Heroes of the Storm and its undying competitive scene

What everyone thought to be the ultimate MOBA turned out to be one of the biggest failures of the genre. With development sporadic and no support for the competitive side, HoTs has been barely surviving for three years. A niche competitive scene is still fighting and not letting this title wither out of existence.

They are the heroes of today’s story.

Heroes of the Storm in 2022

Heroes of the Storm was supposed to win everyone’s hearts thanks to the possible roster of champions that the Blizzard universe has to offer. Yet, bad decisions in design and management have created a painful memory for all fans of the genre.

Of course, this still didn’t stop players from trying out the game, but over time, because of the core systems of the game, the player base that had a huge spike at the beginning of the games life, slowly died off, and eventually, Blizzard decided to end the competitive scene by shutting down HGC in December 2018.

Three years later, development is slow but it does happen.

How regular are the balance updates?

If there were no updates at all, the meta would become quite stale, and eventually, no one would play the game, not even the pros. Luckily, the little what is left of the HotS development team do their best to spice up the game every now and then, last year, there were 10 major patches, which is way more than it was expected to be honest. Every patch brings a lot of balance changes, and sometimes a hero rework.

New heroes since the cancellation of HGC?

Well, the good news is that since the HotS team was significantly downsized, there were some newly released heroes. The bad news is that the last released hero was back in December of 2020. The total number of champions released was 6, and along came a couple of hero reworks, with the latest one being for Rehgar in patch 55.0 released on December 8^th, 2021.

Are there any newly released HoTS maps?

When it comes to the maps, also known as battlegrounds, there were no new releases since June 12^th, 2018, which is quite a shame. The last released battleground was Alterac Pass, which is kind of ironic since the game has gone quite cold since its release.

Any HoTS esports tournaments in 2022?

Everyone knows that tournaments are the essence of the competitive scene, and when it comes to HotS, even if there is no HGC, there are still some bigger offline events.

• In 2019, there were two Gold Series in China with prize pools of $77.6k and $80k.
• In 2020 there was the Community Clash League Season 1 with a $41k prize pool.
• In 2021 the Community Clash League Season 2 and 3 were held with $44.7k and $40k prize pools, and there was also Masters Clash Championship with a $12.4k prize pool.
• So far, in 2022, there is a Defrost Miami Lan planned with a $5k prize pool, and probably more tournaments are going to come.

If you are wondering if the HotS competitive scene is still up and running, the answer is a big yes. When it comes to smaller tournaments that are mostly played online, there are quite a lot of them, and the prize pool for these varies from smaller numbers like $3k to $20k+ prize pools.

Thanks to this active scene and an ever passionate player base, the game is still seeing development, and hopefully players will re-discover this amazing gem of the MOBA genre. The community is truly amazing, and if you are planning to return to the game, 2022 is still not late to do so.

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