Posts with tag blizzard-all-stars

Our friends over at Adriacraft have been extremely busy datamining Blizzard's upcoming Hero Brawler Heroes of the Storm. As a result, we have a huge dump of information from them, including skins, mounts, Hero lore, and more.

Digging through giant posts like these can be something of a daunting task, especially with the strings. The extensive pictures of heroes and skins are fantastic, I am a particular fan of the "Lurkablo"-Diablo and the "Diablo Kaijo" skins, and their flavor text: "The government of Neo-Tristram grew overconfident as their experiments yielded more and more nuclear energy. They thought the power of the atom was under their control. They were wrong." But why are we interested in the strings, the lines of code at the top?

Well, they indicate that Heroes of the Storm is going the same way as Hearthstone, by working off a dual-currency system. The currency that allows you to buy skins, mounts and more could be your local currency, as suggested by the Select Currency, Tax and Real Money purchase strings. We can also see that heroes are sometimes free-to-play, and that you will get a reward for beta-testing the store. Not only that, but the various access unlocks suggest a secret shop!

First and foremost, if that trailer from CarBot didn't even crack a smile, you have a heart of stone. This trailer, or tribute as CarBot calls it, was shown at BlizzCon to introduce gamers to Blizzard's newest offering: Heroes of the Storm. Anyone who's been keeping an eye on my Twitter will know that I was almost as excited about Heroes of the Storm as I was about Warlords of Draenor, so I took the earliest opportunity to go and play it. And then two subsequent opportunities to go back and play it again.

I've played a fair bit of League of Legends, and more recently quite a bit of SMITE, and I enjoy both games, and the MOBA genre as a whole. Blizzard is, I should mention, apparently keen to get away from calling this a MOBA, and move towards the idea of a "Hero Brawler". There are several important differences between the mechanics of Heroes compared to League, particularly, which I really think are fantastic shifts away from a bloated system.

Talents over Item Shop

Now I will not pretend for a second that I am a pro League of Legends player. Heck, I'm probably not even a good one. I got into LoL very late, very late indeed, and there are a couple of elements that have stood in my way as a newer player. The item shop is definitely one of those elements. Even since the introduction of the Shopping List system, and with the Recommended Items list, it's confusing when you're just getting started. Working out what you need and knowing what's good are second nature to a seasoned player, but tricky to a beginner.

Blizzard's MOBA is now officially known as Heroes of the Storm! That's right, remember that trademark filed earlier this year? Speculation has abounded as to what it might be -- one of the front-running theories being that it was the name of the next WoW expansion -- but it turns out that was wrong. Not that anyone's sad to be wrong in this case, I'm sure!

Given the timing of this (incredibly adorable) mini-trailer's release, I think it's a safe bet we'll be seeing a good deal more from this title at BlizzCon, and I'm certainly looking forward to it!

WoW Insider posted back in January about an interview between Eurogamer magazine and Chris Sigaty, Starcraft 2's Production Director, about the ongoing silence on the title. Back then, it was confirmed that there was still a team working on it, but that they were looking at other MOBAs and their business model.

But now, as our sister site Massively reports, Blizzard has posted looking for an E-Sports director for the upcoming title, amongst other things. What does this mean? Well, Blizzard isn't renowned for hiring people at great speed any more than it is for making games at great speed, but as Massively points out, this is pretty firm confirmation that the game is still at least in the works.

I'm allowing myself to hope that there might be an announcement at BlizzCon this year, although given how it's in only a month and a half, that might be rather ambitious of me.

The above image is pretty much all the information available on the Blizzard All-Stars official website, with the exception of the usual legal and copyright information. We particularly enjoy the "Soonish(TM)".

But really, this game was announced back at BlizzCon 2010, so what's causing the delay? The copyright dispute with Valve over the use of the DotA trademark may have set them back a little, but that can't possibly account for the current silence. Back in 2011, Senior Game Designer Jonny Ebbert said that the 2010 version of the game had been "flattened", implying that it was being totally reworked, shifting away from the earlier model of an add-on to Heart of the Swarm.

Eurogamer spoke to Chris Sigaty, StarCraft 2's production director, regarding the company's prolonged silence on the title.