So I searched but I could not find anything on this.
It looks like NASL will now also feature a Heroes of Newerth competitive tournament with 40K in prizes.
KALAMAZOO, Mich., Sep 06, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Heroes of Newerth (HoN), the session-based, multiplayer, action-RPG developed by independent game developer S2 Games, will join professional eSports League North American Star League (NASL) as a promotional title beginning October 5 for its Season 2 competition.
North American Star League is one of the largest eSports broadcasters in the world. It caters to more than 50 of the world's most elite eSports players, and will now include Heroes of Newerth amongst them.
Any thoughts on why they would do this? Are they trying to become the new MLG?
HoN = Ownage.. I am glad they added HoN and not LoL. The title originally made me think it was going to air ads during the thing for HoN though lol.....
but seems silly to add this with dota 2 around the corner. I hope they don't have any sort of exclusive contract that is for too long. HoN is going to be wiped off the earth when Dota 2 is released.
Not really related to SC2 at all. Agree that it should be in Sports and Games. As to thoughts on why they would do this...why not? They want to make more money so they're hosting another game
Good, HoN deserves all of the attention that LoL gets, its 10000% a better esport than LoL. I do have a feeling that Dota2 will wipe the floor clean with all of the other moba's though.
God, am I the only one who, considering the last season, think that that money is better spend on either travel reimbursing all the players attending the grand finals by 100% and upping the production quality?
Well, this can only be good for SC2 since people that would watch HoN will now get to see some of our game too and the other way around. More popularity for everyone.
I think there were alot of pointers to HoN beind added to the NASL, so everyone saw it coming.
seems kind of odd to do this instead of Dota2 from a business point of view, HoN is not popular at all(the amount of viewers they get is pretty damn low), I wonder why they don't want to add Dota 2 instead when it comes out.
actually maybe they could, in which case it would be good.
also in before this turns into LoL vs Hon debate, which judging from the comments it is already heading that way.
On September 07 2011 03:53 R0YAL wrote: Good, HoN deserves all of the attention that LoL gets, its 10000% a better esport than LoL. I do have a feeling that Dota2 will wipe the floor clean with all of the other moba's though.
While I agree about your first point (even though I think the skill required in HoN is still very low), I don't know if DotA2 will wipe everything, because a lot of HoN players aren't playing DotA anymore, and DotA2 is basically DotA1 so I don't think they'll change their mind like that, just my opinion though.
They added HoN? As a person who plays HoN and LoL I have to say I'm not looking forward to this, mainly because S2 does an impeccably bad job and handling their own community, as well as any exclusive S2 Hero makes that does not pertain to a Hero from DotA is typically ungodly overpowered and imbalanced. (Emerald Warden, anyone?)
Edit: To clarify, this is a solid example of the way the HoN developers handle their community, they apparently don't care for losing in their own game. I'm not sure NASL wants to be a part of this action, really.
On September 07 2011 03:56 JustPassingBy wrote: God, am I the only one who, considering the last season, think that that money is better spend on either travel reimbursing all the players attending the grand finals by 100% and upping the production quality?
Adding HoN = adding revenue to do those kinds of things.
On September 07 2011 04:01 rza wrote: tought HON was already dead, my bad (I play LoL relegiously)
Everyone I know seems to be getting sick of HoN. Apparently the community is losing a lot of its english speakers to LoL, making the community ACTUALLY WORSE (which is an amazing feat from what I understand). Plus with DotA2 coming out, most of them will be jumping ship.
LoL seems to have gotten the upperhand on HoN, and DotA2 will likely do better than BOTH of them. Not really sure what kind of a future HoN will have with TWO games in its "genre" being more popular than it.
On September 07 2011 04:08 Dr.FuzzyBallz wrote: Why add a dead game? W.e once Dota 2 comes out it will be dead for sure, if it isnt yet, ill stick to LoL and Dota 2.
I agree, and I'm surprised people think HoN will hold onto players when Dota2 comes out. Especially when HoN is considered a very true dota clone, and it isn't handled by the one and only 'Icefrog.'
Where do you LoL players get your information about HoN being dead?
Sure it doesn't have the stupid amount of people playing it but it's still a fantastic game and as close to DotA you get without playing DotA right now.
On September 07 2011 04:10 Shinobi1982 wrote: On NASL S1 finals weekend, iNcontroL mentioned several times they were adding HoN next season.
OK. I'm sorry if you guys think it's a useless thread. I did not know of this. Also it was not in any search results that I got.
I just got the news and I thought that since one of the larger SC2 tournaments is changing, people might want to know. And looks like I was not the only one in the dark.
Well HoN is a very Niche game. I don't expect it to be around for very long, but as long as DOTA2 isn't out, it has a place. Perhaps it is a short time investment? LoL vs HoN discussion is really not necessary though, they cater to two different audiences. I always hope for the best for NASL, especially after the Koreans decided to trash it and themselves.
they probably added HoN because the Dota 2 footage shown at gamescom looked like crap. The graphics were awfull and everything looked like a different shade of mud.
I trust icefrog with doing great balance with dota 2 but when you cant see anything what's going on the screen how do you want to introduce people to the game. " here is this brown clump and there flies another one " and so on.
On September 07 2011 04:14 Skilledblob wrote: they probably added HoN because the Dota 2 footage shown at gamescom looked like crap. The graphics were awfull and everything looked like a different shade of mud.
I trust icefrog with doing great balance with dota 2 but when you cant see anything what's going on the screen how do you want to introduce people to the game. " here is this brown clump and there flies another one " and so on.
I'm surprised you and a few others feel that way. Personally in DotA I don't want to have a colorful background. Give me the crisp animations and hero models and I'm good to go. Anything more is a distraction from the tightly wound play of DOTA.
On September 07 2011 04:11 N3rV[Green] wrote: Where do you LoL players get your information about HoN being dead?
Sure it doesn't have the stupid amount of people playing it but it's still a fantastic game and as close to DotA you get without playing DotA right now.
Im stoked for this.
It has nothing to do with LoL being more popular, Riot's not going to kill it. Valve is.
On September 07 2011 04:14 Skilledblob wrote: they probably added HoN because the Dota 2 footage shown at gamescom looked like crap. The graphics were awfull and everything looked like a different shade of mud.
I trust icefrog with doing great balance with dota 2 but when you cant see anything what's going on the screen how do you want to introduce people to the game. " here is this brown clump and there flies another one " and so on.
I'm surprised you and a few others feel that way. Personally in DotA I don't want to have a colorful background. Give me the crisp animations and hero models and I'm good to go. Anything more is a distraction from the tightly wound play of DOTA.
Yup, personally I find it way harder to tell stuff apart in HoN than on the DotA2 stream due to all the shiny graphics and effects HoN has.
Maybe if you actually played the game you would know what you're seeing. And besides, competitive HoN is atleast fun to watch compared to LoLletsfarmuntilminute30
I've never touched a moba game but I could follow Dota2 nicely on that Valve invitational tournament and it was easy on the eye. Other moba games I can't watch more than 5 seconds.
On September 07 2011 04:14 Skilledblob wrote: they probably added HoN because the Dota 2 footage shown at gamescom looked like crap. The graphics were awfull and everything looked like a different shade of mud.
I trust icefrog with doing great balance with dota 2 but when you cant see anything what's going on the screen how do you want to introduce people to the game. " here is this brown clump and there flies another one " and so on.
You realize the tournament wasn't played on a release quality version of the game right? They're still working on the game. The tournament was just to hype up publicity for it.
Well, this seems like a direct shot at MLG picking up LoL, and it makes perfect sense. Wonder whether NASL is picking up new staff, since it seems like the old staff just about managed with only SC2.
if NASL want to get popular and well known then why pick HON? It's a really stupid choice and they need all the audience they can get since the Korean drama in sc2 part. HON is basically dead I'm not hating on HON but the community is just too small to be viable I'm just viewing this business wise alright? Don't respond like i haven't play the game and stuff.
Sorry, but I really don't like their business model. They force the players to play an over two months long group stage to see who qualifies for the grand finals (compare IPL Origin). And they won't even reimburse the people who attend the finals 100% for their flights plus lodging, even though they apparently have the money to do so.
On September 07 2011 04:32 DarkRise wrote: if NASL want to get popular and well known then why pick HON? It's a really stupid choice and they need all the audience they can get since the Korean drama in sc2 part. HON is basically dead I'm not hating on HON but the community is just too small to be viable
Well the community can always grow again. Maybe some SC2 fans will get into it, maybe some of the older fans/players will get back into it now that there is a competitive scene starting up again.
I'm not saying it's going to happen, but it looks like that is what S2 is betting on by paying NASL to do this.
Maybe they also tried to get MLG to pick them up but lost out to LoL.
Meh doubt S2 can stay in the battle of money throwing as well as Riot and Valve, the game is soon to be replaced by Dota2 anywhere it exists, because valve can throw 3/5mil on a tournament (I know prize pool was 1.7 only but they had to rent space at gamescom and casters and all so I am giving them an other 2mill to do all that), while Riot is throwing 5mil on season 2.
Oh well Dota2 and LoL are good for eSports and maybe that makes blizzard sponsor some crazy prize pool for SC2, considering they were the ones to give us the 100k prize pools in GSL when it Started, plus I enjoy watching Dota2 and LoL just as much as SC2.
On September 07 2011 04:37 laguu wrote: I wish they fixed their problems with SC2 first. This seems just overly ambitious. Or maybe Riot is paying all of it.
It's S2, and yes I think they are paying for this themselves, rather than NASL splitting their budget.
At least that's what I get when they say promotional title.
I wish that I knew something about HoN as I do with dota so I could actually watch and understand it... ugh I dont get the HoN graphics at all and the game doesnt make sense to me.. Prolly cus I havent spend time on it Go esports! In whatever shape it may come
Why would you add HoN with DotA 2 around the corner and LoL dominating the casual part of the market? Makes no sense long term, so S2 must have paid them.
I'm all for expanding Esports and stuff, and the NASL team has shown huge development during and after the last season. But I think adding HoN is a step into the wrong direction. Be it the game's recent development, LoL's amazing stride or the horrible cesspool that is HoN's community - community-wise, there would have been much better options.
Of course I can only make assumptions - they probably have valid reasons for chosing HoN over LoL or over waiting for DotA2. So if it's a sound business decision, good for them! And if it helps NASL overall and thus the SC2 division as well, the better it is.
I actually don't know why they would do this, HoN is nowhere near as popular as LoL both competitively and casually, and DotA 2 is almost out. Just seems weird timing.
On September 07 2011 04:53 AndChe wrote: omg! HoN??...
Add LoL it's better.
HoN is waaaaay better for competitive gaming, IMO. LoL is more beginner friendly and because of that (and Riot's aggressive marketing), it has a larger player base. Hence, it has a larger audience when it comes to spectating games etc, so yeah, maybe LoL would be better in terms of bringing in money for the tournament organizer, but HoN is far superior when it comes to gameplay.
Whilst I'm happy for the players of HoN and the developers, I feel that it HoN's competitive scene doesn't have much of a foot to stand on. I was at Gamescom in Cologne, and the difference between the audience sizes of LoL and HoN were enormous. Where maybe a maximum of 50 people were watching HoN, at least a thousand were watching the mainstage finals, along with at least 300 for the semis/3rd place match.
