I decided to give Heroes of the Storm a go this morning to see what it was like. As a die-hard League of Legends and Diablo III fan, I thought the idea of having a MOBA type game with Blizzard characters was pretty cool. The closed BETA came out on January 13th of this year. I don’t even remember when I signed up for it, but it was all downloaded and ready, waiting for me when I opened the client this morning.
So I did the tutorial, which was fast, and you could opt out to refuse more of the tutorial. I did a few practice games and noticed something: there were no items! It was strange to me, since I have played MOBAs for a few years, not having damage inducing items seemed like a letdown. If you were to go up against the same champ as you, you would both do the same amount of damage to each other. Yay.
Given that the game is still in BETA, there were a few bugs (to be expected). The most frequent one that I came across was the announcer telling me that I had died, when I was clearly at full health and the only one in lane. I ”died” about 20 times in one game.
The fun parts about the game? Well, you have a mount, for one. It helps you get to lane MUCH faster than walking. I really enjoyed that. You level up VERY fast in the client after each match. The free champ rotation is also very nice. You get a feel for the characters and can try them out until new ones come up the following week. I used the demon hunter from Diablo III for my trials. She’s my favourite so far. Or, if you’d rather buy a new champion that you before liked, you have that option. Champs vary between 2000 coins and 10000 coins. Or you can buy them with real cash, which would be a lot faster. I love that the game has a ranked section. I can easily see this becoming as competitive as Starcraft II.
Getting coins takes a LONG time. I played a few coop games and only got 40 coins. At that rate, I would have to play 200 games to be able to afford the demon hunter, who is one of the cheapest champs in the game.
As I was typing this, I was invited by a few friends to another match. This was a changer for me. I liked it better than the other games. This one was on the pirate map, which was really fun. You have a boat in the middle of the map which you can control to attack enemy turrets, which is a HUGE help. Also, after the match, I leveled up, which gave me 1000 coins. I still only got 10 from the match.
All in all, I think the game is fun. I probably won’t play it much, but it is definitely a must-play for all Blizzard fans. I look forward to see how the game develops in the future and will be checking back in maybe once a week to see its progress. If I had to rate it, it would probably be 7.5/10. Definitely something fun for a group of friends.