There’s No 2019 Esports Calendar for Heroes of The Storm

Blizzard have made a game-changing announcement regarding the future of Heroes of the Storm, and in particular its esports offering. The studio have advised that they are currently scaling back the dev team for the game, choosing to put them onto other products instead. Interestingly even the studio admits that the game didn’t take off or fare as well as they’d initially hoped.

Heroes of the Storm was initially released in 2015, into an already fairly saturated MOBA market. The game was up against rivals like DOTA II and League of Legends from the get-go. Where the other games rewarded individual achievement, Blizzard chose reward team gameplay by offering group experience, and map objectives that ensured players had to work together.

The game was fairly well received initially, but now the studio feel it’s time to focus on other projects. They have canceled their two main championships for 2019, the Heroes Global Championship and Heroes of the Dorm. Fans of the series have been shocked to say the least at the sudden change, but even die-hard fans had noticed that updates and announcements for the game had been dwindling.

© Blizzard Entertainment

That doesn’t mean that it’s curtains for the title, there will still be some developers working on the franchise with new heroes, maps and content in the future, it just won’t be progressed as far or as fast as some of the studios other titles like Overwatch. Still, with brawl modes, ranked matches and quick-play to try there is still plenty to get your teeth stuck into even if we wont see tournament matches live anymore.

There have been no other announcements yet regarding the game, other than some reassurance from Blizzard that the servers will kept alive and running smoothly. It is definitely one of the more casual MOBAs on offer, but if you’re a fan of the genre it’s definitely worth giving a go. The mechanics are solid and there are a good offering of heroes to unlock, as well as rewards the more that you play.

Aiming for long-term sustainability is something we’ve seen before. Blizzard often take their lower performing titles, shore them up to ensure they’ll run smoothly and introduce shorter bursts of event content and slower update cycles. Fans were initially worried they might not see any development for their favorite game but Blizzard have stated that this process is a familiar one for the studio and its far from the end of the road for Heroes of the Storm.

2019 promises to be a bigger year than ever for esports the world over, whether it’s strategy titles, MOBAs or battle royale games, there’s plenty on offer and plenty of global tournaments in store. While we’ll miss the presence of Heroes of the Storm, we also know it will free up Blizzard to work more on their other titles, who knows what we’ll see come out of the extra manpower and development time for their other games. It’s definitely going to be an interesting year.

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