It's a staggering difference, and even DotA2's crowd was multiple sizes bigger than HoN's. It might be a really good competitive game to play, but there are several problems. S2 is even worse of a developer for the competitive scene than Riot, the community is even worse than LoL's (which is already multitudes worse than SC2's community), and it's not a very accessible game for people who want to get into it. Things are not very clear for a first time viewer, and a first time viewer will get easily bored because of it (I did, watched a match at the HoN booth). LoL has a very clear graphical style, which makes everything that happens on screen a bit easier to understand.
On September 07 2011 03:53 RajaF wrote: Well, sorry if it's old news. I could not find anything related to it.
I guess then it's news that this is a CNBC article. This is as mainstream media as it gets.
they copy pasted a press release onto their website, I wouldn't get too excited about that.
It's better than nothing man. I mean, it's CNBC which means that even if 20% of their audience clicks on the link SC2 gets an extra couple millions of views.
Dumb, IMO, these moba games and it;s current trend of popularity will die off as soon as the money dries up. As a spectator sport it is hard to follow due to it's complexity and due to the multiplayer aspect it is terrible since you miss the majority of what happens unless there is an epicenter of action. which only happens every so often in the game.
This is a terrible idea because hon is not a good enough game to do it with. Its a bad investment. Now lets say that it was Dota 2 I would have a different opinion.
What worries me the most is that there are a lot of MOBA games competing for the #1 spot and I don't know which one it will be but I doubt it will be HON. I can see either LoL or DoTA 2 taking the crown but as for HoN not so much.
On September 07 2011 05:12 Aegeis wrote: What worries me the most is that there are a lot of MOBA games competing for the #1 spot and I don't know which one it will be but I doubt it will be HON. I can see either LoL or DoTA 2 taking the crown but as for HoN not so much.
I agree... but it's disappointing because dota 2 seems to just be a copy of dota1 =/
Well I guess to survive, they need to expand. Honestly I don't like it and I won't support it. But I also won't try to murder it, it is an ESPORT comparable to Starcraft 2.
Well, kind of glad that they seem to have learned a little bit from sc2 in season 1. Now they first hand out some money to the teams through some showmatches, so that they can afford the flight to the grand finals.
The question remains why they cannot do this in sc2 as well... <.<
On September 07 2011 05:12 Aegeis wrote: What worries me the most is that there are a lot of MOBA games competing for the #1 spot and I don't know which one it will be but I doubt it will be HON. I can see either LoL or DoTA 2 taking the crown but as for HoN not so much.
I agree... but it's disappointing because dota 2 seems to just be a copy of dota1 =/
Don't have a source to back me up, but pretty certain it's just dota1 with it's own engine instead of being inside wc3.
Kinda meh news to me. If it gets them more viewers and helps them to expand then I guess it's ok for them, but I personally ain't gonna watch it, even tho I prefer hon over LoL. Lets just hope they make the switch to dota 2 when it comes out.
I kinda chuckled at the "LoL takes more skill" comment and the bunch of LoL's talking as if HoN is dead.
HoN is pretty much an exact DotA clone. It relies on players skill and a knowledge of the game to know which hero benefits from which item. It doesn't rely on idiotic "Summoner talent trees" or a lack of killing creeps like LoL does. The only reason that LoL is as popular as it is, was due to a huge ad campaign and the game being free* (limited heroes)
So you have a bunch of young kids who can't afford to buy real games playing a free game and finding it's actually kind of fun, while all of the original DotA players moved to HoN where denying was still considered a "feature" and everything rested more on the player and their knowledge.
Like a poster above said, HoN isn't "dead", it just doesn't get the same amount of numbers that LoL does, and since the F2P system was added, actually seen a rise in people playing it.
But what do I know, this is just typical gaming forum "discussion" where people make up facts and spew nonsense and then get upset when called on it and start an idiotic flame war.
See; BF3/MW3, PS3/360, Any Game ever/Any other game ever.
On September 07 2011 05:12 Aegeis wrote: What worries me the most is that there are a lot of MOBA games competing for the #1 spot and I don't know which one it will be but I doubt it will be HON. I can see either LoL or DoTA 2 taking the crown but as for HoN not so much.
I agree... but it's disappointing because dota 2 seems to just be a copy of dota1 =/
Don't have a source to back me up, but pretty certain it's just dota1 with it's own engine instead of being inside wc3.
Well they still refer to themselves as the NASL? Although S just stands for Star, I don't really see how that pertains to HoN in any really significant way. It would be like Starcraft being part of some tournament circuit called NAHL, the North American Heroes League(or something similar, I don't feel like putting that much thought into something that nobody is probably going to see). Which although you could craft some sort of correlation, it wouldn't be all that relevant.
What a strange move. I don't follow the moba scene but LoL has a much bigger community and Dota 2 seems like it'll be huge as well. HoN just appears to be the lowest common denominator in terms of viewership. o_O
Not really sure why people think they would have had the opportunity to add Dota 2 instead of HoN for season 2? Dota 2's open beta hasn't even started yet. At the very least they wouldn't be able to add it until season 3. Therefore HoN is the best option for a competitive "moba" (hate that word) that they have currently to add to season 2. The only other thing they could have done would be to hold off until season 3 to add any new games and hope that Dota 2 open beta/release would be by then.
Anyway I'm glad to at least see them adding HoN for this season, it'll be enjoyable to see how it turns out. Moving to Dota 2 for season 3 would be a smart move, though.
It's probably a money-making venture for them. All of the producers of that genre of games seem to be providing at the very least the prize pool to e-sports tournaments, if not additional money. Hopefully the profit helps keep their SC2 running past season 3 or whatever season they'd initially planned on doing.
Edit: This probably also drove the 'choice' of which of game to pick.
I've never watched the game and I dont think it sounds fun to watch [for me]. But esports isnt just sc2 or whatever, and its obviously helpful to grow an entire market of esports rather than base it purely on one sport. So, good, I hope it does well.
On September 07 2011 03:58 RajaF wrote: Well, this can only be good for SC2 since people that would watch HoN will now get to see some of our game too and the other way around. More popularity for everyone.
How do you figure that one? Halo has been in MLG for centuries and I've never ended up watching it, lol and hon have been at countless events like IEMs and DHs and ive never watched it. The likelihood is its going to be at the same kind of broadcast hours as the starcraft but just on a different channel so most people arnt going to get involved in the other game
i dont think this is a smart move. the season 1 was pretty terrible with production value (1/10 compared to the IPL), although the games were pretty damn good.
it might be ok if they manage to sort it out for season 2 though, but i know i wont be watching any HoN.
Err...the LoL vs DotA has been argued to death. No need to beat the dead horse.
But congrats to HoN. I was pretty scared that HoN was dead as an e-sport but DotA 2 is going to take over DX
But whether it is LoL, DotA, or HoN, pro MOBAs are boring to watch...it is almost like reading a textbook. Why read the textbook when you can go into the lab and have all the fun you want?
Any thoughts on why they would do this? Are they trying to become the new MLG?
NASL needs money. HoN needs Promotion.
This is probably accurate.
On September 07 2011 04:38 Pokebunny wrote: YES YEEEEEAH~!
So happy we've got HoN and not more LoL. Super psyched for HoN and SC2. Woooooo
Now all you need to do is drop SC2 and play HoN with me.
Also: LOL at all the LoL people in this thread. Edit: Also: LOL at all the HoN people bashing LoL in return. Guess what, you both think your game is the cat's pajamas but you don't need to hate the other one for no reason. Neither one is a bad game.
On September 07 2011 05:06 Doctorbeat wrote: Whilst I'm happy for the players of HoN and the developers, I feel that it HoN's competitive scene doesn't have much of a foot to stand on. I was at Gamescom in Cologne, and the difference between the audience sizes of LoL and HoN were enormous. Where maybe a maximum of 50 people were watching HoN, at least a thousand were watching the mainstage finals, along with at least 300 for the semis/3rd place match.
It's a staggering difference, and even DotA2's crowd was multiple sizes bigger than HoN's. It might be a really good competitive game to play, but there are several problems. S2 is even worse of a developer for the competitive scene than Riot, the community is even worse than LoL's (which is already multitudes worse than SC2's community), and it's not a very accessible game for people who want to get into it. Things are not very clear for a first time viewer, and a first time viewer will get easily bored because of it (I did, watched a match at the HoN booth). LoL has a very clear graphical style, which makes everything that happens on screen a bit easier to understand.
atleast hon have a pause function,stats interface, and banning/picks phase. riot is a developing a competitve game? rofl. no they are too busy making another casual map "dominion". dont tell me you really think dominion is gonna be the main map for tournaments.
anyways im hoping to see these 8 teams.
1.msi-best team 2.whp5- allstar north american team. 3.col- just because paintitgold 4.sgty- best american team imo 5.lion- love them for monkey king pick against OK 6.ok- who doesnt love h4nni 7.dskb- best SEA team 8.infs
On September 07 2011 05:10 P0ckets wrote: Dumb, IMO, these moba games and it;s current trend of popularity will die off as soon as the money dries up. As a spectator sport it is hard to follow due to it's complexity and due to the multiplayer aspect it is terrible since you miss the majority of what happens unless there is an epicenter of action. which only happens every so often in the game.
Meh im the same boat as u...moba's are boring as fuck to watch. Ive never made it through a whole game. I play hon an lol cant wait for dota2 to come out but as a spectator sport? I dont know how people can sit trough it personally. But then again golf and baseball have viewers too so to each his own.
Good to see another DotAClone (and it IS a clone of DotA, idc what you say) makin' it huge! Hopefully this means that eSports is getting bigger and bigger!
No matter where you name either LOL or HoN, you will get ppl argue and constantly bash the other side. The funny thing is, this is actually hurting the game since there are ppl who simply don't wanna be a part of that kind of community and stay off the games because of that reason.
On September 07 2011 06:06 Assirra wrote: No matter where you name either LOL or HoN, you will get ppl argue and constantly bash the other side. The funny thing is, this is actually hurting the game since there are ppl who simply don't wanna be a part of that kind of community and stay off the games because of that reason.
Agreed...it would be nice if people could unite like the fighting game community does...sad...
Hilarious amount of people in this thread have no idea about HoN's competitive scene, and it's getting added to IPL and MLG as well as the 7 figure HoNtour so...after LoL's disaster at Raleigh hopefully we stop seeing that awful competitive game in tournaments and zhoN reigns supreme at least until Dota2 comes out.
On September 07 2011 06:06 Assirra wrote: No matter where you name either LOL or HoN, you will get ppl argue and constantly bash the other side. The funny thing is, this is actually hurting the game since there are ppl who simply don't wanna be a part of that kind of community and stay off the games because of that reason.
Agreed...it would be nice if people could unite like the fighting game community does...sad...
Hoping the DotA 2 community improves from past communities of the same genre. I don't think we're ever going to see LoL/HoN/DotA players uniting like other communities though, unfortunately. But, it's a good reason for people new to the games to come to TL.
but seems silly to add this with dota 2 around the corner. I hope they don't have any sort of exclusive contract that is for too long. HoN is going to be wiped off the earth when Dota 2 is released.
it seems silly to test the waters using a popular, existing title? seems sensible to me. dota2's relative success is a gamble, just like any game (except SC2 lol, that was a guarantee), leagues like MLG and NASL adding titles like this will give them some indication of the genre's popularity, and get their staff comfortable with running a moba tournament
Nice to see NASL pick up HoN since it's a great game. I personally would rather see HoN than LoL since LoL is kinda boring to play and watch (to me). Lets see how long this will last since DotA 2 beta is suppose to start around fall of this year.
