heroes No Heroes Esports in 2019

[Steveson 193]

30 minutes ago, taff said:

The fun part is that it is the same company that declined IceFrog, when he was available and then started copyright wars with Valve. Karma?

What can i say
Some people get high by shooting themselves in feet. 15 times in a row. With M61 Vulcan

[Valhalen 1,484]

9 hours ago, Stan said:

Why would the game die off without HGC? Sure, it may lose some prestige and competitive play, but that’s about it. It’s not like the servers are shutting down or anything. People are overreacting, just look at the mess over at r/heroesofthestorm. The vast majority of the playerbase does not even know about HGC. 

I feel genuinely sorry for the many casters and people involved in Heroes Esports.

Definitely overreacting, as people always do. It is not like the game will die or anything.

[Plergoth 277]

38 minutes ago, Valhalen said:

Definitely overreacting, as people always do. It is not like the game will die or anything.

I think a lot of it as well was the part about them moving some of the HotS team away onto other projects and looking at "sustainability" for the game. A lot of people are interpreting that as the game being transitioned into a maintenance mode like Diablo 3 with few and less frequent updates and the knockon effect of it becoming less likely that there will ever be a serious competitive scene again for the game for the foreseeable future. Many popular casters and streamers who are now looking at other games already to move onto as well because what's the point in scrims or pro streams for HotS now? Or trying to get sponsorship for a game that announces this two weeks before Christmas and the end of the year? 

I know the servers aren't being shut down or anything, but ripping out the heart of a gaming community while in the same breath basically telling us all that we weren't good enough is still pretty mean. 

[Valhalen 1,484]

31 minutes ago, Plergoth said:

I think a lot of it as well was the part about them moving some of the HotS team away onto other projects and looking at "sustainability" for the game. A lot of people are interpreting that as the game being transitioned into a maintenance mode like Diablo 3 with few and less frequent updates and the knockon effect of it becoming less likely that there will ever be a serious competitive scene again for the game for the foreseeable future. Many popular casters and streamers who are now looking at other games already to move onto as well because what's the point in scrims or pro streams for HotS now? Or trying to get sponsorship for a game that announces this two weeks before Christmas and the end of the year? 

I know the servers aren't being shut down or anything, but ripping out the heart of a gaming community while in the same breath basically telling us all that we weren't good enough is still pretty mean. 

Sure, but it costs Blizzard roughly 6 million dollars to set up the HGC. If they use this capital to inject some money into HotS, they can still create content. But as you said, the problem is how they are shifting people from the HotS team into other teams (which I'm pretty sure it is for "Diablo IV").

[lChronosl 182]

I don't think the game is dead yet, but these are disheartening news. I will probably still play as long as the servers are up, but it will be harder to feel engaged, I guess.

But, hey, on the plus side it will be easier to balance without any "pro players" ! (I jest, I jest. We laugh to hide the pain?).

Edited December 14, 2018 by lChronosl

[Arcling 898]

3 hours ago, Kuarinofu said:

Moreso, I think competitive HotS sometimes even hurt the game. I was Master in Season one (rank 1 in Preseason kek)  and now I'm Plat 1 both TL and HL.

Preseason was really weird because top rank could contain people from everywhere between platinum and grand master. I like the game being a more casual title, but with lesser investment, it's not going to attract many new players.

Agreed on it not being impressive as an e-sport. There is a much more limit to what a single player can do in this game, as opposed to something like Starcraft 2, where differences between players are obvious, and insane in case of pros.

Edited December 14, 2018 by Arcling

[Badadada 184]

8 hours ago, Steveson said:

Starcraft 2 (Nobody plays it and right now the only new content we are getting are skins and coop commanders - mode nobody plays right now)

Um, what? Starcraft 2 is basically the only RTS (or even strategy) game that people play in a competitive way. Blizzard quite much has monopoly in the RTS e-sports market, so I don't think we should be burying them at all. Products have a lifecycle indeed, and SC2 is not a young game - so sooner or later people will definitely start thinking about alternatives (wouldn't be surprised if HotS developers are moved to an SC3 project), but at the current moment a huge share of the most prestigous e-sport tournaments include SC2 or are solely based around it.
 

6 hours ago, VaraTreledees said:

This is a really shitty think to do.  Oh well.  While I don't think HotS is 100% guaranteed to die, I think there is a high likelihood.  Less content means less people, which means less money and profitability, which means less development time, money and people (as in game devs and such) which leads to less content, which in turn leads to less people, which. . . you get the idea.

