by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

Hungry for more information about Heroes of the Storm? BlizzPro had the chance to sit down with Lead Software Engineer Alan Dabiri at BlizzCon 2013 and talk about a number of topics, ranging from unlocking heroes, the differences between Heroes of the Storm and MOBAs, and more.

Veterans of the genre no doubt understand just what a pain in the butt it can be to play as a support character. Potential for being verbally abused aside, playing a support in a losing battle can be nightmarish, as that hero archetype is often forced to become both underleveled and undergeared. Dabiri explained that, in Heroes of the Storm, support characters are able to have a lot more fun because of shared experience and the lack of item progression.

Abathur might be a support hero, but don’t expect him to do anything short of ruin you day.

“Our support characters, they’ve been doing all kinds of whacky stuff that you probably wouldn’t be able to do in other games because if you’re not up there killing, getting that experience and moving up, you’re falling way behind, but now I can be a healer if I want, I can be Uther. I can jump into Tassadar and do all kinds of shielding and other types of mechanics, crazy stuff with Abathur who is probably the most unique here, where he’s basically not even out on the battlefield, he might be back in the base, jumping into other heroes and almost controlling the battlefield, helping other lanes, so there’s a lot of unique heroes and abilities that we can do because of that team leveling that allows it to still benefit the team and not feel like I’m falling behind because I’m not out there getting those kills at the front.”

Of all the differences between Heroes and the Storm and the rest of the genre, that will likely be one of the most enjoyable for long time support players and it absolutely makes sense, given Blizzard’s constant reminder that the game will be ‘team first’. Support characters will still have abilities that feature healing, damage mitigation, et cetera, they just won’t have the huge handicap of being level five with an opposing level 14 carry running around.