I dont get this move. Right now HoN is nothing compared to LoL in terms of playernumbers and audience and when DotA 2 comes out, HoN is just going to die. Hopefully the NASL gets good money for this. GL with the season.
but seems silly to add this with dota 2 around the corner. I hope they don't have any sort of exclusive contract that is for too long. HoN is going to be wiped off the earth when Dota 2 is released.
it seems silly to test the waters using a popular, existing title? seems sensible to me. dota2's relative success is a gamble, just like any game (except SC2 lol, that was a guarantee), leagues like MLG and NASL adding titles like this will give them some indication of the genre's popularity, and get their staff comfortable with running a moba tournament
Dota2s relative success is a gamble, but SC2s was guaranteed? I think you're way off on that one.
On September 07 2011 05:06 Doctorbeat wrote: Whilst I'm happy for the players of HoN and the developers, I feel that it HoN's competitive scene doesn't have much of a foot to stand on. I was at Gamescom in Cologne, and the difference between the audience sizes of LoL and HoN were enormous. Where maybe a maximum of 50 people were watching HoN, at least a thousand were watching the mainstage finals, along with at least 300 for the semis/3rd place match.
It's a staggering difference, and even DotA2's crowd was multiple sizes bigger than HoN's. It might be a really good competitive game to play, but there are several problems. S2 is even worse of a developer for the competitive scene than Riot, the community is even worse than LoL's (which is already multitudes worse than SC2's community), and it's not a very accessible game for people who want to get into it. Things are not very clear for a first time viewer, and a first time viewer will get easily bored because of it (I did, watched a match at the HoN booth). LoL has a very clear graphical style, which makes everything that happens on screen a bit easier to understand.
Well if we're going off pure numbers, TL should probably drop SC2 and become a Call of Duty website. It's way more competitive of a game if we're judging it by how many fans it has.
Also commenting on the "graphical styles" of either game is just completely opinion. Just because you've played one a lot and took a glance at another doesn't give you a credible source of saying which one is easier to watch.
Seems silly to me since HoN is essentially a carbon copy of a much more established and active competitive game, and will get crushed when they newest carbon copy of the same game is released. HoN is dead, although if S2 are putting the money forward NASL aren't going to lose anything by running it.
but seems silly to add this with dota 2 around the corner. I hope they don't have any sort of exclusive contract that is for too long. HoN is going to be wiped off the earth when Dota 2 is released.
it seems silly to test the waters using a popular, existing title? seems sensible to me. dota2's relative success is a gamble, just like any game (except SC2 lol, that was a guarantee), leagues like MLG and NASL adding titles like this will give them some indication of the genre's popularity, and get their staff comfortable with running a moba tournament
Dota2s relative success is a gamble, but SC2s was guaranteed? I think you're way off on that one.
no, no, a relative success within their league, not the game will sell a bazillion copies. context.
I'm glad they picked HoN after I had to watch LoL at IEM. S2 just made such an awesome game, I don't wanna bash LoL. Good step, maybe HoN still can grow after they were forced to make it f2p-ish because of LoL/DOTA2.
On September 07 2011 05:10 P0ckets wrote: Dumb, IMO, these moba games and it;s current trend of popularity will die off as soon as the money dries up. As a spectator sport it is hard to follow due to it's complexity and due to the multiplayer aspect it is terrible since you miss the majority of what happens unless there is an epicenter of action. which only happens every so often in the game.
God most people here talk out of their ass for something they have no Idea about, DotA has been a MOD(yes a MOD not its stand-alone game) for WC3 and gets millions of downloads on playdota.com whenever a new patch was released, with more millions in China that play on private VPN, yet it still hasn't died as competitive esport or game, the attention on it was about as much as it was on BW really none existent because it was so old (China still has a hard on for it like Korea for BW--a DotA team was bought for 6million dollars in China). As LoL success has shown it is a very good genre of game (you like LoL or not people like the genre), money for the tournaments by the companies is coming out of their promotion budget and these companies spend a lot on promotion, a tournament for 1mil is a lot better than the ad I am looking at right now for LoL (yes as I am typing this there is a LoL add on TL--I have my adblock disabled on TL <3), heck blizzard did the same they still to this date sponsor GOMTV for GSL, however SC2 thanks to that was embraced (same for LoL-and HoN on a smaller scale--with tournaments like IEM/ESL DH including them in their LAN), has Riot/S2 helped these companies decide by covering the risks for this investment, yes they have and maybe more than just the "risks" but the genre--I hate calling it MOBA since I am a DotA player --is here to stay and DotA2 will be the pinnacle and with Riot and Valve throwing promotion money to esports I have nothing to complain about.
Valve maybe does the same thing for CS:GO, and puts up a 1mil tournament for it, that will be amazing and Activizion putting a 1mil CoD tourney is also cool, even though I hate CoD and consoles (can't wait for CS:GO !!!!!!!! the games that can handle the heat will stay as esports other games will disappear as esports after the promotion money is gone, even though it doesn't have to stop, since these games have on going profit model as suppose to buy once model, DotA2 will probably be like TF2, buy to play with hats and later on maybe f2p with more hats (also with steamworks and being able to stream directly on dota2.com with build in functionality in the client for easy stream set up, where valve takes a bit of the pie and pays you for your work as well like justin.tv).
Bottom line, DotA has lived on its own without any help from Blizzard/Valve/insertpublisherhere and with the help of a publisher and refined graphics it can blow up even bigger considering it is more social game than SC2, most of the time with my friends we play DotA instead of SC2 because we want to play together and we hate 4v4--any thing other than 1v1 sucks considering the game is balanced around it and everything else is unbalanced.
On September 07 2011 04:02 JinDesu wrote: If they add it, they should change their name lol
...why?
Because with the addition of HON, it's not longer just a "Star League"
I find it pretty sad that even NASL doesn't realise that the "Star" in the Korean Star Leagues means Starcraft. Incontrol was talking about it before and saying how NASL wasn't just going to be an average starcraft league, but a star league instead. I had to facepalm at that.
HoN? Bit of a strange choice, I thought the HoN scene was declining because of DotA 2. I am not saying it shouldn't be considered but with LoL and DotA 2 out it seems an odd choice. I hope it helps HoN maintain it's eSports status.
Pretty awesome that they chose to do this, as cool as DotA 2 looks HoN gave me so many good times for the past 2 years I will honestly be happy to see it continue to prosper even with DotA 2 out.
On September 07 2011 06:49 wBsKillian wrote: I'm glad they picked HoN after I had to watch LoL at IEM. S2 just made such an awesome game, I don't wanna bash LoL. Good step, maybe HoN still can grow after they were forced to make it f2p-ish because of LoL/DOTA2.
I don't think that HoN is a bad game by any means, but S2's support of their community is pretty horrid.
On September 07 2011 07:23 WArped wrote: HoN? Bit of a strange choice, I thought the HoN scene was declining because of DotA 2. I am not saying it shouldn't be considered but with LoL and DotA 2 out it seems an odd choice. I hope it helps HoN maintain it's eSports status.
I can't speak for all of the people leaving HoN, but there are quite a few people leaving because of how S2 handles stuff.
I can't believe people will write off HoN or LoL because Dota2 will be here, I myself love HoN above both LoL and Dota it's just my personal opinion, but I play both LoL and Dota, and I am pretty sure I will also own Dota2 and play that.
Dota2 won't kill the other games, it might take away a lot of their competitive scene, but it will not take all the players from LoL or HoN it will mostly 'borrow' them. I am using borrowed loosely here. I am pretty sure all three games will still be played after Dota2 comes out, there might be some time where everybody is playing Dota2, but I am also pretty sure it will even out. I mean why can't you play more than one MOB-game as well as we play more than one FPS, or more than on MMO, or even more than one RTS?
It just seems like these 'flame wars' are getting out of hand and taking over so many places, when most people forget we are all gamers, we all love games, just as all football-fans love football (soccer for some) regardless of which team you cheer for, mostly all fans play themselves and love the game. The question really is why people insist on finding the better game instead of enjoying them all. Remember people we are all under the same roof
On a different note I want to add that even though I love HoN, but I must admit that its competitive scene is not nearly as popular as LoL, nor will it compare to Dota2 when it comes out, and for that I can't really see how adding HoN will help NASL, although I can see a motive for S2.
My heart cheers for this change, but my brain will forever be skeptic.
A problem of HoN is that S2 is an independend and relatively small company, for example you never see any HoN ads, just a bunch of LoL ads. I'm only semi-active now in HoN, but I followed the professional HoN scene for over a year and it defenetly has potential for a good esports game. Imo S2 just has to make the right steps to go in this direction, right now they mostly make it attractive for casual players so that it can be a real competitor for LoL, slowing down the effort for balance and for a stable game. But in general I like S2 a lot, during the time i played actively I was also active on the official HoN forum. There you could post sth about the game and a S2 employee (not just a moderator, a real employee who works on the game) would answer, giving reasons for sth. they made in the game. So in my opinion S2 is capable of doing the right things, sponsoring the price money for NASL is a sign for this. I just want people to give it a chance, you shouldn't just declare HoN as dead because DOTA2 is on its way. And NASL seems to be a good chance for that, since many people will watch it for sc2 and it's the biggest HoN event this far.
To the people who say "this is stupid because of DOTA 2, etc, etc": do you know the two games well? They might have a lot of the same heroes, but they are VERY different. As a spectator sport, I find Hon a lot more entertaining to watch, it's a completely different pace. Sure there are a lot of similarities, but it's two completely different games.
OT: Happy to see this. Hon doesn't get enough attention imo, which is sad since it beats games like lol by miles and miles (competitive wise). Good luck!!
but seems silly to add this with dota 2 around the corner. I hope they don't have any sort of exclusive contract that is for too long. HoN is going to be wiped off the earth when Dota 2 is released.
it seems silly to test the waters using a popular, existing title? seems sensible to me. dota2's relative success is a gamble, just like any game (except SC2 lol, that was a guarantee), leagues like MLG and NASL adding titles like this will give them some indication of the genre's popularity, and get their staff comfortable with running a moba tournament
huh? It's hardly a testing of the waters, it's using an inferior game of a similar genre to test the market sounds good to you, I suppose MLG should have added SCBW* (edit happy geez )before SC2 was released to test the RTS waters lol.
The popularity and player numbders that dota 2 will have is most definitely going to equal or most likely, exceed SC2. Especially if they go the F2P model through STEAM. I hope you were trolling when you call dota 2 a gamble but SC2 a guarantee. We all loved broodwar but broodwar didn't create an entire genre and countless rip offs.
Also I'm pretty sure MLG only added LoL because Riot paid for everything, perhaps NASL has a similar deal with S2. I can't imagine NASL thinking its a good idea to fully support HoN.. it doesn't exactly have amazing numbers or eSports following.
Quit HoN about a month ago after working for the GameReplays.org HoN section and playing since Beta. Couldn't deal with the enormous, gigantic, massively inflated egos of everyone from the everyday casual players to the pros to the casters. Then S2 did the whole, "yeah bro pay for your heroes now" and I bounced.
There's like at best 12 nice people in a group of around 2000.
I still watch the casts occasionally but 3 hours for a best of three is tedious to say the least.
but seems silly to add this with dota 2 around the corner. I hope they don't have any sort of exclusive contract that is for too long. HoN is going to be wiped off the earth when Dota 2 is released.
it seems silly to test the waters using a popular, existing title? seems sensible to me. dota2's relative success is a gamble, just like any game (except SC2 lol, that was a guarantee), leagues like MLG and NASL adding titles like this will give them some indication of the genre's popularity, and get their staff comfortable with running a moba tournament
huh? It's hardly a testing of the waters, it's using an inferior game of a similar genre to test the market sounds good to you, I suppose MLG should have added Civ 5 or AoE before SC2 was released to, test the RTS waters lol.
