Heroes of the Storm was my first dip into the MOBA genre after Dan introduced me to the game a couple of months ago.

Since then, I've been playing this game almost everyday with a group of both real life friends and some GB duders. One of the best things that sets this game apart from other MOBAs is the more team-oriented nature of the game and the super beginner friendly community.

If you are thinking about trying the game, now is the perfect time to start. Why?

This week Blizzard is giving you 2 free heroes if you start and have made more heroes available in the free-hero rotation. In addition, you will be also earning more bonus experience and gold.

I would love to help expand the Giantbomb community on HoTs (join the Giantbomb chat channel!) by playing ai games with beginners and helping show them the ropes.

Feel free to add me, my tag is Athadam#1567

Use my refer-a-friend link to get some sweet bonuses (and it helps me get a silly mount too):

https://us.battle.net/account/creation/recruit.html?rid=T7SK25P2KH

I've been edging closer to trying this for around a month now, finally downloaded it last night. I think I will take the plunge and fire it up this evening.

Will definitely add you if you dont mind, as I don't know anybody who plays it :)

I'm in the EU so not sure if your link will work for me, but have been planning on giving this a shot when my exams are over next week, figure we can help each other out then!

HoTS is pretty fantastic. I played it religiously for about 6-7 months before MGSV & other games started coming out. I think the thing that stands out for me that other MOBA's don't have is the movement. There is a snappiness to the movement and the way the heroes control in that game that other MOBA's just don't seem to get quite right. It just feels great to play. This kinda goes for all Blizzard games really. World of Warcraft, I believe, still to this day, has the quickest and most reactive movement of any MMO out there. Overwatch seems to have this as well. Movement and control is one of those things that Blizzard just seems to nail every time.

Beyond that, I think the biggest draw for me was the match time. One of the things that really turned me away from playing DOTA or League more (besides the awful communities, of course) is the time it takes to just get into a match and finish it. You are looking at a hour+ long commitment from when you hit the 'Find Match' button to when you are back to the main menu. With HoTs, 90% of my matches were done within 20 minutes. There is a longer more competitive drafting process (Hero League) if you want it, but if you want to just hop in a bang out a couple rounds you can do that in Quick Match.

I'd definitely recommend this to people who are turned off of MOBA's, it can fill that role that games like Halo 2 or other console shooters used to fill for me, just something to fall back to when you don't know what to play, or don't want to commit to starting a bigger game.

Yup, HOTS is still a fantastic game and It's my go-to "I have 30 minutes to burn and need to play something" game. I've also put too much money I'm OK admitting on it. (Come on, that Jaina riding around in a Christmas outfit while riding a reindeer was to much to pass on).

That being said, I'd wait a few days or weeks before jumping in if you're 100% new to MOBAs. Blizzard introduced a reward for Recruit a Friend thing where if your friend reaches a certain level, you get a free mount. Sounds like a good idea but sadly, a bunch of people who ran out of friends to recruit started to make smurf accounts and getting the mount like that. Lower levelled games might actually be filled with experienced players who just want a mount. It was pretty bad a few days ago but it shouldn't last to long.