Giving Heroes of the Storm a Shot

I’ve been invited to the Heroes of the Storm Alpha since early December, but only this week did I get on and give it a try, and it is a lot of fun.

Of course the style is a mix of League of Legends MOBA with a Blizzard twist, but there are many differences between HotS and LoL. While I am sure I haven’t seen all the differences in my short playing time, here are a few that stand for me after a few games.

1. Don’t worry about last hitting – there is NO gold during gameplay in HotS. Blizzard has done away with ingame gold and instead just have minions provide expeierence – and that expeirence is for the entire team, which leads to the next point…
2. Your team levels up together. The is no individual level, but each team has a level that all 5 champions are at. Expeirence is gained by the team and if one team is at a higher level than the other, all the champs are fighting at that higher level. This is kinda good for when you get a disconnect, but I haven’t seen many of those – or at least many that have lasted more than a minute or so.
3. Towers prefer to shoot minions regardless of if you are shooting the heroes whose team is controlling the towers. This is good on offense, but bad on defense. I have to get used to the fact that just because I am in range of my tower, the enemy is not deterred from attacking me if there are minions around.
4. Towers provide gateways that can only be passed through by the owning team which gives added protection as you can run back through your gate to escape from the enemy team. This added protection is offset by the fact that the towers have limited ammo. You need to pay attention to towers because once they are out of ammo, they provide not protection and you can dance around in their range without getting shot.
5. Jungle camps can be recruited to fight for your team. If you defeat the various jungle camps, you can stand in a circle where they spawn and flip it to your team’s color. This will cause them to start moving to attack enemy structures which can really turn a lane around.

These are just a handful of the differences between the games that I have seen. There are plenty of others, but for the most part, I have been enjoying the gameplay and loving the experience of learning a new game. Beta is coming soon, so I suggest you give Heroes a shot to see how you like it.

#HotS #HeroesOfTheStorm #LoL #Moba #LeagueOfLegends