Civ is not even a RTS, while HoN and DotA2 are not only the same genre, but also like 90% the same exact game
but seems silly to add this with dota 2 around the corner. I hope they don't have any sort of exclusive contract that is for too long. HoN is going to be wiped off the earth when Dota 2 is released.
it seems silly to test the waters using a popular, existing title? seems sensible to me. dota2's relative success is a gamble, just like any game (except SC2 lol, that was a guarantee), leagues like MLG and NASL adding titles like this will give them some indication of the genre's popularity, and get their staff comfortable with running a moba tournament
huh? It's hardly a testing of the waters, it's using an inferior game of a similar genre to test the market sounds good to you, I suppose MLG should have added Civ 5 or AoE before SC2 was released to, test the RTS waters lol.
MLG did test the waters with SC2. They had the weekly MLG koth during the beta to see what numbers it would draw.
On September 07 2011 08:06 lazydino wrote: With hon dying and LoL rising, I can't see how this is a good decision.
HoN isn't dying right now.
When DotA 2 is released that might change, but LoL certainly won't be rising at that point in time if it is, as for HoN to die DotA 2 has to be a better alternative to it. If this is the case, LoL will lose player-base as well, even if it isn't to the same degree which HoN loses player base.
but seems silly to add this with dota 2 around the corner. I hope they don't have any sort of exclusive contract that is for too long. HoN is going to be wiped off the earth when Dota 2 is released.
it seems silly to test the waters using a popular, existing title? seems sensible to me. dota2's relative success is a gamble, just like any game (except SC2 lol, that was a guarantee), leagues like MLG and NASL adding titles like this will give them some indication of the genre's popularity, and get their staff comfortable with running a moba tournament
huh? It's hardly a testing of the waters, it's using an inferior game of a similar genre to test the market sounds good to you, I suppose MLG should have added Civ 5 or AoE before SC2 was released to, test the RTS waters lol.
Civ V isn't even an RTS. It would be more akin to adding SCBW though, which honestly wouldn't have been a bad idea.
AoE is a very different game than SC2 while SCBW is at least very similar, if not the same game. A much better analogy for the relationship between HoN and DotA 2.
NASL makes strange choices. They should solidify they're SC2 brand before they move into new titles. They had a very shaky season one and season two had so much drama before the season even started. I would hope they smoothed over everything before branching out.
Then to choose HoN(which doesn't have the numbers or hype that LoL or Dota2) is a questionable choice for your next title.
On September 07 2011 08:34 Aurdon wrote: NASL makes strange choices. They should solidify they're SC2 brand before they move into new titles. They had a very shaky season one and season two had so much drama before the season even started. I would hope they smoothed over everything before branching out.
Then to choose HoN(which doesn't have the numbers or hype that LoL or Dota2) is a questionable choice for your next title.
I don't understand their motivations for this.
There hasn't been a LoL tournament not sponsored by Riot and I'm sure you're aware of what happened at Dreamhack (or was it Gamescom, I forget now) and MLG. HoN's numbers are increasing, it's getting added to MLG and IPL, and it's where every decent player (at least in NA) is playing right now.
Dota2 isn't a factor because it isn't released. HoN is the best choice right now.
Why HON instead of LoL? It's like chosing red alert 3 tournament over SC2. LoL is more popular, has more players, has more EVERYTHING!! HoN Must have given NASL a shit ton of money or something.
On September 07 2011 08:34 Aurdon wrote: NASL makes strange choices. They should solidify they're SC2 brand before they move into new titles. They had a very shaky season one and season two had so much drama before the season even started. I would hope they smoothed over everything before branching out.
Then to choose HoN(which doesn't have the numbers or hype that LoL or Dota2) is a questionable choice for your next title.
I don't understand their motivations for this.
There hasn't been a LoL tournament not sponsored by Riot and I'm sure you're aware of what happened at Dreamhack (or was it Gamescom, I forget now) and MLG. HoN's numbers are increasing, it's getting added to MLG and IPL, and it's where every decent player (at least in NA) is playing right now.
Dota2 isn't a factor because it isn't released. HoN is the best choice right now.
It's a promotional title, which means that the HoN people are paying NASL to do this. I would assume that's their motivation.
On September 07 2011 08:58 lyrlian wrote: Why HON instead of LoL? It's like chosing red alert 3 tournament over SC2. LoL is more popular, has more players, has more EVERYTHING!! HoN Must have given NASL a shit ton of money or something.
No, that's not what it's like at all. LoL doesn't have everything, unless you really think popularity is everything.
I thought this was old news? I heard about it ages ago O.O. Either way this is just paving the way for Dota 2 following outside of china >:D. All for it :D
I don't see how it's hard to comprehend that NASL added hon because S2 is paying for it...MLG added LoL because Riot paid them more than S2 for the spot too. It has nothing to do with what the better game is or which game takes more skill or has more skilled players.
We're just seeing more of them at tournaments now because they have to worry about losing market share to dota2 as well as the fact that Riot has been so much more successful business wise that they can basically go for the kill on hon.
On September 07 2011 09:19 MichaelDonovan wrote: A "Starleague" airing a boring non-spectator-sport game called heroes of newerth? Heroes of Newerth American Starleague? What is this nonsense?
I dunno, personally I enjoy watching HoN more than SC2 much of the time. I think it's a great fit for an eSport, and hyped as I was for DotA 2, I went right back to playing/watching HoN along w/ SC2.
On September 07 2011 09:19 MichaelDonovan wrote: A "Starleague" airing a boring non-spectator-sport game called heroes of newerth? Heroes of Newerth American Starleague? What is this nonsense?
I dunno, personally I enjoy watching HoN more than SC2 much of the time. I think it's a great fit for an eSport, and hyped as I was for DotA 2, I went right back to playing/watching HoN along w/ SC2.
I agree, DotA 2 seems to be a worse spectator sport when I was watching the stream for the tourny, didnt feel interesting even though I knew the heroes and what they did from Dota1. I don't see people saying it should incorporate LoL though, as I see lots of Sc2 players enjoying HoN more then LoL.
So, I'm not very into the MOBA scene, but which one has the better future in ESPORTS? HoN? DotA 2? LoL? From what I've seen, the latter 2 draws in a lot of viewers, but I have no clue on HoN. Which do you think has the brightest future, and is it possible for all 3 or even 2 to co-exist without dividing the viewers and being in direct competition?
On September 07 2011 09:33 Telcontar wrote: So, I'm not very into the MOBA scene, but which one has the better future in ESPORTS? HoN? DotA 2? LoL? From what I've seen, the latter 2 draws in a lot of viewers, but I have no clue on HoN. Which do you think has the brightest future, and is it possible for all 3 or even 2 to co-exist without dividing the viewers and being in direct competition?
The only game that has a real future in eSports is Dota 2. Reason being is that Dota 2 champions will always be considered to have more skill than the top LoL team. Case closed.
Every other post is a HoN v. DotA v. LoL fanboy flame post regardless of how subtle they try to be.
Kinda like the post above me.
This is good news for S2 and HoN. I've played HoN during beta and it was a pretty fun game. Although whether or not this is a smart long-term move by NASL will have to be seen. A lot of people are already saying that DotA2 will spell the end for HoN because the two games are too similar. Whether or not that's true will be seen in the next year, but good luck to NASL I suppose.
I think this is a great! I haven't played HoN in ages, but I remember the fact that it's a little more fast-paced and gank oriented made it fun to watch back in the day
On September 07 2011 03:48 Risen wrote: Holy shit that's crazy :O
Still, I hope they swap from hon to dota2 when it comes out.
This. I feel like HoN is on its last leg. I'm anticipating a lot of HoN players switching to dota 2 when it comes out, and even some LoL players. I don't see much of a future for hon
Comparing the competitive viability of games by its popularity is flawed at best. The Sims is like the second most popular PC title, do you think because of that they should start having competitions? I talked to a friend who had never heard of HoN but played LoL - why are they playing it? Because it's free and it's casual.
Anyways, having 40k go to a tourney versus some crappy online ads is something we should support in eSports.
On September 07 2011 08:34 Aurdon wrote: NASL makes strange choices. They should solidify they're SC2 brand before they move into new titles. They had a very shaky season one and season two had so much drama before the season even started. I would hope they smoothed over everything before branching out.
Then to choose HoN(which doesn't have the numbers or hype that LoL or Dota2) is a questionable choice for your next title.
I don't understand their motivations for this.
Well, even though LoL is more popular, HoN is more skill-based, at least in comparison to Dota. Dota2 is simply not out yet, and we don't know WHEN it will be, so you can't really jump on it until valve goes with the official release, OR if they had a contract with valve bla bla, too complicated IMO.
So between Dota(1), LoL and HoN, HoN seems like the appropriate choice, due to the fact that it's a new-er game than dota, and more competitive than LoL.
And yes, I played LoL as well. It's good, but it's the minor differences that make it more newb-friendly that also make it more e-sports unworthy.
On September 07 2011 08:58 lyrlian wrote: Why HON instead of LoL? It's like chosing red alert 3 tournament over SC2. LoL is more popular, has more players, has more EVERYTHING!! HoN Must have given NASL a shit ton of money or something.
Why choose SC2 over Call of Duty? CoD is more popular, has more players, and has more EVERYTHING! NASL should probably drop SC2 in favor of CoD as well because it's obviously way better of a game.
I played HoN for about a year before picking up Starcraft 2 and they both are great and fun games. My only concern is that HoN was not made as an e-sport, but as a DoTA clone. This means that for a spectator it will be pretty hard to understand and parse what is happening in the matches since you have 10 heroes (from a pool of 80+ to choose from) with 4 spells each, that is a combination of 40 spells proc'ing during team fights. Also, my concern is that during the first 10 minutes of the game the laning phase is simple, but can be boring.
Don't get me wrong, I would love for HoN to succeed as e-sport, but I don't know if the complexity of what is happening at once in the screen will let itself to be one. Unless we have casters that speak like auctioneers or race track commentators.
On September 07 2011 11:42 Ozrak wrote: I played HoN for about a year before picking up Starcraft 2 and they both are great and fun games. My only concern is that HoN was not made as an e-sport, but as a DoTA clone. This means that for a spectator it will be pretty hard to understand and parse what is happening in the matches since you have 10 heroes (from a pool of 80+ to choose from) with 4 spells each, that is a combination of 40 spells proc'ing during team fights. Also, my concern is that during the first 10 minutes of the game the laning phase is simple, but can be boring.
Don't get me wrong, I would love for HoN to succeed as e-sport, but I don't know if the complexity of what is happening at once in the screen will let itself to be one. Unless we have casters that speak like auctioneers or race track commentators.
Well the first 10 minutes of games now are pretty action packed in fact. And I think Breaky will be able to hold is own as a caster :D
Not a smart move to go with hon. I appreciate the attempt at game diversity, but they probably picked it simply because EG already has a hon team. If you want popular and views, you go with lol. If you want skill and hype, you wait for dota 2.
I think that hon is likely screwed when dota 2 comes out since the nicest thing anyone can say about it is that its a dota clone. If they didnt want to wait, they should have gone with lol for the big playerbase that will likely not be bastardized to much by dota 2 due to the difference in mechanics.
