On the Slow, Preventable Doom of Heroes of the Storm

It isn’t often that I read a published opinion on a topic and feel compelled to publicly agree with what I’ve just read. That’s exactly why I’ve decided to write this article, however. Yesterday evening, I stumbled across an article penned by Chris Neal of Massively OP. Reading that piece caused me to realize that I’m actually subconsciously more worried about the fate of Blizzard Entertainment’s MOBA title Heroes of the Storm than I originally realized.

For those of you who might not be aware, near the end of 2018, Blizzard abruptly and drastically reduced Heroes of the Storm’s development staff. They justified this change by basically explaining that they needed the talents of the dev team assigned to Heroes to be applied to other projects. They then took things a step further and essentially gutted the game’s esports scene by getting rid of its main championship series as well as the tournament marketed toward college students known as “Heroes of the Dorm.”

Some portion of Heroes of the Storm’s player base (myself included) would argue that these decisions spelled doom for the game. From that point, things became a matter of whether that doom would come sooner or later. By my understanding, those involved in the game’s esports scene were given very little (if any) prior notice of Blizzard’s decisions. If that’s the case, they essentially found out about what had happened right alongside everyone else in the game’s community.

Of course, the game is still live and even being somewhat actively patched and maintained at the time of writing. That’s an obvious sign that the final nail hasn’t been hammered into Heroes of the Storm’s coffin quite yet. However, an equally clear sign of the effects of the game’s reduced development team comes in the fact that there has been a drastic reduction in the frequency with which new characters are added to the game’s roster.

No new heroes have been added to the game so far this year. The newest character added to the game (Hogger) was implemented in a patch that went live on December 1st, 2020. Before that, Overwatch’s Mei was added in an update that took place on June 23rd of that same year. Those two were the only new heroes added to the game in the entirety of 2020.

Prior to Mei’s addition there was Deathwing, who officially entered the fray on December 3rd, 2019. As I recall, Deathwing’s upcoming addition was virtually the only thing the Heroes of the Storm team was able to announce at 2019’s BlizzCon event. Speaking of events, within the Massively OP article I mentioned in this piece’s opening paragraph, Chris Neal notes that Heroes of the Storm’s special winter event is still ongoing despite the fact that we’re two months away from summer here in the U.S.

Given everything I’ve mentioned thus far – the dwindling numbers of new playable characters, the increasing time between new additions, and the apparent lack of enthusiasm about the game’s originally time-limited events – I strongly suspect that Heroes of the Storm’s days are numbered. Well, honestly, I think the game’s days have been numbered since those fateful decisions were made in December of 2018, but you get the point.

At this point, I wish to present Blizzard Entertainment with an ultimatum. I know full well that my words probably won’t do very much (if any) good for the fate of Heroes, but I think Blizzard has a clear choice here. They should either restore as much of the game’s original development team as is feasible or simply pull the metaphorical plug on a title it certainly seems like they no longer wish to support. Basically, Blizzard, either start caring more thoroughly about the game like we all know you used to, or put it out of its misery.