BlizzCon 2014: Heroes of the Storm Panel
by Adam Holisky 
Nov 7th 2014 at 9:30PM
At BlizzCon 2014 Blizzard held a Heroes of the Storm panel that went over where the game is now and where it's going in the future. Instead of a live blog I'm going to give the bullet points of each segment.
What's happened since BlizzCon 2013
- Talk-home alpha started immediately after BlizzCon 2013. Internally only, just employees, who played from home.
- Blizzard used the take-home alpha to "find the fun" of the game, and make sure that the designers could play the game, as well as work on it.
- Technical alpha started in March 2014. It's a very small test group. They're using this group to learn how to refine their team and learn about the development of this particular game.
- Patches every 4 – 6 weeks, constant evolution. Lots of smaller chunks, much more often.
- Everything is fair game for improvements.
- Technical alpha is the core gameplay, a lot more will come in the future
- Added Garden of Terror battleground
- Added a lot of heroes. Murkey, Brightwing, Zagara, Rehgar, Azmodan.
- Invites
- Currently adding 15x the number of players than were initially invited to the alpha
- Closed beta starts on January 13, 2015
Draft Mode
- Teams take alternating turns picking heroes. Coin flip determines which team goes first.
- No duplicate heroes.
- Battleground selection is known, allows for better hero picking.
- Used by all ranked modes.
- Provided as an option in custom games.
- Heroes matchup added to loading screens for unranked and ranked play
- No hero bans initially – you won't be able to say no to certain heroes.
- Hero league – any number of heroes queue up, matchmaker system fills up the rest of the team.
- Team league – premade 5-man teams.
- Based off of Hearthstone, StarCraft, and other games.
- Rank starts at 50, you go up to 1.
- Winning game earns points, losing games you lose points
- Points determine your rank. This is also called personal rank.
- Number of points you earn depend on the difference in skill level.
- Each season ranks will start new.
- Retain points based on last season's rank.
- Skill rating – algorithm that tries to calculate how good of a player you are. Hidden score. Persists season to season.
- Parties of any size can queue up.
- Fills your team with players of similar sizes.
- Favor matches against parties of similar sizes.
- Personal ranking and skill ranking are your own.
- Must have reached player level 30.
- Team leader pre-create a team with a unique name.
- Total of 9 players on your team, only 5 can play at once, however.
- Can be a member of up to 3 teams.
- Team has a ranking and a skill ranking. This is different from the hero league.
- Must have reached player level 40.
- If you leave a game early, you'll be flagged as a leaver.
- If you're flagged as a leaver, Blizzard determines that you enjoy that style of play.
- You'll get matched with other people who leave games early.
- You can get out of that group by not leaving games.
- If you play a ton of games and then have to leave one all the sudden, you'll be forgiven. Graces leaves will be given.
- Jaina. Massive amounts of burst damage.
- Thrall. Burst oriented assassin character. Shaman.
- Sylvanas. Dark archer. Mind Control is her signature ability.
- The Lost Vikings. Best way to play them is to spread them all across the map.
- Sky Temple. Capture the temples at top, middle, and bottom. It's a super high-fantasy desert kingdom.
- Tomb of the Spider Queen. Kill minions, collect gems, summon the spider queen and kill her.
- They will exist.
- Blizzard doesn't have the rewards locked down yet.
- It's "definitely an option" to bring in Heroes from the books.
- Absolutely will add Overwatch heroes (eventually).
- Blizzard is still looking at talent gating.
- It's "definitely a possibility" to add in different types of game modes, like PvE. Not something being actively worked on.
Filed under: Heroes of the Storm
