Blizzard shifts its top developers away from Heroes of the Storm, halts eSports plans

Polycount

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If you're a regular Heroes of the Storm player such as myself, we have some slightly unfortunate news for you today. In a blog post published yesterday, Blizzard announced that its attempt at a more fast-paced, casual MOBA isn't going quite as well as it hoped.

Whether the game is profitable but simply not making enough revenue to compete with the likes of League of Legends and DOTA 2, or unprofitable and actively losing money, we may never know.

Regardless, as a result of either of those two scenarios (or another, unknown one), Blizzard is taking some of Heroes' resources and most talented developers and bringing them to "other projects," whatever that means.

So, how will this decision affect the game? To start with, all future official Heroes of the Storm eSports plans are being cancelled, effective immediately. This includes the annual Heroes Global Championship, and the Heroes of the Dorm tournament.

Beyond that, players can likely expect to see new heroes get released at a slower rate, and new content (such as new maps, skins, or game modes) will undoubtedly be reduced in scope.

To be clear, this news does not necessarily mean that Blizzard will be shutting the game down anytime soon. Cosmetic microtransactions such as the ones Heroes of the Storm uses will probably be enough to keep it running in "maintenance mode" for years to come. However, it does represent a shift in Blizzard's focus, and only time will tell where their new focus lies.

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Yes! Diablo 4 needs those resources!

Literally anything except a cheesy clicker game needs those resources. Hopefully this is the start of Blizzard rediscovering its roots. I'd love to see WoW Classic be a somewhat re-imagined and improved WoW experience, with most of WoW 2.0's conveniences but closer to vanilla's challenge level. Think about all the time travel shenanigans...they could retconn almost anything.
 
HOTS is an excellent game. I prefer it over LoL (though, that's great too).

They made a gamble with investing so much in eSports. I'm hoping they are more so realizing it's not going to become the next big eSport and less that they just don't want to continue it.

Most games are not eSport related. So there is plenty of hope HOTS will just keep going the way a lot of other Blizzard games go (SC2 and Diablo 3 both have a continuing player base due to their online functionality and updates).
 
Yes! Diablo 4 needs those resources!

Literally anything except a cheesy clicker game needs those resources. Hopefully this is the start of Blizzard rediscovering its roots. I'd love to see WoW Classic be a somewhat re-imagined and improved WoW experience, with most of WoW 2.0's conveniences but closer to vanilla's challenge level. Think about all the time travel shenanigans...they could retconn almost anything.

Keep Classic Classic. Otherwise in 10 years time we will ask for WoW Classics Classic Legacy Classic release.

Blizzard does not need WoW 2.0, if they ever do another MMO, it should not be WoW. MMOs have been slowly decaying for years now.

This litterery consist of 99.9% of MMO-C Classic sub threads...
 
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