield. I would love to see what Rehgar and Varian have to say to each other, but it doesn't seem to be on the cards just yet. Here's hoping for the future!
Heroes of the Storm skins, mounts and more
Our friends over at Adriacraft have been extremely busy datamining Blizzard's upcoming Hero Brawler Heroes of the Storm. As a result, we have a huge dump of information from them, including skins, mounts, Hero lore, and more. Digging through giant posts like these can be something of a daunting task, especially with the strings. The extensive pictures of heroes and skins are fantastic, I am a particular fan of the "Lurkablo"-Diablo and the "Diablo Kaijo" skins, and their flavor text: "The government of Neo-Tristram grew overconfident as their experiments yielded more and more nuclear energy. They thought the power of the atom was under their control. They were wrong." But why are we interested in the strings, the lines of code at the top? Well, they indicate that Heroes of the Storm is going the same way as Hearthstone, by working off a dual-currency system. The currency that allows you to buy skins, mounts and more could be your local currency, as suggested by the Select Currency, Tax and Real Money purchase strings. We can also see that heroes are sometimes free-to-play, and that you will get a reward for beta-testing the store. Not only that, but the various access unlocks suggest a secret shop!
Why Heroes of the Storm is the MOBA for me
First and foremost, if that trailer from CarBot didn't even crack a smile, you have a heart of stone. This trailer, or tribute as CarBot calls it, was shown at BlizzCon to introduce gamers to Blizzard's newest offering: Heroes of the Storm. Anyone who's been keeping an eye on my Twitter will know that I was almost as excited about Heroes of the Storm as I was about Warlords of Draenor, so I took the earliest opportunity to go and play it. And then two subsequent opportunities to go back and play it again. I've played a fair bit of League of Legends, and more recently quite a bit of SMITE, and I enjoy both games, and the MOBA genre as a whole. Blizzard is, I should mention, apparently keen to get away from calling this a MOBA, and move towards the idea of a "Hero Brawler". There are several important differences between the mechanics of Heroes compared to League, particularly, which I really think are fantastic shifts away from a bloated system. Talents over Item Shop Now I will not pretend for a second that I am a pro League of Legends player. Heck, I'm probably not even a good one. I got into LoL very late, very late indeed, and there are a couple of elements that have stood in my way as a newer player. The item shop is definitely one of those elements. Even since the introduction of the Shopping List system, and with the Recommended Items list, it's confusing when you're just getting started. Working out what you need and knowing what's good are second nature to a seasoned player, but tricky to a beginner.