While in most cases progress towards depopulation of the game is inevitable, there are ways to turn it around. A competitve game requires far stricter ruleset than a casual one - if they can loosen up the math behind certain abilities and gameplay restrictions HotS could be made great again. We know for example the base SC2 engine has good mod support. Why not open up HotS for community created content as well? Unlikely they will do it, but I'm sure many modders would love to experiment with it and maybe they would even create something new and exciting.

[Abom 31]

If people care about the game the community can organize it's own competitive scene.

 

[Nazamber 38]

I seriously don't understand how removing the esports factor kills the game for anyone? If you aren't involved with the scene then you aren't affected. Like, this rampage is getting more ridiculous than people complaining about Rudolph and "Baby, It's Cold Outside". It doesn't kill the game removing an aspect of it that wasn't profitable. I know for you younglings, you don't know what gaming was like prior to esports...but I can tell you people played Ranked Ladder matches without the ability to stream or be hosted at big convention centers. I do see that it sucks that Blizzard is starting to chop up aspects of their games but I mean c'mon...we all knew the HotS player base was considered the most toxic and uneventful player base...there are articles all over it from the time it released how terrible the community was. All this means, is that its time people start looking elsewhere for enjoyment instead of focusing on one company...

[Ogerscherge 43]

10 minutes ago, Nazamber said:

I seriously don't understand how removing the esports factor kills the game for anyone? If you aren't involved with the scene then you aren't affected. Like, this rampage is getting more ridiculous than people complaining about Rudolph and "Baby, It's Cold Outside". It doesn't kill the game removing an aspect of it that wasn't profitable. I know for you younglings, you don't know what gaming was like prior to esports...but I can tell you people played Ranked Ladder matches without the ability to stream or be hosted at big convention centers. I do see that it sucks that Blizzard is starting to chop up aspects of their games but I mean c'mon...we all knew the HotS player base was considered the most toxic and uneventful player base...there are articles all over it from the time it released how terrible the community was. All this means, is that its time people start looking elsewhere for enjoyment instead of focusing on one company...

You really should read the whole article before commenting. The title of this topic is, quite frankly, poorly chosen and does not reflect the actual Job's message inherent in this particular announcement. 

[greatCraft 29]

Some people are motivated to play competitive games like HoTs to chase an unattainable goal of getting closer in skill to the professionals that display inspiring performances. Hell, I can imagine this is what motivates people to play boring games like baseball. How else can you explain people who invest hours into hitting a fast ball with a stick?  I am one of these people. This move has seriously drained my desires to spend more money on this game or any other Blizzard esport. Blizzard esports has proven that they are unpredictable in what esports they will continue to support. Most of their esports do not excel in their genres. Except Overwatch. And that's only during Overwatch League Season. This has serious ramifications for all investors. 

Edited December 14, 2018 by greatCraft

[Laragon 269]

The game is "dead" from a marketing and money making standpoint. Blizzard will be doing very little support for it and will do even less marketing and broadcasting. Sure you might have recycled seasonal events, but very very few new ones. Streamers that play it to be competitive (Bambam, Mewn, Turk, any pros) will start leaving. What's the point of promoting and focusing on a game that is officially a sinking ship.

If you're taking the game seriously, this game is officially no longer for you. If you want to queue with friends in tl and qm to play a moba with blizzard ip, then it still is and is fine. But when "half" the point of the game is now worthless I can absolutely understand why people call it "dead".

[Arcling 898]

1 hour ago, Nazamber said:

I seriously don't understand how removing the esports factor kills the game for anyone? (...) we all knew the HotS player base was considered the most toxic and uneventful player base...

It's not just about e-sports, but they also haved removed some developers from the team and moved them somewhere else. Most toxic playerbase? HotS playerbase isn't even close to being most toxic, I've seen communities far worse, but if we are talking just about Blizzard, Overwatch is way worse, though it's getting better due to it's playerbase stagnating (so those who have played OW only when it was still fairly new, have left already). They even had to make player profiles hidden by default, because if you had chat turned on, people constantly insulted each other for their respective levels and ranks, even in QM and arcade.

[greatCraft 29]

what if the HGC wasn't the reason why HoTs wasn't reaching financial goals?

[greatCraft 29]

what if the HGC was not the problem for Heroes of the Storm in reaching its goals?  ?

[shanghaied 55]

I'm not sure if I appreciate them announcing these things or not.

On the one hand, its transparency, and it hints at the level of involvement I can expect from them going forward.

On the other, what good is this statement actually doing?  This sort of announcement is the figurative equivalent of firing a giant torpedo into the hull of the game's community.  Why shake player confidence even more when the game is apparently struggling?

I get that you have to announce things like HGC and HoTD not returning, but the additional language is just... negative. Why not say you're reallocating resources from those to pour into the game, or reevaluating the esport format for HoTS, and leave it open?

