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Category: Heroes of the Storm

Blizzcon Heroes of the Storm Overview

Here’s a summary of the Heroes of the Storm panel!

Blizzcon14_Heroes_SkyTemple_AnubThrall

  • A lot of people are getting invites now
  • Closed beta starts on january 13th
  • Draft mode is coming soon
  • Works like standard MOBAs
    • No duplicate heroes
    • Battleground known before heroes are selected
    • All ranked modes will use draft
    • Coinflip to start picking
    • Picking order goes
      • team 1 picks 1 hero
      • team 2 picks 2 heroes
      • team 1 picks 2  heroes
      • team 2 picks 2 heroes
      • team 1 picks 2 heroes
      • team 2 picks 1 hero
    • No hero bans
      • To keep games shorter
      • To keep amount of heroes you need to own low
  • Ranked play
    • 5-man premades will be high-end ranked
    • Two ranked leagues, one for groups under 5 (Hero league) and the other for 5-man premades (Team League)
    • Ranking system based on Hearthstone
    • Win to get points, losing loses you points
    • 50 ranks, 50 to 1 (top)
    • MMR affects point gain, playing against better opponents gives more points
    • Season based
    • Like HS, you gain points for the next season based on rank
    • Personal skill rating used for MMR, carries over from season to season
    • Hero league fills team based on skill rating
    • Will try to match you based on premade size. A 3-man premade will be matched against another 3-man premade
    • Will only use person skill ranking
    • Player level 30 needed to queue in hero league
    • Team league requires you to make a team with a team name, akin to Arena
    • Up to 9 players on each team
    • Can join 3 teams per account
    • Uses team skill rating, not personal
    • Must be hero level 40 to queue for team league
    • Tons of stats available for teams
  • On the subject of leavers
    • Stripping people of game rewards didn’t motivate people to stay
    • Leavers will get flagged if they leave too often
    • Flagged leavers will be matched with other flagged leavers
    • Flag will be removed if you play enough games without leaving
    • Might not be final implementation
  • New heroes
    • Jaina
      • Ice mage, looks a lot like War3
      • Water Elemental – Ultimate
      • Frost ring
      • Blizzard
    • Thrall
      • Bursty DPS
      • chain lightning
    • Sylvanas announced
      • Curses, can shut down enemy minions and towers
      • Ultimate, mind control
    • The Lost Vikings
      • Fans demanded them every time they talked to blizzard
      • 3 heroes at once
      • Can be controlled at the same time or seperately
      • Each hero can complete objectives by himself
      • Very difficult character
      • Ultimate is a ship
  • New Battlegrounds
    • Sky temple
      • Capture the 3 temples
      • Fight temple guardians to capture them
      • They shoot beams of death at your enemies
      • A desesrt in the sky, lots of water and trees as well
      • It’s all about the magic
      • Egyptian themed buildings, mercs and minions
    • Tomb of the spider queen
      • Collect gems to summon queen
      • Underworld
    • Diablo stage
    • Heaven, good vs evil
    • Half map angelic, half diabolic

Blizzcon Opening Ceremony Liveblog

We’ll be updating this liveblog with news from the blizzcon opening ceremony as things get announced!

  • The ceremony started with videos of warcraft 1, 2 and 3 and then transitioned into World of Warcraft with the developers talking about it.
  • Mike Morhaime comes on to the stage.
  • Mike mentions the 20th anniversary of warcraft and the 10th anniversary of WoW.
  • The documentary Looking For Group will premier tommorow at 5pm bizzcon time on the main stage.
  • Afterwards it’ll be available on the website and youtube.
  • In december a new charity pet will be released, proceeds will go to the red cross to battle the ebola virus.
  • A sneak peak of the World of Warcraft movie will be shown in the special theater at blizzcon.
  • fightforthehorde.com , fightforthealliance.com set up by Legendary pictures
  • Heroes of the Storm  new things:
    • Jaina, Thrall, Lost Vikings as new heroes
    • Sky Temple, tomb of the spider queen, new battleground
    • Ranked Play
    • Closed beta starts January 13th, 2015
  • Production Director Jason Chayes enters the stage to talk about Hearthstone
  • In December the android tablet version of HS will be released
  • The first HS expansion will feature goblins and gnomes. “Goblins vs Gnomes”
  • More than 120 new cards
    • Explosive Sheep
    • Annoy-o-tron
  • It will release next month!!
  • Game Director Dustin Browder takes the stage to talk about Starcraft 2 (The Legacy of the Void logo is showing in the background).
  • Awesome new trailer shown for LotV
  • It shows Xel’naga returning as a threat
  • You will reunite the scattered Protos tribes.
  • LotV is a standalone game and will not need the other two games to play
  • The lurker is back
  • New Archon mode, you and a teammate will work together to control a single base and a single army
  • Chris Metzen enters the stage
  • A new game/world is announced!
    • Overwatch
    • A new world that used to be in a warring state but now in peace due to overwatch
    • A futuristic new world
    • A cinematic showing peace at first and then showing new heroes/villains of the series that fight each other
    • Game Director Jeff Kaplan takes the stage to continue talking about overwatch
    • Overwatch is a team based multiplayer shooter
    • Another overwatch video is shown
    • It shows the different heroes in action
    • Beta in 2015
    • Sign up at playoverwatch.com

Matchmaking Design in Heroes of the Storm

Blizzard posted a new blog about matchmaking in heroes of the storm!