In HoN or dota, there is so much burst damage that people drop so fast. Since HoN and Dota has LOTS AND LOTS of CC heroes it really hard to explain wth is going on. I dont believe it can be a spectator sport. LoL, the burst damage is smaller and less CC so it easier to follow but even still it not that fun to watch. I just cant see MOBA game ever working in the long run. They are fun to play though
i remember it was anounced last season that hon will come for 2nd one so here it is finaly said so it has nothing to do with no koreans or whatever its a very old plan
I don't get why they added HoN as its fanbase isn't really that big compared to LoL or DotA. I'm not commenting on the relative merits of the games, but it doesn't make much sense to me on a business level, unless of course, S2 somehow made some deal with NASL.
This is actually amazing. I really love HON and im glad its getting its time in the spotlight. I know dota will bring with it some fierce competition, but at least the more competitive of the hon/lol scene is getting a chance. Lets see some denies~!
On September 07 2011 04:23 coddan wrote: "Promotional" means HoN is paying to be there. That's why.
Yup, that's what immediately comes to mind for me as well.
On September 07 2011 05:25 Tomfour wrote: Well they still refer to themselves as the NASL? Although S just stands for Star, I don't really see how that pertains to HoN in any really significant way. It would be like Starcraft being part of some tournament circuit called NAHL, the North American Heroes League(or something similar, I don't feel like putting that much thought into something that nobody is probably going to see). Which although you could craft some sort of correlation, it wouldn't be all that relevant.
Yeah, the name doesn't seem to fit, although it's not a huge problem I guess.
Personally, I couldn't care less about which MOBA game they and and why, etc. I can see why LoL, HoN, DotA(2) are fun to play, and while I haven't played any one of them for an extended amount of time I'm sure they all have their merit. However I don't think any of them makes a good spectator game. The whole genre probably :/
I really like HON. I think it's a very well crafted, fun, and balanced game to play. S2 really dropped the ball on the p2p business model and poor marketing though, and LoL overtook it by a huge margin even though HoN is definitely the better game, imo. I think this is good news. It will probably only be played for another year or so or until dota2 comes out of course, but this is a good way to close out.
This was announced months ago. I think they just are trying to draw more spectators. Hosting more games can't cost too much more, and HoN isn't carried by many events.
I'm glad about this though I heard the news some time ago, I like HoN quite alot and LoL too, I feel HoN flies under the radar a bit more than it deserves its a fun game but gets alot of hate that isnt really fair.
Afaik Riot paid MLG for lol also, so it seems that more and more companies are sponsoring side events alongside major sc2 tourneys. Happy for HoN as the game needs alot more love than it is getting atm.
On September 07 2011 04:06 RumZ wrote: They added HoN? As a person who plays HoN and LoL I have to say I'm not looking forward to this, mainly because S2 does an impeccably bad job and handling their own community, as well as any exclusive S2 Hero makes that does not pertain to a Hero from DotA is typically ungodly overpowered and imbalanced. (Emerald Warden, anyone?)
Yeah, that's probably why EW is being banned almost every time in competetive games and when he doesn't get banned he gets picked and takes over games.
Where do you even get your news from? 1250 MMR players complaining about this or that hero being imbalanced?
Besides, does it even matter? If every heroe S2 invents is overpowered, there's enough of them now to make most of the heroes overpowered. If everyone is overpowered then, effectively, no one is.
On September 07 2011 11:42 Ozrak wrote: My only concern is that HoN was not made as an e-sport, but as a DoTA clone. This means that for a spectator it will be pretty hard to understand and parse what is happening in the matches since you have 10 heroes (from a pool of 80+ to choose from) with 4 spells each, that is a combination of 40 spells proc'ing during team fights. Also, my concern is that during the first 10 minutes of the game the laning phase is simple, but can be boring.
Don't get me wrong, I would love for HoN to succeed as e-sport, but I don't know if the complexity of what is happening at once in the screen will let itself to be one. Unless we have casters that speak like auctioneers or race track commentators.
Every game is hard to follow if you don't know it inside out. Even simple concepts like StarCraft may be hard to follow without knowing the nuances that allow you to gauge what's going on.
And S2 has made EXCELLENT (can't stress this enough) effort on creating spectator UI and LAN client for tournaments. They do consider the e-sport potential of HoN and are working to make it as good as possible on this field.
Maybe they should have added DOTA2, because it is the newer game and will attract a lot of viewers initially who'd be interested in checking it out. HoN went free to play recently, so may not be doing too well, and both LoL and HoN are kind of old and may not do as well for televised esports.
Hope things will go well for the NASL guys regardless!
This just shows how poorly the decision making is behind NASL. HoN is sadly going to die off once DotA2 is out. The community behind it is very small in comparison to the competition.
On September 07 2011 18:31 Renew wrote: This just shows how poorly the decision making is behind NASL. HoN is sadly going to die off once DotA2 is out. The community behind it is very small in comparison to the competition.
Must... Control... Anger...
Would you guys please stop with dumb comments like that? DotA2 isn't out yet and you don't know when will it be out. After it's out there will still be some time required to assess its potential as an e-sport and overall quality as a game. Only then will we be able to ascertain if it's going to kill anything or fail hard.
I, for one, am not the least bit interested in DotA2. I might be interested if they made something new with it and not DotA with better graphics. I've been playing DotA for years and welcomed HoN for its innovations.
Meh , when looking for an E-sports game I think you should considder stuff like , if u needed an FPS would u go for COD or BF ? Well COD most pepl. play but BF is know for better balance. So COD, sooo to relate to this, I would have gone LoL on acount of balance AND player count.
On September 07 2011 19:41 DH_Remorse wrote: Meh , when looking for an E-sports game I think you should considder stuff like , if u needed an FPS would u go for COD or BF ? Well COD most pepl. play but BF is know for better balance. So COD, sooo to relate to this, I would have gone LoL on acount of balance AND player count.
I'd choose neither CoD nor BF. There are much better FPS games out there (hell, even CSS is better).
On September 07 2011 18:31 Renew wrote: This just shows how poorly the decision making is behind NASL. HoN is sadly going to die off once DotA2 is out. The community behind it is very small in comparison to the competition.
Must... Control... Anger...
Would you guys please stop with dumb comments like that? DotA2 isn't out yet and you don't know when will it be out. After it's out there will still be some time required to assess its potential as an e-sport and overall quality as a game. Only then will we be able to ascertain if it's going to kill anything or fail hard.
I, for one, am not the least bit interested in DotA2. I might be interested if they made something new with it and not DotA with better graphics. I've been playing DotA for years and welcomed HoN for its innovations.
Um beta is out and there is a 6 month timetable for release...
Dota and lol have 10x the playerbase and hon has been seeing a decline in player numbers despite going f2p. It is a poor decision on nasl part to back 3rd place out of a 3 game race.
Um beta is out and there is a 6 month timetable for release...
Dota and lol have 10x the playerbase and hon has been seeing a decline in player numbers despite going f2p. It is a poor decision on nasl part to back 3rd place out of a 3 game race.
Beta isn't out, LoL spec client didn't even work at MLG, and HoN has won ~ 25k more players connected at the same time since going f2p. Your only valid point is LoL and DotA having a larger playerbase. I mean people should get it's just about $$, it's not about what NASL producers prefer has a game.
On September 07 2011 18:31 Renew wrote: This just shows how poorly the decision making is behind NASL. HoN is sadly going to die off once DotA2 is out. The community behind it is very small in comparison to the competition.
Must... Control... Anger...
Would you guys please stop with dumb comments like that? DotA2 isn't out yet and you don't know when will it be out. After it's out there will still be some time required to assess its potential as an e-sport and overall quality as a game. Only then will we be able to ascertain if it's going to kill anything or fail hard.
I, for one, am not the least bit interested in DotA2. I might be interested if they made something new with it and not DotA with better graphics. I've been playing DotA for years and welcomed HoN for its innovations.
Um beta is out and there is a 6 month timetable for release...
Dota and lol have 10x the playerbase and hon has been seeing a decline in player numbers despite going f2p. It is a poor decision on nasl part to back 3rd place out of a 3 game race.
HoN has a far better spectator client right now, witch makes a strong selling point for an esport.
On September 07 2011 18:31 Renew wrote: This just shows how poorly the decision making is behind NASL. HoN is sadly going to die off once DotA2 is out. The community behind it is very small in comparison to the competition.
Must... Control... Anger...
Would you guys please stop with dumb comments like that? DotA2 isn't out yet and you don't know when will it be out. After it's out there will still be some time required to assess its potential as an e-sport and overall quality as a game. Only then will we be able to ascertain if it's going to kill anything or fail hard.
I, for one, am not the least bit interested in DotA2. I might be interested if they made something new with it and not DotA with better graphics. I've been playing DotA for years and welcomed HoN for its innovations.
Um beta is out and there is a 6 month timetable for release...
Dota and lol have 10x the playerbase and hon has been seeing a decline in player numbers despite going f2p. It is a poor decision on nasl part to back 3rd place out of a 3 game race.
Are you sure you know what decline means? The fact that HoN has experienced the exact opposite of what you just said simply leads me to believe that you don't actually know what decline means.
Best part about HoN would be the special Lan client and the Spectator UI. Those are MAJOR selling points that Dota2 could definitely take a page from.
They are probably getting paid to host HoN. That's why they are willing to do it, at worst it gives them more money to work on their production with, which in turn only helps the SC2 productions. Also, have you seen their recent showmatches? The production is finally where you would have wanted it when it started, it's going places.
seriously, why are we adding a non starcraft 2 title to a starcraft 2 league? If you want to add it and change your name to the NAeSL That makes sense. But don't change the meaning of a star league.
On September 07 2011 18:31 Renew wrote: This just shows how poorly the decision making is behind NASL. HoN is sadly going to die off once DotA2 is out. The community behind it is very small in comparison to the competition.
Must... Control... Anger...
Would you guys please stop with dumb comments like that? DotA2 isn't out yet and you don't know when will it be out. After it's out there will still be some time required to assess its potential as an e-sport and overall quality as a game. Only then will we be able to ascertain if it's going to kill anything or fail hard.
I, for one, am not the least bit interested in DotA2. I might be interested if they made something new with it and not DotA with better graphics. I've been playing DotA for years and welcomed HoN for its innovations.
Um beta is out and there is a 6 month timetable for release...
Dota and lol have 10x the playerbase and hon has been seeing a decline in player numbers despite going f2p. It is a poor decision on nasl part to back 3rd place out of a 3 game race.
Beta isn't out yet... And since HoN goes f2p, it constantly hit 50k players online at the same time in International server, and just hit 25k players online in Garena server a week ago.
On September 07 2011 20:14 bigjenk wrote: It is a poor decision on nasl part to back 3rd place out of a 3 game race.
Let me try and get to you some reasoning behind NASL to get HoN instead of LoL and DotA.
1. DotA is just a mod, it's way too old and half of its playerbase resides in China. Hard to make a league like that. DotA2 isn't out yet.
2. LoL might have large playerbase but it also suffers from certain problems and let me quote someone more knowledgeable on the matter than myself ([EG]chu, who got to #1 rank in LoL in under 2 months):
Well made casual game, donkeyshit competitive game. There is only one way this game can be played at top level and that is passive farm-lane-entire-game, with its metagame heavily reliant on a stupid free blink that probably plagued that game since the beginning of time.
