My MOBA background: I'd consider myself a pretty seasoned League of Legends player (don't we all?). I've spent the better part of my gaming time since early 2011 playing League of Legends on a pretty much daily/weekly basis and have learnt all roles at a pretty high standard (I don't play a whole lot of ranked though due to normally playing with 2-3 other people, but I play with and against Platinum/Diamond players regularly). I think overall I have somewhere in the region of 2500-3000 games played.

Just thought i'd share my two cents and first impressions on the aspects of Heroes of the Storm that jumped out at me since curiosity got the better of me and I bought into the beta!

1) Immediately I'm super impressed and I'm surprised how well Blizzard have done. Considering they're up against the most played game on the planet, they couldn't have done a better job. Controlling a hero feels familiar to League but is full of voice, sound effects and art from Blizzard games that is so incredibly endearing - I didn't foresee how enjoyable that aspect would be. If you have any reverence for any of Blizzard's franchises then it's instantly lovable on so many levels.

2) One of the big controversial aspects is the removal of last hitting. A design decision that sounded on paper like it completely dampens the fun of a match's laning phase. In practice, the laning phase is hugely enjoyable and offers a choice to players - do you use your abilities and cooldowns to harass/kill the opponents or try and murder creep waves as fast as possible while saving your cooldowns for objectives? Farming is just as important in Heroes without those kicking-yourself-because-you-missed-that-last-hit feelings. It's a surprisingly welcome change and gives matches a very unique rhythm.

3) Support players got a hell of a good deal in this game. I can't speak for DOTA 2 but i'm sure it's similar to League of Legends: a lot of people are turned off by the support role, which means there are very few support players. This is mainly because in League you have to be very good at playing support to make a difference, which a lot of people don't appreciate. In Heroes, support characters are incredibly valuable right off the bat and feel immediately powerful and fun to play.

4) The removal of item shops and the implementation of a talent system for your character scaling is a really cool difference they've made to the genre. Without the need to go back to base (unless you desperately need to heal) - more time is spent running around out in the field having fun. Being able to spec your hero on the fly and respond to the growing threats of the enemy team is a cool feeling. For example, I was playing as Nova (ranged squishy assassin) and the enemy Zeratul (stealth burst assassin) was targeting me in every fight and killing me very quickly. I chose to spec into the Blink ability when I was at the appropriate level which, although meant locking out some other damage talents meant every fight I could blink away from Zeratul and get help from my team to counter gank him. It's a very satisfying system that makes you think about how the choices you make will affect your contribution to the match.

One of my concerns is whether the maps will stand up to the test of time. They are INCREDIBLY fun to play the first few times you jump into them, but how much fun will they be after 100 games? Only time will tell, I guess......also, the game is hilariously unbalanced at the moment in certain spots but y'know - it's a beta so that's expected.

Overall, I've been waiting for a game that takes League of Legends off my personal throne for a while and this game is an incredibly strong contender.

What are your thoughts? Any questions from anyone who's not in the beta?

I used to play Dota 2 a ton until i got into the alpha for this. The focus on team fighting and objectives that make team fights happen is great. Destroying towers is encouraged, unlike in Dota where if you destroy towers too soon you push the lane and everyone gets mad at you, because god forbid you don't want to play a game that lasts 50 minutes. Glad items and last hitting are gone, last hitting just seemed to be some sort of busy work to me to keep the early game somewhat tolerable, otherwise the begin of MOBA's are incredibly boring. Removing items was a brilliant move, this mean no player can be extremely overpowered. There have been points in Dota where the enemy carry is so farmed I would die to him in 2-3 hits. What do you do then? Nothing! You can't do anything at that point but wait until the game ends, no fun at all and i think that's where the player rudeness comes from. There is a point in most DOTA games when you know you've lost, however, the game can still last 30 minutes after that, and no one wants that, so people become aggressive. This isn't the case in Heroes of The Storm, even a support late game you can trade blows with the enemy assassin, sure you will die if you keep doing it but I never felt I had to run away or avoid particular players/heroes because of bad match-ups or because they were so farmed.

What part of the game do you think is unbalanced? All the heroes are well balanced in my opinion. Thrall is the exception, his sustain is a little to good right now, but he was only released last week so it's understandable he is a little overpowered.

I don't have any big insights to the genre. I only tried twice to get into Dota but failed.

Heroes is just much easier to pick up, with the stripped mechanics such as no last hitting, shared xp and lack of items. I can feel I am getting better but I still have so much to learn. Sadly with more people getting access to the game I also sense a rise in toxicity. I hope Blizzards gets on top of that as soon as possible as I feel that is really a big turn-off for many people.

I come from Dota 2 and played a bunch of HotS over the weekend. I was enjoying myself for most of the time but the last few matches felt kind of empty for some reason. The lack of items, collective hero leveling, no last hitting, no denying, felt fresh and exciting at first. But I think I must find some kind of deeper strategy to the game (which I'm sure there is) else I fear it will burn out fast for me.