Quote from: Blizzard

Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen several conversations pop up within the Heroes community in which some players seemed a little mystified by how the matchmaker is intended to work, and how it interacts with the regional game servers around the world. We’d like to shed a bit more light on matchmaking in Heroes of the Storm, and hopefully clear up some of the questions you may have.

Skill-Based Matchmaking Our primary goal with Heroes of the Storm matchmaking is very similar to the one we had with StarCraft II: To provide skill-based matchmaking that offers very even games in which players win around 50% of the time. We learned a lot while we continued to build and develop the StarCraft II matchmaker, and we’ve been pretty happy with that system’s ability to provide very even matches overall throughout the years. Unlike StarCraft II, which is largely focused on 1v1 play, Heroes of the Storm is a team-based game. Having to account for 5v5 play, as well as the variety of roles a player can fill in Heroes posed a whole new set of challenges for us in terms of matchmaking. We’ve taken the lessons we learned from StarCraft II and are improving upon our work there so that we can bring that same level of quality in matchmaking to Heroes. We aren’t finished, though, and throughout each testing phase we’ll continue to improve on the work we’ve already done in order to bring you the best matchmaking experience possible in Heroes of the Storm.

Team Compositions It’s no fun when your favorite Hero gets snatched up by someone else in a game lobby before you have a chance to make a selection yourself, which is why we allow you to select your Hero before you even enter unranked matchmaking queues. Once you’ve made your selection and entered the queue, the matchmaker will then create a balanced team for you by finding other players of similar skill who have selected Heroes in complementing roles. In addition to this, we’ve also added a number of rules to the matchmaker in order to help further encourage the creation of well-rounded team compositions.

  • No more than 3 Warriors.
  • No more than 4 Assassins.
  • No more than 2 Support.
  • No more than 2 Specialists.
  • No more than 3 Melee heroes.

However, there are also a number of ways you can override these restrictions.

  • If you’re in a full party, the rules no longer apply to your team and you can use any composition you like.
  • If you’re in a partial party, you can still create team compositions that fall outside of the matchmaking rules.
    • For example: A three person party that enters the queue as three Support Heroes is allowed. The matchmaker will do its best to round out your team, but your party will not be grouped with any more Supports.
  • Getting into a game quickly can often times be more important than waiting a long time for the perfect composition. So, if a party has spent six minutes or more in the matchmaking queue, the rules may be broken in order to find a match. We’ll be keeping an eye on this rule to get a feel for how it impacts matchmaking, and may make adjustments to it in the future.

We’ll keep improving on this aspect of the Heroes matchmaker so that you’ll continue to receive well-balanced team compositions as often as possible whenever you queue for unranked matchmaking.

Arranged Team vs. Random Team Arranged teams, or a group of players who enter matchmaking as a full party, are often able to better coordinate, communicate, and execute strategies than opposing random teams, which are teams made up of individual players grouped together via matchmaking. Though random teams can and do win against arranged teams, our win percentage data shows that arranged teams generally have a slight advantage over their random counterparts. We feel that better games generally come from matching arranged teams with one another, and random teams with other random teams, and the Heroes matchmaker actually prefers to create games this way. Due to the relatively low Tech Alpha population, however, we’ve configured the matchmaker in such a way that it currently allows arranged and random teams to play against one another if an opposing team with a similar-sized party could not be found. We’ve done this in order to get you into games faster, rather than making you wait when a more suitable matchup isn’t readily available. As the pool of invited Heroes testers is increased, these situations will occur less often. Eventually, the matchmaker will be able to consistently match arranged teams against other arranged teams and random teams against other random teams. Whether a team is made up of individual players, a group of five friends playing together, or any combination in between, you can rest assured that the matchmaker will always take the team’s overall skill into account in order to find even matchups.

Finding the Best Game Server for You We want all of our players have the most epic Heroes experience possible, and we’ve begun adding game servers located in regions around the world to help make that possible. Our end goal for you as a player is that you’ll never need to worry about what server to connect to for unranked play, and we’ve implemented tech which allows the matchmaker to find the best game server for you automatically. In order to make this process as seamless as possible, the Heroes client first determines your round-trip latency (a.k.a. “ping”) to all of the servers connected to the region you log into. Next, your ping information is used in combination with your individual skill rating to find and match you with other players of similar skill who also connect to your server. Making server selection automatic in this way allows us to easily add new game servers in the future, which will continue to improve responsiveness for players around the globe. This system is already in place for unranked play, but due to the limited pool of Tech Alpha players and ongoing development work, you may occasionally find yourself in a game that’s not quite as responsive as others. Keep in mind, though, that those situations should become less frequent as we continue to make improvements and invite additional testers from each region to play Heroes. Additionally, as we continue to design and develop ranked play, we’ll likely consider other server selection options which make more sense for that aspect of the game. We’ll always strive to find a great match for you both in terms of player skill level, as well as game responsiveness.