3. HoN has great spectator/LAN tools and some really good players (I mean, Testie plays HoN, what more do you need?).
tried watching HON, very difficult even for noobies then i played hon for a week used parasite, couldn't infect boss's on map because i wasn't a star member shortly uninstalled later
On September 08 2011 03:17 br0fivE wrote: tried watching HON, very difficult even for noobies then i played hon for a week used parasite, couldn't infect boss's on map because i wasn't a star member shortly uninstalled later
You can't infect bosses regardless of what kind of member you are.
I have been playing HoN since the beta, and watching it as well. If you play the game, it is great to watch, and Breakycpk (the best/main commentator of the game) is awesome. If you haven't played it, it is probably just as hard as LoL to understand, although it is somewhat more competitive, with lots of strong teams for it's whole life time.
Graphics are pretty good too. I suggest not playing it on absolute highest though, the game becomes a little *too* shiny ^.^
On September 07 2011 10:51 RaiKageRyu wrote: This is why they chose StarLeague instead of Starcraft League. They kept in mind for future games beyond Starcraft.
I don't think that's true. I think they did that because in BW there were "starleagues" like, OSL meant OnGameNet Starleague. I'm pretty sure that North American Starleague was very much intended to mean SC2 league, like GSL.
On September 08 2011 03:57 Surili wrote: I have been playing HoN since the beta, and watching it as well. If you play the game, it is great to watch, and Breakycpk (the best/main commentator of the game) is awesome. If you haven't played it, it is probably just as hard as LoL to understand, although it is somewhat more competitive, with lots of strong teams for it's whole life time.
Graphics are pretty good too. I suggest not playing it on absolute highest though, the game becomes a little *too* shiny ^.^
I agree and let me add that breakycpk is as good of a caster as tasteless or artosis in starcraft 2 , I love his casts.
On September 08 2011 04:08 ETisME wrote: I don't feel hon is that balanced, or maybe it's just me disliking how the game has so many jumping and leaping and "blink" skills
So many blink skills compared to what game? HoN is basically a clone of dota, an LoL is the game where every hero has a free blink spell.
On September 08 2011 04:08 ETisME wrote: I don't feel hon is that balanced, or maybe it's just me disliking how the game has so many jumping and leaping and "blink" skills
So many blink skills compared to what game? HoN is basically a clone of dota, an LoL is the game where every hero has a free blink spell.
This^ + there aren't really that many jumping/leaping/blink spells, don't remember the excact number on the top of my head but I am certain it is below 10.
On September 08 2011 04:08 ETisME wrote: I don't feel hon is that balanced, or maybe it's just me disliking how the game has so many jumping and leaping and "blink" skills
Blink heroes are all weaker than other heroes.
Magebane: Melee, Master's Mantra is one of the worst skills in the game.
Wretched Hag: Decent hero but nobody will scream imba. Doesn't have any sort of disable skill unlike other nukers like Pyro and Witch Slayer.
Valkyrie: very well rounded hero. The blink is directional and fixed length but in return she gets a stun, even tho it has pretty bad reliability.
Actually. that's pretty much it with blink heroes. There's Doctor Repulsor in a way but every time he uses it he loses like all his mana.
On September 08 2011 01:44 Manit0u wrote: 2. LoL might have large playerbase but it also suffers from certain problems and let me quote someone more knowledgeable on the matter than myself ([EG]chu, who got to #1 rank in LoL in under 2 months):
Well made casual game, donkeyshit competitive game. There is only one way this game can be played at top level and that is passive farm-lane-entire-game, with its metagame heavily reliant on a stupid free blink that probably plagued that game since the beginning of time.
I honestly don't put any stock into what Chu says. He's rather irrational at times. He never even played LoL competitively and I don't think that gives his words any merit. Albeit, he is a very talented player. Being as good as he is, I'm not surprised he did well in the solo queue ladder for LoL. Especially since he had played LoL previously. All Chu showed me was a very talented MOBA player could hunker down and play a single champion in LoL very well.
I personally think HoN is a very good game. So is LoL however, and half the claims I see people make are empty prejudices. I mean, LoL has a pretty decent prize pool future in front of it. There is hardly any new blood in the tournement scene involving LoL. Until I see some HoN team or DotA team come in and crush the LoL scene I don't consider LoL the inferior competitive game.
Back on topic... I'm very happy NASL picked up HoN and it was smart to do so since I haven't had any connection with their competitive scene in a long time and would like to watch some of it again. I'm excited and I do think it was a good decision by NASL for a lot of the reasons people have listed.
On September 08 2011 04:08 ETisME wrote: I don't feel hon is that balanced, or maybe it's just me disliking how the game has so many jumping and leaping and "blink" skills
Blink heroes are all weaker than other heroes.
Magebane: Melee, Master's Mantra is one of the worst skills in the game.
Wretched Hag: Decent hero but nobody will scream imba. Doesn't have any sort of disable skill unlike other nukers like Pyro and Witch Slayer.
Valkyrie: very well rounded hero. The blink is directional and fixed length but in return she gets a stun, even tho it has pretty bad reliability.
Actually. that's pretty much it with blink heroes. There's Doctor Repulsor in a way but every time he uses it he loses like all his mana.
Bubbles, Maliken, Magmus, Night Hound, Chronos.. out of the back of my head.
OT It is probably S2 who has made a good offer for NASL
On September 08 2011 04:08 ETisME wrote: I don't feel hon is that balanced, or maybe it's just me disliking how the game has so many jumping and leaping and "blink" skills
Blink heroes are all weaker than other heroes.
Magebane: Melee, Master's Mantra is one of the worst skills in the game.
Wretched Hag: Decent hero but nobody will scream imba. Doesn't have any sort of disable skill unlike other nukers like Pyro and Witch Slayer.
Valkyrie: very well rounded hero. The blink is directional and fixed length but in return she gets a stun, even tho it has pretty bad reliability.
Actually. that's pretty much it with blink heroes. There's Doctor Repulsor in a way but every time he uses it he loses like all his mana.
Bubbles, Maliken, Magmus, Night Hound, Chronos.. out of the back of my head.
OT It is probably S2 who has made a good offer for NASL
The problem is except Maliken, all heroes in that list (included the one the other guy listed) are DotA-ported heroes lol...
On September 08 2011 03:57 Surili wrote: I have been playing HoN since the beta, and watching it as well. If you play the game, it is great to watch, and Breakycpk (the best/main commentator of the game) is awesome. If you haven't played it, it is probably just as hard as LoL to understand, although it is somewhat more competitive, with lots of strong teams for it's whole life time.
Graphics are pretty good too. I suggest not playing it on absolute highest though, the game becomes a little *too* shiny ^.^
I agree and let me add that breakycpk is as good of a caster as tasteless or artosis in starcraft 2 , I love his casts.
He doesn't have the knowledge nor the competitive/gaming experience of either Artosis or Tasteless. He's a very good shoutcaster though, and although some people still give him hate for whatever reasons, he has improved a lot. I personally enjoy melonzz as a shoutcaster, he is funny, knows his shit and talks real. Although he tried too hard in his latest honcast cocasting, in my opinion.
Also, pretty much every melee carry hero has some sort of positioning skill, else it'd be an inferior hero unable to get close to anyone in teamfights.
Very interesting reading a lot of the comments in here about the HoN and NASL announcement
Anyways, I am really looking forward too an awesome event and I will be sure to do what I can to make it as entertaining as possible for viewers to watch as I currently do with Honcast on a daily basis.
I also want people to remember that such an event like this is more about the spectator / entertainment side of it rather than you actually playing the game, and thus you should keep that in mind when discussing HoN being chosen over LoL (in my opinion a very slow and boring game to watch) and dota2 (still has a lot of work to do before getting on that level it can/will be).
Thanks for all the responses and I cannot wait to get this started! Also, I am a huge fan of SC2 so this made this move that much better for me as a fan in general as I have had the opportunity to meet gretorp as well as watch many of SC2 matches.
On September 08 2011 05:17 breakycpk wrote: Very interesting reading a lot of the comments in here about the HoN and NASL announcement
Not really TL has a large group of LoL players and they hate on HoN for no good reason. The rest of the posts are HoN players being dumb back and DotA2 fanboys who want something to rant about before the game comes out.
Cool that you're posting here though. I'll definitely watch your casts.
On September 08 2011 05:17 breakycpk wrote: Very interesting reading a lot of the comments in here about the HoN and NASL announcement
Anyways, I am really looking forward too an awesome event and I will be sure to do what I can to make it as entertaining as possible for viewers to watch as I currently do with Honcast on a daily basis.
I also want people to remember that such an event like this is more about the spectator / entertainment side of it rather than you actually playing the game, and thus you should keep that in mind when discussing HoN being chosen over LoL (in my opinion a very slow and boring game to watch) and dota2 (still has a lot of work to do before getting on that level it can/will be).
Thanks for all the responses and I cannot wait to get this started! Also, I am a huge fan of SC2 so this made this move that much better for me as a fan in general as I have had the opportunity to meet gretorp as well as watch many of SC2 matches.
how has dota still a lot of work to do before getting to hons level?
On September 08 2011 05:17 breakycpk wrote: Very interesting reading a lot of the comments in here about the HoN and NASL announcement
Anyways, I am really looking forward too an awesome event and I will be sure to do what I can to make it as entertaining as possible for viewers to watch as I currently do with Honcast on a daily basis.
I also want people to remember that such an event like this is more about the spectator / entertainment side of it rather than you actually playing the game, and thus you should keep that in mind when discussing HoN being chosen over LoL (in my opinion a very slow and boring game to watch) and dota2 (still has a lot of work to do before getting on that level it can/will be).
Thanks for all the responses and I cannot wait to get this started! Also, I am a huge fan of SC2 so this made this move that much better for me as a fan in general as I have had the opportunity to meet gretorp as well as watch many of SC2 matches.
how has dota still a lot of work to do before getting to hons level?
I think he's referring to the observing UI and watchability. In that case he is correct. HoN has a far superior observing UI to what we saw at gamescom.
On September 08 2011 05:17 breakycpk wrote: Very interesting reading a lot of the comments in here about the HoN and NASL announcement
Anyways, I am really looking forward too an awesome event and I will be sure to do what I can to make it as entertaining as possible for viewers to watch as I currently do with Honcast on a daily basis.
I also want people to remember that such an event like this is more about the spectator / entertainment side of it rather than you actually playing the game, and thus you should keep that in mind when discussing HoN being chosen over LoL (in my opinion a very slow and boring game to watch) and dota2 (still has a lot of work to do before getting on that level it can/will be).
Thanks for all the responses and I cannot wait to get this started! Also, I am a huge fan of SC2 so this made this move that much better for me as a fan in general as I have had the opportunity to meet gretorp as well as watch many of SC2 matches.
how has dota still a lot of work to do before getting to hons level?
I think he's referring to the observing UI and watchability. In that case he is correct. HoN has a far superior observing UI to what we saw at gamescom.
yeah hons spectator UI looks pretty good, but i dont get how that would put it on a higher level compared to the better teams, clearer graphics and (in my opinion) superior gameplay, that dota has to offer.
Anyways its pretty pointless to discuss over other games instead of hon, since s2 obviously pays for this^^
On September 08 2011 05:17 breakycpk wrote: Very interesting reading a lot of the comments in here about the HoN and NASL announcement
Anyways, I am really looking forward too an awesome event and I will be sure to do what I can to make it as entertaining as possible for viewers to watch as I currently do with Honcast on a daily basis.
