by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

There were a lot of different things announced at the BlizzCon 2013 opening ceremony, but nothing generated more hype with the crowd than Heroes of the Storm, with the exception of Hearthstone on the iPhone. Fans went into the segment with almost no understanding of what the upcoming title would bring and left with a burning need to play the game. Here’s what we know thus far:

Champions of Blizzard

There’s no surprise here. Heroes of the Storm will feature characters from the Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo universes, all colliding in a crazy, essentially loreless environment. Initial trailers showed Nova Terra, Diablo, Arthas, Jim Raynor, Kerrigan and Tyrael duking it out. Beyond that, we did see a character selection screen, and that gives us some more hints as to who might be involved. Moreover, based on the image above, it seems like we can definitely expect character skins, something totally commonplace in the MOBA market these days.

Based on what we’ve seen via the trailer and the concept art, here’s the list of characters we can safely assume are going to be in the game:

• Tyrael (Diablo)
• Witch Doctor (Diablo)
• Diablo (Diablo)
• Demon Hunter (Diablo)
• Barbarian? (Diablo)
• Nova Terra (Starcraft)
• Kerrigan (Starcraft)
• Jim Raynor (Starcraft)
• Zeratul (Starcraft)
• Uther (Warcraft)
• Arthas (Warcraft)
• Jaina Proudmoore (Warcraft)
• Malfurion Stormrage (Warcraft)
• Illidan Stormrage (Warcraft)
• Sylvanas Windrunner (Warcraft)
• Anub’arak (Warcraft)
• Chen Stormstout (Warcraft)
• Thrall (Warcraft)

Character Roles and Builds

Heroes of the Storm will feature four distinct hero archetypes, as opposed to the usual three. The four types include Assassin, more DPS oriented, Warrior, bigs that can soak up hits, Support, healers and buffers and Specialists, which are complementary characters based on your team composition.

According to the official site, no one character will be pigeonholed into a specific fighting style or appearance, making for unique experiences. There are also mounts, which would explain why some people thought they saw Diablo riding a wolf. That poor, poor wolf.

Objective Based

While conventional MOBAs feature largely PvP based objectives with PvE in the form of last hitting and jungling, Heroes of the Storm will feature PvE objectives that most closely mirror the quests in Alterac Valley. Starcraft 2 Game Director Dustin Browder explained that Heroes of the Storm maps will allow players to effectively perform in-game quests to acquire the aid of pirate mercenaries, golems and other unaligned factions. In one map, players will even be able to imbue one of their heroes of the power of a Draconic demi-god, granting them untold strength that will apparently crush other heroes foolish enough to challenge them.

Before purists get up in arms, consider that in other MOBAs, players can group up to taken down entities such as Kongor and Roshan, along with the myriad of PvE creatures in League of Legends. This, in my opinion, sounds totally reasonable, and frankly more interesting.

Closed Beta

If you were concerned that Heroes of the Storm might not be out for some time, think again. Closed beta sign-ups officially began today, and that means you can log into your Battle.net account manager and opt-in, similar to how it was with Hearthstone. There’s no word at this point if the game will feature beta keys, but that could be answered during today’s panel. For now, go ahead and sign up early.

There’s a playable alpha mode of Heroes of the Storm at BlizzCon meaning that, if you’re in Anaheim, you can give the game a go. The rest of us will just have to enjoy watching others play. We’ll expect more information to come on this title later in the afternoon.