I've had a similar experience to you, I spent a weekend with it and felt that I got everything there was to get out of it. Complexity is what makes MOBAs so deep and satisfying, but unapproachable as a result. by removing the complexity, HotS is a very approachable game with the depth of a puddle. By removing the skill floor they inadvertently brought down the skill ceiling to the point that I can't see anyone playing this for long periods of time.

I come from Dota 2 as well and I think the tactic HotS is focusing is a great one: Getting hero levels and kills is helpful but spending effort on goals to boost the team's creeps instead wins the match. But the problem is I have no idea how long term this will work out or even if it is entertaining at high levels of play.

I feel the same as others wondering how long game could run like this because of its "low bar of entry" but I would love to see some sort of one off mode like this (call it "Creep Siege Mode" or something) in Dota 2.

Supports are very overpowered in Heroes which I imagine is what makes them more appealing; and that's fine but while almost every support in the game is quite good there's plenty of mediocre to poor Assassins/Tanks that are only useful in the hands of an excellent player (who would be even more useful if they picked one of the handful of good members of those classes). What this ultimately means is that a 2 support group is a lot better than a 1 support group the vast majority of the time unless the 1 support group has the best heroes in the game on their side.

Really? This is my least favorite part of League, which is why I play ARAM and main support in Rift, haha. Heroes does sound interesting though, I'll probably check it out when it gets out of Beta.

I think that most people who are way into Dota are not going to like HotS at all. HotS has stripped out even more of the complexity of the genre than League did, so if you prefer Dota over League due to that, there's really nothing in HotS for you unless you want to play a fanservicey Blizzard game. I think that people who are into League might be able to go HotS and have some silly, easy fun every now and then (but by no means will it supplant League for those people). It just seems like a game in the genre for people who don't already play the genre.

Also, I'll just say that your impression of supports in Dota is wrong: each draft has anywhere from 1-3 supports per team (most often 2-3) and they are often the most skilled players on the team, sometimes outside of mid. They absolutely make or break games. I understand why you'd say it having only played League though, where there's generally only 1 support.

Hots honestly doesn't feel like a moba at all. It comes off way more as an arena game along the lines of Unreal Tournament or Team Fortress. The game is mostly teams moving around to get objectives and fighting each other while almost entirely relying on the maps for variation, instead of the moba style which is more about resource managment and sieging, where items and spell order provides variety for your heroes.

Hots is pretty fun. I wasn't too into the alpha business model and I think it moves a bit too janky for what I expect from Blizzard "alpha still". If they keep adding new and fun maps I think it could be a good time for a decently long time though. Still more excited about Overwatch personally. XD

The one thing I think HotS has going for it is that approachability. I have friends who are scared to death of trying to play a Dota 2 match for multiple reasons so they'll never really want to play with me. And frankly I have issues trying to play Dota 2 with some of them because of their temperament. On the other hand if they go "Hey play some HotS with us", I'll jump in and screw around in it and not feel bad either way.

I spent all weekend with the game. For those that don't know if they're in beta or not, check your Battle.net page for the word "beta" on your HotS link. I don't remember ever getting an email saying that I was in, but I went ahead and downloaded and logged into the game having no clue that it is still a closed beta and got lucky.

My impressions? Awesome!

I went ahead and pushed the limits on it over the weekend, and trolled a bit. Right off the bat, in one game, I spent the first few minutes running straight down the map and feeding until I had died 10 times. I wanted to see what kind of a lead this resulted in for the enemy team. It gave them 1.5 levels on my team. I then proceeded to play with my teammates and we turned it around very quickly and won what turned out to be a somewhat close game.

Conclusion: Kills count for very little in the game. The real award from kills seems to come from denying the enemy team the XP that the dead hero would have soaked up, if left alive, and denying them that extra power to take objectives with. This brings us to objectives, they're your bread and butter of every map. You win the objectives, you win the game, and there are a lot of objectives on each map.

Having played RTS games and DotA (and its derivatives) for years, I found HotS to be an utter snoozefest last time I played it. The monetisation is over the top too.

Hmm, you sound far more positive on it than I expected. Still waiting for a chance to try it. I've always rather disliked MOBAs, yet have played a few hundred hours of LoL. Definitely think it is way more "fun" than DOTA, even if I do belive DOTA is the "better" game.

Clocked in about 2k hours at Dota, and before that some in HoN. I had so low expectations to this it's hilarious. Got an invite fairly early, but didn't try it until recently for when a friend asked me to join him when he got his invite.

It was so much fun. The heroes is really fun to play, the game is fast paced and fun throughout the whole (Surprisingly few exceptions to this). It's a fun, easier (than most other big MOBAs) and interesting game. Oh and yeah, the artstyle and voicework is just superb!

I can't see this as something that will replace Dota for me, nor anything that will give me countless of hours with fun, but in shorter time periods I can see myself playing this game some days in a row.

Heroes of the Storm takes League of Legends 'Burden of Knowledge' philosophy to its extreme, basically getting rid of all the small things, and lowering the skill ceiling significantly. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I think it'll make games less fun to watch and play, but I'll hold my judgement until I see where this goes.