This is what Ive never understood about companies like this, just say the truth i don’t want to hear vague comments just say what it is if its activision isn’t happy with HOTS numbers and financials just say that be clear to us so when the game shuts down we’re not like well you said it was going to be supported in the future. I know HOTS isn’t the most popular MOBA but i still love playing the game , because its fun it has charcters in it i know from games ive been playing since i was 16 years old and its from a developer i used to consider the best in the industry. It seems like more and more and more blizzard is just turning into another development studio and this once beloved studio is loosing the faith and respect of its customers and fan base. If this is all activisions calling the whole stuff that’s been happening recently they must really not know why blizz has been so successful all these years.
This is truly sad. I hope our gane will not die.
Very sad times ahead. Best luck to all the content creators/streamers and now ex-pro players out there, my heart is out to you!
you know voljin is in the game right?
bla bla bla bla, death game
I’m sad to hear that, HGC is far more enjoyable than DotA 2 and OW pro tournaments and I really liked watching it.
I hope it will come back in the future or that we’ll have something similar.
These are dark days but there is still hope. I truly believe HOTS has another chance to come back again and we should be looking at this as an opportunity to shake things up. This is my feedback to the dev team:
Devote 40% of your team effort into growth initiatives. Put egos aside and recognise that a lot of people have tried HOTS and did not find the game fun. Let’s face it, if the playerbase was twice or three-times the existing playerbase, we wouldn’t be in this situation. Let’s revisit first principles and experiment with changes using a low risk environment like brawls. LOL and DOTA 2 have experimented with shorter game formats (and to some extent introduced shared xp from what I have heard of Nexus Blitz). I don’t see HOTS experimenting to this same extent. I won’t go into the possible root causes here, there have been many great ideas raised by others in the past. If we only focus on the existing player base, this game will just slowly die.
The remaining 60% of your efforts should be devoted to maintaining the existing player base. With a reduced dev team, a focus on quality rather than quantity is more important than ever. There are a lot of fantastic skins, sprays, voicelines, and emotes but there are also many terrible ones, which is a waste of your team’s time. You should also be expecting the playerbase to shrink and need prepare for that, especially in minor regions, for example by combining HL and TL. It will also be an up-hill-battle to maintain matchmaking quality with an even smaller playerbase. As others have mentioned, re-think your monetisation model. The loot box model is terrible. So I would suggest trialing new methods, e.g. allowing players to convert gems into shards (time limited and up to say 1,000 gems as a trial). To build the community and support streamers, you could consider investing seed money to run regional amateur tournaments.
Your remaining dev team will need to devote their hearts and soul to this game, more than ever in the next 6 months, if it is to survive in a meaningful way. Judging by the outpouring from the community you can be sure that, we the players and streamers, will be rallying behind you and your team in this phase of our journey.
I do believe the Heroes team is genuinely committed to keeping this game great. I only hope Activision is willing to let you.
From what I gathered in this thread:
Blizzard in silence.
Blizzard haters: See. This game is dead. The silence treatment is the proof of this. HoTS is dead.
Blizzard reassured that they will continue supporting HoTS with their best
Blizzard haters: LIES! TYPICAL PR TALK! NONSENSE! DISINGENUOUS ACT! FAKE!
Blizzard: …Wow.
Hopefully you’re not implying it’s okay to completely shaft people for playing the game too much.
Not everyone (myself included) chooses to put in 200 more seconds of real life searching for ranked games (forgetting about the most recent patch) over quick match. Searching QM would get me a match 180 seconds sooner than a ranked game. Sometimes even in ranked games then probably arguing teammates might even cost you your ranked match points, or something along those lines; just seems like more of a ‘risk’ for ranked games. But everyone who wanted to watch competitive (even if they can’t do it themselves) still had the option of watching those that did have the time and dedication.
I play QM a lot, and made a very recent ‘complaint’ thread about QM play with the recent patch (you can check it out yourself for a replay of me getting pounded too); point being ranked gameplay has its own issues too (and also supposedly more problems with the recent patch). Shouldn’t mean it’s okay to throw people under the bus.
I have been a Blizzard fan since the times of Warcraft 2. I played Wow for years, paying for it, even when it wasnt available in my country. I’ve kept my subscription up and running after i stopped playing. It’s been my favourite game and I wanted to be a part of it not having enough time to actually play it. So i was thinking that I can at least support it and support Blizzard. I was so excited for Heroes of the Storm, I got invited into closed beta and never stopped playing after. I made a lot of gaming friends and formed strong bonds within the game. Every new hero made me so excited! It felt like i was a little child waiting for Christmas presents. I was spending money on heroes, mounts, skins and stimpacks, I was thinking of this as a way of supporting Blizzard who provides such an amazing experience for me and for my friends. And I’ll say to you there are so few thing in this world that can make me feel that way. Now it seems there’s nothing left to support.
This announcement feels similar to finding out that Santa Claus wasn’t real. Blizzard managed to keep this child inside of me alive for so long. And now this excited child inside has been killed off one more time by the reality it didnt want to face.
I am beyond sad.
HGC was superfun to watch. I feel for pro-scene players, hosts and every single person who was part of it. It is a sick Christmas present.
Along with the Diablo Immortals, that thing should have been announced at BlizzCon. You should’ve got the reaction you deserve first hand.
Now we are witnessing how does effective management ruin everything people care about. Welcome to reality and way to go Activision-Blizzard.
I don’t disagree with your point. Trying to fix the correct problem the wrong way happens a lot.
However, the ‘granddaddy of mobas’ you’re talking about started off as a mod from Warcraft 3, with the mod itself an idea based on another mod from Starcraft (both games of which Blizzard made, by the way). The rest is history, but not very notably ethical history either.
Can you guess why that ‘powerhouse’ is still standing? I’ll give you a hint: Look for similarities in the intended audience of Diablo: Immortal.
This literally has not given a single detail that was not given yesterday. It’s him straining to smile through being screwed by blizzard. The devs are still leaving, blizz is still giving up on the game, and the game is still going on life support. Nothing has changed. The game has lost the focal point of the balance, and will slowly dissolve into a cluster of heroes that cannot be balanced because there is no focal point. He is trying to sugar coat the game being left to die, and him along with it.
I have always loved blizzard, I have stuck by them for years and this IS a resignation of the game being dead. This guy is smiling through being shafted, his game being left to die and him along with it. The focal point for balance was the pro scene, what will it be now? Bronze league? Gold? Diamond? You simply cannot have all heroes balanced at all levels of play, especially with a skeleton crew. They are giving upon HoTS. The coming content will be much like diablo 3, just something to keep people complacent, and while that works for diablo 3, as it is pve and you can just balance by buffing constantly, heroes will not do well with that mentality.
frequently looks for pro players
cancells its entire pro league
nice way to treat a pros arentcha?
braindead game braindead devs. nothing amazed me since its almost identical with alpha version.
Better yet, why not add a Destiny 2 hero instead?
I dont care it your game is dying or not or if this decission was hard for you…do you people realise that you endet careers over night wihout any warnings to them…you could at least have the respect and the decency to tell them a bit sooner. That will be it for my journey with blizzard and i will not play anymore of your games, im sorry but that was literaly a b*tch move…
Such a political message, even if it’s true it makes we want to not believe it. "And I’m excited , yes I’m excited " cmon stop that bs just write the truth and we moove on.
Do you aware that SC2 Coop still getting a new commanders regularly?
Why use D3 when HoTS is most likely will following SC2 coop route? Did D3 even has microtransaction as HoTS did?
Feel free to consider that hero the last one of the sorts.