Future Improvements We’re constantly evaluating how our matchmaker is performing, and we’re always on the lookout for new ways to improve the quality of the games it finds for you. Stepping ahead just a bit, we’d like to give you a brief preview for some of the ideas we’re considering for Heroes matchmaking in the future.

  • We’re currently exploring ways to assess individual player performance with finer granularity than wins vs. losses, and adjust your skill rating accordingly.
  • We’re also thinking about how we’d like to find matches for players who frequently abandon in-progress games, and are considering matching so-called “leavers” with others who exhibit similar behaviors.
  • Finally, we’d like you to feel comfortable playing with all of your favorite heroes, even if you’re trying a hero out for the first time. We’re looking into ways in which we can potentially adjust your individual skill rating by allowing the matchmaker to take into account how much you’ve played using your selected hero thus far, and find even matches accordingly.

Hopefully, we’ve managed to help answer a few questions you may have had about matchmaking and regional play. If you’d like to share feedback on anything we’ve mentioned today, don’t forget to stop by the Technical Alpha forums to share your thoughts with us. Stay tuned right here on the official Heroes of the Storm site to keep up with the latest game news as it’s announced, and be sure to connect with us on Twitter by following @BlizzHeroes.

WoW Down to 6.8 Million Subscribers, CM Lore On Devs On Twitter, HotS: Stitches Trailer

The Q2 2014 earnings call took place yesterday and it was announced that WoW is down to 6.8 million subscribers. Although it’s a loss of 800k subscribers keep in mind that 6.8M is still a big number. The lack of new content has doubtfully had a great influence on the subscriber numbers.

In other news, last night CM Lore responded to some of the concerns about a lot of information being shared on twitter and not being posted through other official news channels.

Quote from: Blizzard

This thread has been a very interesting read so far. I’ve really appreciated the discussion, especially since we’ve been having very similar discussions internally lately, particularly regarding Twitter. Let me shine some light on our thinking to hopefully help you guys understand where we’re coming from:

First off, we’ve definitely made some serious missteps over the past couple of months. Bladespire and Karabor should have been communicated in a clearer and more complete form than Twitter can really allow, as an obvious example. We’re sorry about that, and are doing our best to learn from our mistakes and avoid making them again in the future.

When used properly, however, we think Twitter’s a great platform. It offers developers the ability to respond quickly to simple questions without tearing them away from more involved tasks. It allows community managers to communicate and interact with the community on a much more personal level. As we’ve been embracing Twitter more closely, we’re learning where the line is on “good interaction” vs “bad way to share information.”

I also found some of the comments about transparency interesting. One issue we face constantly is “when is a good time to let players know?” The answer is a lot trickier than it might seem. If we tell everyone about every change we make the minute we decide to make it, many of those changes will never make it past the concept stage, and we create a whole lot of stress for players (let alone ourselves). Furthermore, it can be difficult to understand why a change needs to be made before all of the related pieces are in place.

On the other hand, if we don’t share changes until they’re complete, we miss out on the opportunity to hear concerns from players, and use that feedback to create a better end product. Neither extreme is a good answer, so it’s a matter of finding the right spot in the vast grey area between the two.

I realize I’ve just used a lot of words and didn’t really say much, so I’ll finish up with a couple bullet points:

  • We think Twitter is a good platform for some things, but recognize that it’s not working well for others.
  • We recognize that many of you would like to see us participating more actively on the forums. It’s not as simple as “post instead of tweet”, but we’ll do our best.
  • As someone mentioned earlier in the thread, fansites such as Wowhead do a great job of consolidating and organizing tweets if you’d prefer a “news roundup” format.
Quote from: Blizzard
Posted by Blupache

I’d also like to see more general design commentaries like the post on dps warriors earlier in the alpha/beta process.

Agreed, and more are coming. The dev team is just crunching pretty hard right now to get the expansion ready to go, which doesn’t leave a lot of extra time for commentary. Once they’re to a point where they can come up for air, we’ll work on getting some more design insight blogs together.

08/05/2014 07:48 AMPosted by Elaedrial

As far as it not being as simple as “post instead of tweet”, why is that? Does it really take you longer to bring up the forums and type the same thing you’d put on twitter into the forums instead?

Yes, actually. Reading a tweet takes less than a second, and replying to it often doesn’t take much more time than that. A designer with a pile of tasks to get through for the day can easily sneak a glance at Twitter here and there, while waiting for a zone to load or some code to compile or what have you.

Reading a forum post, however, can be a much more involved task, especially if the discussion takes off. Quite often, designers (or community managers), upon noticing a particularly interesting thread, will make a note to come back to it later when they have time to give it their full attention. In fact, I’ve actually had to step away from my desk 3 or 4 times just in the course of writing this response.

That’s not really an excuse for us to not spend time talking with players on the forums, I’m just explaining why it’s not as simple as “use the forums instead of Twitter”, especially for a designer hard at work on the expansion. They’re just very different mediums, each with their own advantages and disadvantages.

Blizzard also released a trailer for Stitches in Heroes of the Storm.