Blizzard Enters MOBA Fray With 'Heroes Of The Storm'

Visitors play ''Starcraft'' at the Blizzard exhibition stand during the Gamescom 2011 fair in Cologne August 18, 2011. The Gamescom convention, Europe's largest video games trade fair, runs from August 17 to August 21. Reuters/Ina Fassbender

The prodigious success of "World of Warcraft" stands testimony to Blizzard Entertainment's pioneering breakthrough in the games as a service model. However, despite all its experience in the this business model, the publisher hasn't been able to tap into the massive free-to-play MOBA games market populated by success stories such as Valve's "DoTA" and RIOT Games' "League of Legends." Because MOBA and free-to-play are the two major bywords for success these days, it's only natural that the granddaddy of online gaming brings a contender in the fray.

Blizzard is doing exactly that with "Heroes of the Storm." The game will mark the company's entry into the MOBA genre. This is ironic because the prevailing king of the genre "DoTA" was originally a "Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne" mod, before Valve picked up the intellectual property rights. The "Diablo" maker has announced that the game will be launched on June 2, according to Gamespot.

"With its focus on team play and fast-paced fun, Heroes of the Storm is a fresh take on a very popular genre," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment. "We've built Heroes of the Storm in a way that makes it accessible to new players, but also challenging enough for veterans who really want to put their skills to the test."

The Blizzard brand name commands great interest from hardened MOBA fans. This is underscored by a total of whopping nine million subscribers signing up for the initial closed beta for the game, as noted by MMO Champion. Between that and the June launch, "Heroes of the Storm" will undergo an open beta starting May 20. This will allow eager players to try out the game in advance and enable Blizzard to make final optimisation for game balance and stability. Hopefully, this will prevent day-one issues associated with unprecedented server loads and other technical problems.

Although a brand new title, Blizzard has ensured franchise loyalty for "Heroes of the Storm" by including some of the well-known characters from its existing games such as "Warcraft," "StarCraft" and "Diablo." The core gameplay is similar to the existing benchmarks in the genre such as "League of Legends" and "DoTA."

For those new to the genre, MOBA is short for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena – an off-shoot of the Real-Time Strategy games. This class of games focus on fast-paced action and eschew the slower and tedious RTS mechanics of unit and structure building. This allows MOBA games to offer an exciting blend of tactical depth and skill-based fast action gameplay.

Blizzard has announced that Quick Match and Cooperative are two of the game modes that will be available at launch, with the latter pitting players against AI opponents. However, hardened MOBA players will be more interested in the "highly competitive, draft-style ranked play" which was also teased by the company. Videogamer notes that the game will launch with 30 playable heroes and seven battlegrounds. Blizzard will also host a live-streamed "Heroes of the Storm" event a day before its official release.

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