I also want people to remember that such an event like this is more about the spectator / entertainment side of it rather than you actually playing the game, and thus you should keep that in mind when discussing HoN being chosen over LoL (in my opinion a very slow and boring game to watch) and dota2 (still has a lot of work to do before getting on that level it can/will be).
Thanks for all the responses and I cannot wait to get this started! Also, I am a huge fan of SC2 so this made this move that much better for me as a fan in general as I have had the opportunity to meet gretorp as well as watch many of SC2 matches.
Love what you do with Honcast man! Hope you put a lot into NASL and help HoN grow. Btw any spoilers on when the teams will be anounced?
On September 08 2011 05:17 breakycpk wrote: Very interesting reading a lot of the comments in here about the HoN and NASL announcement
Anyways, I am really looking forward too an awesome event and I will be sure to do what I can to make it as entertaining as possible for viewers to watch as I currently do with Honcast on a daily basis.
I also want people to remember that such an event like this is more about the spectator / entertainment side of it rather than you actually playing the game, and thus you should keep that in mind when discussing HoN being chosen over LoL (in my opinion a very slow and boring game to watch) and dota2 (still has a lot of work to do before getting on that level it can/will be).
Thanks for all the responses and I cannot wait to get this started! Also, I am a huge fan of SC2 so this made this move that much better for me as a fan in general as I have had the opportunity to meet gretorp as well as watch many of SC2 matches.
I'm one person who's excited for this at least. I just hope they make some kind of rule minimize pauses. Long pauses at the start (I assume this is for tactics discussion) is pretty much the norm of competitive HoN. It's really annoying from a spectator point of view and don't think casters particularily enjoy filling the airtime either.
All of you who are waiting for dota2 need to realize that the experience the NASL organization will gain from running a HoN league will benefit a Dota2 league greatly if they decide to pick that game up at some point in the future. Assuming that it doesn't in some way interfere with their SC2 league it's a win/win no matter kind of fanboi you are.
Except for LoL and Dota Allstars I suppose. But from what I know about those games there's just too many obstacles with them to make it viable to run a cross-continent online league.
On September 08 2011 05:17 breakycpk wrote: Very interesting reading a lot of the comments in here about the HoN and NASL announcement
Anyways, I am really looking forward too an awesome event and I will be sure to do what I can to make it as entertaining as possible for viewers to watch as I currently do with Honcast on a daily basis.
I also want people to remember that such an event like this is more about the spectator / entertainment side of it rather than you actually playing the game, and thus you should keep that in mind when discussing HoN being chosen over LoL (in my opinion a very slow and boring game to watch) and dota2 (still has a lot of work to do before getting on that level it can/will be).
Thanks for all the responses and I cannot wait to get this started! Also, I am a huge fan of SC2 so this made this move that much better for me as a fan in general as I have had the opportunity to meet gretorp as well as watch many of SC2 matches.
how has dota still a lot of work to do before getting to hons level?
I think he's referring to the observing UI and watchability. In that case he is correct. HoN has a far superior observing UI to what we saw at gamescom.
That's only because the commentators were bad at using the features and the AI bot didn't use them at all. Luminous showed off a ton of great spectator features on his cast of the finals.
The only possible reasoning I see why NASL would to this is hon payed some huge bucks. HoN is in a really bad position to be huge in esports and is just trying to save its ass. Right now, with DotA 2 coming out, its gonna stomp hon to an esports grave where it never should have left.
I really hope its for only a single season. This game is.. well its ok for a pub game but its beyond pukefuck to be a solid esports game.
I don't understand why people bash HoN and why people say it and LoL will die when Dota2 is released. I see this statement very often but never an argument. Personally I can't wait until the rage kids leave HoN and switch to Dota2.
Also, I think Blizzard has a lot to learn from S2 and it is amazing how much better S2 can do when they are such a small dev with limited resources compared to Valve or Blizzard.
On September 08 2011 16:24 Arkanthiel wrote: North American Star League
>>HoN
I.. I just don't understand.
What is there to understand? HoN has extremely high skill level involved at the top of the game, there are many great teams and players, it has great potential as an e-sport overall.
Also, there are a lot of hype possibilities for the spectators and a lot of "Holy Shit!" moments. Basically, when the top teams are involved there's usually several awesome or beyond awesome plays in a game.
On September 08 2011 05:17 breakycpk wrote: Very interesting reading a lot of the comments in here about the HoN and NASL announcement
Anyways, I am really looking forward too an awesome event and I will be sure to do what I can to make it as entertaining as possible for viewers to watch as I currently do with Honcast on a daily basis.
I also want people to remember that such an event like this is more about the spectator / entertainment side of it rather than you actually playing the game, and thus you should keep that in mind when discussing HoN being chosen over LoL (in my opinion a very slow and boring game to watch) and dota2 (still has a lot of work to do before getting on that level it can/will be).
Thanks for all the responses and I cannot wait to get this started! Also, I am a huge fan of SC2 so this made this move that much better for me as a fan in general as I have had the opportunity to meet gretorp as well as watch many of SC2 matches.
how has dota still a lot of work to do before getting to hons level?
In the same way that it will take a long time for SC2 players to reach Sc1 players surely? Dota 2 will be a new game, and the meta game will shift a huge amount before people know what is actually good, whereas HoN has been around for 2 years now. And the top teams have some great teamwork.
On September 08 2011 13:16 gosublade wrote: The only possible reasoning I see why NASL would to this is hon payed some huge bucks. HoN is in a really bad position to be huge in esports and is just trying to save its ass. Right now, with DotA 2 coming out, its gonna stomp hon to an esports grave where it never should have left.
I really hope its for only a single season. This game is.. well its ok for a pub game but its beyond pukefuck to be a solid esports game.
HoN is getting added to IPL, MLG and NASL. Dota2 isn't out yet, it's not a factor.
On September 08 2011 05:17 breakycpk wrote: Very interesting reading a lot of the comments in here about the HoN and NASL announcement
Anyways, I am really looking forward too an awesome event and I will be sure to do what I can to make it as entertaining as possible for viewers to watch as I currently do with Honcast on a daily basis.
I also want people to remember that such an event like this is more about the spectator / entertainment side of it rather than you actually playing the game, and thus you should keep that in mind when discussing HoN being chosen over LoL (in my opinion a very slow and boring game to watch) and dota2 (still has a lot of work to do before getting on that level it can/will be).
Thanks for all the responses and I cannot wait to get this started! Also, I am a huge fan of SC2 so this made this move that much better for me as a fan in general as I have had the opportunity to meet gretorp as well as watch many of SC2 matches.
how has dota still a lot of work to do before getting to hons level?
In the same way that it will take a long time for SC2 players to reach Sc1 players surely? Dota 2 will be a new game, and the meta game will shift a huge amount before people know what is actually good, whereas HoN has been around for 2 years now. And the top teams have some great teamwork.
The only meta-game shift will be backwards due to the smaller hero pool. All heroes and their respective numbers are exactly the same as the WC3 mod.
On September 08 2011 05:17 breakycpk wrote: Very interesting reading a lot of the comments in here about the HoN and NASL announcement
Anyways, I am really looking forward too an awesome event and I will be sure to do what I can to make it as entertaining as possible for viewers to watch as I currently do with Honcast on a daily basis.
I also want people to remember that such an event like this is more about the spectator / entertainment side of it rather than you actually playing the game, and thus you should keep that in mind when discussing HoN being chosen over LoL (in my opinion a very slow and boring game to watch) and dota2 (still has a lot of work to do before getting on that level it can/will be).
Thanks for all the responses and I cannot wait to get this started! Also, I am a huge fan of SC2 so this made this move that much better for me as a fan in general as I have had the opportunity to meet gretorp as well as watch many of SC2 matches.
how has dota still a lot of work to do before getting to hons level?
In the same way that it will take a long time for SC2 players to reach Sc1 players surely? Dota 2 will be a new game, and the meta game will shift a huge amount before people know what is actually good, whereas HoN has been around for 2 years now. And the top teams have some great teamwork.
No, the meta game will be the exact same as the current dota, which has been around for 8 years lol. It has an existing pro scene with teams that are inarguably higher skilled than hons teams. (many of the top hon players were average IHCS players)
On September 08 2011 05:17 breakycpk wrote: Very interesting reading a lot of the comments in here about the HoN and NASL announcement
Anyways, I am really looking forward too an awesome event and I will be sure to do what I can to make it as entertaining as possible for viewers to watch as I currently do with Honcast on a daily basis.
I also want people to remember that such an event like this is more about the spectator / entertainment side of it rather than you actually playing the game, and thus you should keep that in mind when discussing HoN being chosen over LoL (in my opinion a very slow and boring game to watch) and dota2 (still has a lot of work to do before getting on that level it can/will be).
Thanks for all the responses and I cannot wait to get this started! Also, I am a huge fan of SC2 so this made this move that much better for me as a fan in general as I have had the opportunity to meet gretorp as well as watch many of SC2 matches.
how has dota still a lot of work to do before getting to hons level?
In the same way that it will take a long time for SC2 players to reach Sc1 players surely? Dota 2 will be a new game, and the meta game will shift a huge amount before people know what is actually good, whereas HoN has been around for 2 years now. And the top teams have some great teamwork.
No, the meta game will be the exact same as the current dota, which has been around for 8 years lol. It has an existing pro scene with teams that are inarguably higher skilled than hons teams. (many of the top hon players were average IHCS players)
It depends on the scene though...specifically in NA every top DotA player is playing HoN, whereas Europe/Asia still plays a lot of DotA.
On September 08 2011 16:24 Arkanthiel wrote: North American Star League
>>HoN
I.. I just don't understand.
What is there to understand? HoN has extremely high skill level involved at the top of the game, there are many great teams and players, it has great potential as an e-sport overall.
Also, there are a lot of hype possibilities for the spectators and a lot of "Holy Shit!" moments. Basically, when the top teams are involved there's usually several awesome or beyond awesome plays in a game.
I would imagine he was refering to the Star bit referring to StarCraft.
I actually bought HoN, but I played it maybe twice. Always felt it was a poor choice (for me at least). The community was way too angsty / ragy for my taste. Maybe watching some of the top players will get me interested again.
On September 08 2011 05:17 breakycpk wrote: Very interesting reading a lot of the comments in here about the HoN and NASL announcement
Anyways, I am really looking forward too an awesome event and I will be sure to do what I can to make it as entertaining as possible for viewers to watch as I currently do with Honcast on a daily basis.
I also want people to remember that such an event like this is more about the spectator / entertainment side of it rather than you actually playing the game, and thus you should keep that in mind when discussing HoN being chosen over LoL (in my opinion a very slow and boring game to watch) and dota2 (still has a lot of work to do before getting on that level it can/will be).
Thanks for all the responses and I cannot wait to get this started! Also, I am a huge fan of SC2 so this made this move that much better for me as a fan in general as I have had the opportunity to meet gretorp as well as watch many of SC2 matches.
how has dota still a lot of work to do before getting to hons level?
In the same way that it will take a long time for SC2 players to reach Sc1 players surely? Dota 2 will be a new game, and the meta game will shift a huge amount before people know what is actually good, whereas HoN has been around for 2 years now. And the top teams have some great teamwork.
No, the meta game will be the exact same as the current dota, which has been around for 8 years lol. It has an existing pro scene with teams that are inarguably higher skilled than hons teams. (many of the top hon players were average IHCS players)
Meta game won't necessarily be the same. Different engine allowing you to do different things, as well as static damage on heroes as opposed to random range in WC3 can play pretty big factors. Also, new players joining/switching might influence the meta-game too.
