Blizzard draws a comparison between Heroes of the Storm and other MOBA games

It seems like we hear about a new MOBA game every few months now and while most of them seem mediocre to put it lightly, there are a few new ones that do look promising. Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm is definitely one of them even though the company doesn’t actually refer to the game as being a MOBA. Blizzard says that its upcoming title is in fact a “team brawler”, which implies that there are certain differences between Heroes of the Storm and similar games like League of Legends and Dota 2. As fate would have it, Game Designer Kent-Erik Hagman spoke about those differences last week during Blizzcon and you can find a few of his statements below.

“We wanted to keep some of these things so they’re still familiar, so they’re still played like the type of games that you’ve already grown and loved while still being able to offer fresh new things,” Hangman said in an interview with PC Gamer. He mentions the talent system as being one of the features that make Heroes of the Storm different than other MOBAs. This system provides “gameplay that’s kinda similar to an item shop as you might see in another game but fits the gameplay of ours which is fast-paced, so you do it one the field.” The gameplay is also quite different in Heroes of the Storm than in games like Dota 2 and League of Legends as there are other traditional mechanics missing besides item shops, such as last hitting for example. Hangaman says about this that Blizzard is placing the emphasis less on “the tactical gameplay of nailing the last hit and more on the strategic gameplay.”

Elsewhere, the Game Designer talks a bit about eSports and how it affected the development of Heroes of the Storm. Hangman admits that this was a primary concern while developing Starcraft 2, but it was not a priority in the case of Blizzard’s team brawler. Naturally, the company still hopes that Heroes of the Storm will become successful on the eSports scene, but the main focus here was to make a fun game that would appeal to a large audience. Hangmans points to Hearthstone as a good example of a game that was developed just to be fun, with little to no effort put into making in popular among professional competitive players. And yet, Hearthstone is becoming very big on the eSports scene at the moment, so perhaps Heroes of the Storm will become popular as well.