On the off chance you haven't heard, MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) games are pretty popular right now, gathering millions of players between Valve's Dota 2 and Riot Games' League of Legends. Blizzard, the developer whose games were modded to start the genre, is getting into the action with a title of its own, Heroes of the Storm, and a 17-minute video of the game has been released.
Featuring an early Alpha build of the game, the designers cast a match between two players and show off their game on the map Dragon Shire. There's a lot of heroes, combat, and projectiles--your typical MOBA affair--and it all looks very good.
Blizzard has stated it wants to challenge some of the paradigms in the genre and that Heroes of the Storm isn't a straight entry into the genre, referring to it at times as a "Hero Brawler".
I can certainly see what they're going for, though it definitely sits pretty firmly in the MOBA and action real-time strategy genre. Since this is Blizzard's game, it has the added bonus of combining many of the famous company's beloved franchises to create the game's universe: heroes are made up of characters from Warcraft, Diablo, and Starcraft.
The game was originally called Blizzard All-Stars early in its development before being rebranded as Heroes of the Storm last year. It will be available for Windows PC and Mac OS X, and yesterday Blizzard announced the game will open Technical Alpha testing, inviting a limited number of players to playtest the game. Visit that link for details on how to apply for the test, and be sure to check out the video of the gameplay below.
Source: Kotaku
