Here's a Look at Heroes of the Storm in Action

Natures Prophet was Malfurion who was one of the NE druid from WC3, what you're calling out as a copy Anti Mage is likely Illidan or one of the many other Demon Hunters. Pudge is also clearly the abomination unit from WC3, the hook grapple ability is a bit on the nose but JESUS.

They are bringing unique maps, and likely a lot of other different things to the table. Blizzard is not EA, they wouldn't do something exactly the same as LoL or DotA. Is it inspired by DotA and LoL? Absolutely, but don't be so ignorant and dismissive.

Awesome!

you can always like ya know... don't play it.

It will be interesting. Do they think they have enough brand cache to make it anything other than F2P?

The visual style certainly looks like a less finessed WoW.....anyway back to DotA until it comes out.

Well let's just look at all the successful mobas that aren't free to play...

Wow... this looks like it was made years ago as a SC2 mod or something. Very unimpressive.

That said if Blackthorne is in this thing, I'm on board.

I believe it is free to play, it just seems to be the best model for these games, though there is already another accessible ARTS being made called Strife, made by S2 games, the guys behind HoN.

Still waitin' for Warcraft 4. And I'm likely to wait forever.

Looks like another MOBA for sure. I'll stick to DOTA 2, personally... UNLESS we get some Rock 'N Roll Racing up in there.

Man.. if only this was Warcraft 4..

Well, MOBA players are obsessed with acronyms and HOTS is a pretty bad ass one

You mean Heart of the Swarm? X_X Also "moba" is the dumbest genre term ever.

This just makes me wish for a Warcraft IV.

There sure are a lot of MOBA's.

Here is the thing.
Hear me out.

I said the same thing about heartstone, this looks generic and a rip off.
Then I tried Heartstone beta, and 50 USD later, I was sold.

So I will give this a chance as well.

MOBAs are accessible. You get better by playing, people are just too quick to quit because they don't instantly start kicking ass.

(psst. I think they were making a joke about Valve ripping off Blizzard first)

This looks fun. I'll definitely give it a shot, don't know if it'll win me over from LoL but we'll see wont we.

Lol, that Pudge.

If LoL is the "baby" version of DotA, then HotS is the "baby" version of LoL. No items, no gold, no last hitting, shared experience across the teams. But it still has LoL's "play the game enough and you can unlock characters" model so I won't be touching it besides trying it out.

Given my only experience with mobas is watching Brad play and 20 minutes of confusion with that Middle Earth thing on PS3 this one felt a lot less entertaining to look at. I might be interested if it is positioned as an easy way into the genre, Dota seems way too daunting.

But yeah, not looking amazing but Blizzard have shown a pretty amazing pedigree when it comes to wrapping their games in gorgeous presentation. Playing through StarCraft 2 and I've been staggering by just how professional and well put together it is compared to a lot of more recent PC releases.

Looking forward to the quick look :)

I'm a huge Blizzard fan, but from everything they have said about this game, it seems like it will be too casual for me. I will def play it, but I doubt I will stick with it for long.

...Then I don't see the point, personally. But hey, Blizzard has a huge built-in fanbase; it really doesn't matter if it appeals to anyone else as long as the die-hards see the ___ license get represented well.

@redhatdrew: For your sake I hope not.

Was Diablo just riding a horse?

@sooty: id say the caustic environment of MOBA communities and how you need to fall completely in line and not suck one bit right from the beginning or face internet wrath make it pretty damn inaccesible to me. granted i didn't spend enough time with the giant bomb group in my pitifully brief DOTA stint, but i wouldn't put it beyond some of them to behave the same way towards nubs...

I like how this is, by any measure, a bad trailer. It doesn't describe anything about the game, the gameplay appears to be unnaturally slow, pure nonsense is going on constantly without any explanation, and just jumps from scene to scene every 3-5 seconds just in case you weren't already confused enough.

And yet, it is fairly representative of the general MOBA experience and those are popular, so fuck trying to make a good trailer that explains anything to a wider audience - that would be a waste of time, right?

@oginam: What explanation does there need to be? It shows the towers, it shows the gates, and it shows the characters fighting and attacking the gate. Seems pretty self-explanatory.

Doesn't a trailer exist to arouse curiosity and interest anyway?

Glad Valve did Dota 2 and not Blizzard, all I can say.

Every character was crawling in that trailer. Too slow for my likes.

Let's be serious you're gonna encounter a ton of twats no matter what game you play online if it's as popular as the likes of League of Legends and Call of Duty.

Wow Blizzard

Talk about copying LOL/DOTA2

But it looks better so thats at least something.

This could be something that gets a lot of people that are otherwise uninterested or intimidated by MOBAs to actually try out the genre. If this connects, then there's a third potential contender. If not, then a lot of new blood will be added to the other games.

I'm hoping for it to at least be somewhat successful, so that Riot Games and Valve can learn lessons from what Blizzard tried that worked, and what didn't.

Will play it a bit for the characters then quit because instead of taking the LoL approach of removing mechanics that they felt were unneeded Blizz just removed all of them.

This seems like it can't not be really successful. Since they already have brand recognition it's easier for new players to figure out what's going on, since instead of being tossed into a sea of new characters they've never met before and having no idea what any of them do, it's just a matter of recognizing characters you already know and figuring out how their abilities from other games transferred.

Also in interviews the Blizzard guys were trying to rename the genre "Hero Brawler" rather than "MOBA," an effort I can whole-heartedly support

@alejandrosernab09: hero brawler, you mean HeBra?

@talibanchic: Or we could just not make it an acronym. I mean I know it's the internet, but we don't HAVE to shorten everything to a few letters

@alejandrosernab09: Oh Acronyms? Those are now 'Acros'.

Looks neat, the music to the trailer sounded similar to the music in Mass Effect.

Worth the price to see Diablo riding a tiny horse.

I'll just assume you're joking.

I'm going to try this game either way, but seriously, please add VanCleef.

"Unique Battlegrounds" is something that I figured every other Moba would have already managed by now, but no, they all stick to the same map, so having different maps as a selling point actually works here.

I just think it's kind of terrible that this is one of the few cases I've seen this type of game decide to do that.

I can't wait for that one map.