Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm moba is finally dead. The game is going into maintenance mode – there is no more new content.
It had been foreseeable for a long time, but now the time has (unfortunately) come. Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm moba is all but dead. The developers have announced that the game will be placed on maintenance mode effective immediately. This should herald the last chapter in the history of this Blizzard game.
What did Blizzard say? In an official blog post, Blizzard talked about Heroes of the Storm. It is mentioned that HotS is now celebrating its 7th birthday in June – only to follow directly with bad news for the fans. So it says:
In the future we will be heroes [of the Storm] in a manner similar to our other long-running games, StarCraft and StarCraft II.
Or to put it another way: the game is put into “maintenance mode”.
There’s a parting gift: In the coming week there will be a small patch that will unlock the “Epic Arcane Chaos Lizard” mount for all players.
What does maintenance mode mean? This means that there will be no more new content in the game. New heroes, maps or skins have probably died with it. However, the shop will remain active and all functions that are necessary for normal operation – i.e. changing hero rotations – will continue to work. The developers also want to bring further improvements to the game client and balance changes if they are necessary.
But no one needs to expect big hero reworks like there have been in recent years. The game will remain largely in its current state.
How have the last few years gone for HotS? Rather sluggish. Several years ago it was announced at BlizzCon that the HotS development team was drastically reduced. New heroes came only extremely rarely. “A new hero every 2-3 months” became “a new hero a year” – and now none at all. Even then, many suspected that it was only a matter of time before the development of new content was completely stopped – that time has now come.
What did Heroes of the Storm want to be? With Heroes of the Storm, Blizzard actually wanted to provide an answer to DOTA and League of Legends. They wanted to score points with the well-known Blizzard heroes from all the major franchises.
Unlike other MOBAs on the market, there were some unique selling points. For example, HotS did without a shop system and instead uses talents. The whole team also shared a level of experience so that everyone could work towards the common goal. There were also additional objectives in each map that went beyond simply “tear down enemy defenses”. These goals repeatedly forced group fights and gave the game its own dynamic.
Despite this, Heroes of the Storm simply never took off like other mobas – partly because it missed the right moment.
Will you still be playing Heroes of the Storm in maintenance mode? Or will the Moba finally fly off your hard drive with this announcement?