At worst just silently withdraw support.  You'll have howling from fans but at least they'll be less inclined to look at their time in HoTS as borrowed. 

I know fans want to crawl up devs butts these days, but sometimes limiting information is actually beneficial.  This past year, Blizzard seems to have completely forgotten that, which is really surprising for them.

For a company that is usually modest about this sort of stuff, this to me is very loud writing on the wall.  And its sad; I've really enjoyed this game and I hate the MoBA format typically.

[Aasgier 36]

17 hours ago, greatCraft said:

Dear people in charge,

 

 

**** YOU. I HOPE YA'LL SUFFER.

 

ooh, this is a public forum. "Best wishes guys. Thanks for the memories."

BY FIRE BE PURGED!

[Alkasar 55]

23 hours ago, greatCraft said:

Dear people in charge,

 

 

**** YOU. I HOPE YA'LL SUFFER.

 

ooh, this is a public forum. "Best wishes guys. Thanks for the memories."

 

19 hours ago, Steveson said:

- We will shift some HOTS developers to other projects. This will not affect the game at all
- We are removing official tournaments

You know this situation is kind of similar to what happened to Valve's Team Fortress 2. But there is a difference - TF2 was popular and remains pretty popular (not as much as other games on Steam but still) to this day. HOTS while was received pretty well never got as popular as DOTA 2 or LoL. So it kinda figures that Blizzard are gonna pull the plug on it. Sad but true.
Also i think the order in which Blizzard will be doing the same thing to other IPs is going to be somewhat like this:
1 - Diablo 3 (ditto)
2 - HOTS (Already happening)
3 - Starcraft 2 (Nobody plays it and right now the only new content we are getting are skins and coop commanders - mode nobody plays right now)
4 and 5 - World of Warcraft/Overwatch (nobody knows which one will survive longer)
6 - Hearthstone

 

23 hours ago, Kaelos said:

Are they killing yet another game which I really like? So depressing

What every one of you seems to forget.

Heroes of the Storm was meant to be a minigame in Starcraft2 Heart of the Swarm. It has been bigger, better and more popular than it was planned to be. 

It is a great game which surpassed its own goals. We should not cry for that setback. We still got more than we were ever supposed to get.

Edited December 15, 2018 by Alkasar

[Stan 5,240]

Updated the article with the message about the future of Heroes.

[Koxsos 38]

Well RIP.
Gotta learn to play LoL again then...
I mean it's not going to die, it just is not going to be looked after and that makes me sad.

[Sholto 32]

On 12/14/2018 at 12:12 AM, Steveson said:

But not as rapidly as WoW yeah.

This is a fiction.  Subscription retention is high, IIRC, around Wrath levels.  It doesn't matter what peak numbers are, it matters what's being retained and they are at high levels of retention despite the salt that is present and has been present for every single expansion.

Heroes was a money loser.  They can't keep pouring resources into making something happen that players obviously aren't there for.  Simple.  Not conspiracy.   The Heroes team couldn't even afford to bill out Blizzard's own internal cinematics team and what was shown at Blizzcon was outsourced.  And while it is a nice looking game in its genre, and I like the use of Blizz IP, it seemed pretty obvious at the last two BlizzCon that there simply wasn't as much interest in the e-sports side either, whereas OWL is already expanding, and attracting investment the likes of which doesn't exist anywhere else in e-sports.

And nobody lost their jobs, they're moving to other teams.   Because Blizz doesn't actually function like corporate Activision or a company like EA.  Based on the numbers this move will only be felt and even noticed by a somewhat vocal minority, and then parroted by the gaggle of folks who are just negative all the time because that's what makes them happy.  For the most part, based on the numbers, this is a move that will be hardly even noticed by gaming as a whole or e-sports in particular.   Otherwise they would have supported the title like they have Hearthstone.

 

Edited December 18, 2018 by Sholto

[Misuteri 26]

Let’s just say it’s the beginning of the end.

The one thing HOTS misses out on is any ability for a comeback in competitive play.  Once a team starts to slip 95% of the time it’s game over.

I love the game as far as art, having fun with it, looking forward to new characters and maps.  However it truly isn’t a great eSport game.

I’ve been playing it nearly 2 years and never felt compelled to spend one dime on the game between earning gold, the 10-12 characters I got “free” and only purchasing characters in a current meta.  I am the worst player from a business standpoint in that I’ve figured out how to get everything I want and not pay for it.

[InfernoPunch400 1]

Rip HotS. you will be missed






 

 

 

 

 

 

JK, no one will miss you, or even remember you existed anywhere past 2015.