Heroes of the Storm Now Truly on Life Support

Let me tell you right off the bat, folks, it brings me absolutely no joy whatsoever to write this article. Longtime readers (and/or fans of our YouTube channel) might know that I’m still a pretty big fan of Blizzard Entertainment’s cross-universe MOBA game, Heroes of the Storm, despite all the turmoil and tumult it’s been through during its seven-year existence. You may also recall that I went into more detail about the game’s trials and tribulations in this article.

In that piece, I mentioned that Blizzard hasn’t added any new playable heroes to the in-game roster in well over a year. Nor does Blizzard seem intent on updating the game’s seasonal events in a timely manner. It certainly felt as if they had all but forgotten about Heroes of the Storm, but were still keeping the game alive as a hollow shell of its former self so as to keep extracting money from in-game purchases. Well, now it seems they’ve stopped just short of saying so in a recent blog post.

To clarify, they didn’t exactly explicitly say, “the only reason Heroes is still playable is so that we can suck even more money out of your wallets than we’re already getting from Diablo Immortal” or anything like that. I think that would be a textbook case of “saying the quiet part out loud.” Rather, Heroes of the Storm has now officially entered what I think is euphemistically termed “maintenance mode.”

That is to say, the game will remain active and playable until Blizzard decides otherwise. However, it will receive no further major updates or purchasable content like new mounts, skins, or characters. Any updates made to Heroes of the Storm from this point forward will take the form of things like general maintenance, bug fixes, and the occasional character balance patch when necessary. To serve as what could be charitably described as Blizzard’s best attempt at a sendoff of sorts for the game, all players will receive the “incredibly rare Epic Arcane Lizard mount with next week’s patch.”

I’d like to break down some of what Blizzard actually said in the aforementioned blog post and offer my thoughts on it. I consider myself rather passionate about this topic, and I don’t normally get quite as fired up as I currently am about things like this, so buckle up. “To our Heroes community, we say ‘thank you.’” They’re halfheartedly thanking us for all the money we’ve given them over the past seven years, I presume.

“You continue to be one of our most passionate communities [and] we’re grateful for your continued dedication and support[.]” Gee, Blizzard, I wonder if this game’s community would be even more passionate and dedicated if you hadn’t abruptly eviscerated its eSports scene and reassigned the vast majority of its development staff back in 2018? “[A]s always, we look forward to seeing you in the Nexus.” The part I’m guessing they left out there was “until we decide to shut down the servers once we’re satisfied we’ve gotten as much money as possible from the lot of you.”

I know this article is just the impassioned ranting and raving of a single fan of a dying game who feels like he has been cheated. Whether or not I’m alone in feeling that way doesn’t matter all that much, though. I don’t really know how to truly articulate how I feel about this whole situation. I’m glad the game is still playable for now, but I know its actual demise is coming eventually. I just hope the Heroes of the Storm community will join me in basking in the pleasant memories we have because of this game before it met with its terrible fate.