Their strategy does not at all align with their vision at all. When that happens it means a business has lost its purpose. If they are going to expand, they need to do it properly, but I can't see that happening when they already have quite a number of issues with their SC2 tournaments.
It would benefit them much more to run one SC2 tournament successfully, rather than run even more failed tournaments, thus increasing costs while losing their fan-base.
I think NASL is doomed to fail, they don't even understand their own purpose, which is probably why there is no coherence with their decision making in and out of SC2.
Considering they are called the North American Starcraft League, why not make it a National League rather than an International One?
Heres why - Competition: There are way too many International Leagues, there are no high-budget National Leagues -- In every other sport there is usually only very few international leagues and lots of national leagues, SC2 is the complete opposite, possibly from people trying to run the biggest tournament possible rather than trying to establish their local scene. Imagine if Soccer had 4 World Cup tournaments a year?! -- Too many international leagues is destructive for the scene, as it becomes a race to the bottom, who can get the most korean contracts to their tournaments wins, instead of trying to develop local heroes. - Lower costs - Lower complexity (don't have to worry about Korean airfares and such) - May generate a more supportive following - They are called the North American Starcraft League, they have an opportunity to be the NBA of Starcraft rather than try and be the World Cup in a scene where there are many World Cups running every year.
My favorite foreign tournament has and will probably always be TSL 2. Why? It was all about the local heroes and established rivalries. Interviews were a lot more interesting, IdrA would complain about Protoss units that kill everything, and that his losses were because the other players weren't korean and therefore could not execute their strategies properly. NonY would guess his next round results, and they would come true every time.
Things like that will never happen if we keep running so many huge international tournaments, where players don't have a chance to be creative and establish a name for themselves in their respective countries.
On September 08 2011 05:17 breakycpk wrote: Very interesting reading a lot of the comments in here about the HoN and NASL announcement
Anyways, I am really looking forward too an awesome event and I will be sure to do what I can to make it as entertaining as possible for viewers to watch as I currently do with Honcast on a daily basis.
I also want people to remember that such an event like this is more about the spectator / entertainment side of it rather than you actually playing the game, and thus you should keep that in mind when discussing HoN being chosen over LoL (in my opinion a very slow and boring game to watch) and dota2 (still has a lot of work to do before getting on that level it can/will be).
Thanks for all the responses and I cannot wait to get this started! Also, I am a huge fan of SC2 so this made this move that much better for me as a fan in general as I have had the opportunity to meet gretorp as well as watch many of SC2 matches.
how has dota still a lot of work to do before getting to hons level?
In the same way that it will take a long time for SC2 players to reach Sc1 players surely? Dota 2 will be a new game, and the meta game will shift a huge amount before people know what is actually good, whereas HoN has been around for 2 years now. And the top teams have some great teamwork.
No, the meta game will be the exact same as the current dota, which has been around for 8 years lol. It has an existing pro scene with teams that are inarguably higher skilled than hons teams. (many of the top hon players were average IHCS players)
Meta game won't necessarily be the same. Different engine allowing you to do different things, as well as static damage on heroes as opposed to random range in WC3 can play pretty big factors. Also, new players joining/switching might influence the meta-game too.
Yeah for example, people already said that Crystal Maiden's attack animation makes her easier to hit than before.
On September 08 2011 05:17 breakycpk wrote: Very interesting reading a lot of the comments in here about the HoN and NASL announcement
Anyways, I am really looking forward too an awesome event and I will be sure to do what I can to make it as entertaining as possible for viewers to watch as I currently do with Honcast on a daily basis.
I also want people to remember that such an event like this is more about the spectator / entertainment side of it rather than you actually playing the game, and thus you should keep that in mind when discussing HoN being chosen over LoL (in my opinion a very slow and boring game to watch) and dota2 (still has a lot of work to do before getting on that level it can/will be).
Thanks for all the responses and I cannot wait to get this started! Also, I am a huge fan of SC2 so this made this move that much better for me as a fan in general as I have had the opportunity to meet gretorp as well as watch many of SC2 matches.
how has dota still a lot of work to do before getting to hons level?
I think he's referring to the observing UI and watchability. In that case he is correct. HoN has a far superior observing UI to what we saw at gamescom.
That's only because the commentators were bad at using the features and the AI bot didn't use them at all. Luminous showed off a ton of great spectator features on his cast of the finals.
I still think HoN has a better interface. Dota2 has nice graphs and spectator features, but HoN also displays a ton of information on screen. Still, neither game has a bad spectator interface and dota2 will likely get more features over time.
I hope they allow people to talk shit during the game, it's severely missing from Dota2. There was no "omfg lag!!!1" or "you guys suck, blue is the only good player" or even "lol using smoke, get good and don't use it.."
I think that one of the reasons NASL HoN is possible is because they've already got at least 3 teams participating who have their SC2 and HoN teams (MSI, compLexity, TT eSports). Not sure if EG is still alive in HoN, especially seeing chu play with WHP5 now.
Anyone who says HoN is a DotA clone is clueless and is better off not saying anything at all.
HoN started out as a DotA clone, but basically ever since it's release 1.5 years ago the game has been slowly changed to diversify itself from it. We haven't seen a hero ported from DotA in that entire period. Several map changes were made. Several new items were added.
At this point in time, saying that HoN is a DotA clone is like saying CoD and CS are clones. You shoot people in both and have some of the same guns. The vast majority of heroes are different, many of the items were changed or added, the map has changed, the pace is different and the metagame is different.
I firmly believe that DotA2, HoN and LoL can coexist as they draw people that like different things in the genre.
NASL=North American Star League not Starcraft League, so I don't see an issue with them adding a HoN tournament as a promotional title which may or may not feature at it in the future.
The difference between the LoL/Dota2/HoN competitive scenes is the fact that the HoN community built itself from the ground up (much like original DotA did), growing by itself and not via a forced huge prizepool. That's why HoN at the moment has 8 tournaments running at the same time with decent prizepools (5k-40k which were awesome prizepool a year ago, before all this silly stuff with 1 million + came about), LoL has one - and that one is funded by Riot.
Peace out. Stop hating. Play the game you want to play, support the whole genre and eSports in general.
On September 09 2011 08:47 Endymion wrote: I hope they allow people to talk shit during the game, it's severely missing from Dota2. There was no "omfg lag!!!1" or "you guys suck, blue is the only good player" or even "lol using smoke, get good and don't use it.."
To be fair it was a showmatch tournament. I bet we'll have all that juicy stuff in common games, especially with Valve voicechat.
What would be sick is if you can vote to turn voice-chat on between teams like you can in LFD2 lol
On September 09 2011 09:22 Kolapz wrote: Anyone who says HoN is a DotA clone is clueless and is better off not saying anything at all.
HoN started out as a DotA clone, but basically ever since it's release 1.5 years ago the game has been slowly changed to diversify itself from it. We haven't seen a hero ported from DotA in that entire period. Several map changes were made. Several new items were added.
At this point in time, saying that HoN is a DotA clone is like saying CoD and CS are clones. You shoot people in both and have some of the same guns. The vast majority of heroes are different, many of the items were changed or added, the map has changed, the pace is different and the metagame is different.
I firmly believe that DotA2, HoN and LoL can coexist as they draw people that like different things in the genre.
NASL=North American Star League not Starcraft League, so I don't see an issue with them adding a HoN tournament as a promotional title which may or may not feature at it in the future.
The difference between the LoL/Dota2/HoN competitive scenes is the fact that the HoN community built itself from the ground up (much like original DotA did), growing by itself and not via a forced huge prizepool. That's why HoN at the moment has 8 tournaments running at the same time with decent prizepools (5k-40k which were awesome prizepool a year ago, before all this silly stuff with 1 million + came about), LoL has one - and that one is funded by Riot.
Peace out. Stop hating. Play the game you want to play, support the whole genre and eSports in general.
I am actually pretty sure this isn't true... (desperately trying to think of more ports) but maybe because i cannot distinguish the beta and the release in my memory, but there were definitely ports that went on throughout the whole beta...
Otherwise what you say about HoN being a grassroots game is very true, the face of hon (that is HoNCast) was entirely a fan run organisation thanks to Breaky/xanderk and others, and now it has become one of the strongest esports contenders with a large number of tournaments.
On September 09 2011 09:27 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
To be fair it was a showmatch tournament. I bet we'll have all that juicy stuff in common games, especially with Valve voicechat.
What would be sick is if you can vote to turn voice-chat on between teams like you can in LFD2 lol
This is one example of something that already exists in hon, the voicechat system works pretty well. Not perfect, so i still use skype sometimes, but still pretty good.
Another thing that i very much hope gets implemented in dota2 is being able to set the minimap on the right side instead of the map. because of the shape of the map (ie being played from bottom left to top right) it is very easy to click on the minimap when trying to retreat/attack and thereby moving in the opposite direction to that intended. Switching the minimap to the otherside actually didn't affect my play at all after 2 games and completely removed this problem.
I think hon has some neat hero's that are very unique, like puppet master, parasite, and zephyr. It's all balanced fairly well and I like how the metagame allows for a more aggressive approach as compared to dota or lol.
I'm glad HON is still going strong and I will continue to play it after Dota 2 comes out.
On September 09 2011 21:24 Monkooli wrote: I'm a bit confused to add HoN rather than LoL since LoL has a considerably bigger fan-base. It's probably sponsoring benefits or something.
Bigger fan base doesn't mean anything. LoL is a shitty game and HoN is a game created for e-sports.
Anyone who says HoN is a DotA clone is clueless and is better off not saying anything at all.
HoN started out as a DotA clone, but basically ever since it's release 1.5 years ago the game has been slowly changed to diversify itself from it. We haven't seen a hero ported from DotA in that entire period. Several map changes were made. Several new items were added.
At this point in time, saying that HoN is a DotA clone is like saying CoD and CS are clones. You shoot people in both and have some of the same guns. The vast majority of heroes are different, many of the items were changed or added, the map has changed, the pace is different and the metagame is different.
I firmly believe that DotA2, HoN and LoL can coexist as they draw people that like different things in the genre.
NASL=North American Star League not Starcraft League, so I don't see an issue with them adding a HoN tournament as a promotional title which may or may not feature at it in the future.
The difference between the LoL/Dota2/HoN competitive scenes is the fact that the HoN community built itself from the ground up (much like original DotA did), growing by itself and not via a forced huge prizepool. That's why HoN at the moment has 8 tournaments running at the same time with decent prizepools (5k-40k which were awesome prizepool a year ago, before all this silly stuff with 1 million + came about), LoL has one - and that one is funded by Riot.
Peace out. Stop hating. Play the game you want to play, support the whole genre and eSports in general.
Starts out a bit hostile, but the end says it all.
On September 09 2011 21:34 jstar wrote: Bigger fan base doesn't mean anything. LoL is a shitty game and HoN is a game created for e-sports.
Regardless of how you feel, these types of posts shouldn't be on here. All they do is start flame wars back and forth. I'd hope that the TL DotA/HoN/LoL community could learn from some of the past communities and how they went wrong.
One thing that I don't really understand is the talk about how DotA2 is supposed to be so good. I wasn't able to watch too much of the tournament but what I did see it just looked like DotA with new skins and slightly better graphics, but all of the same heroes. Does anyone know what actually took so long? Why were LoL and HoN able to do the same thing so much sooner? What are the actual benefits of DotA2 over DotA1? Does anyone know?
On September 09 2011 21:24 Monkooli wrote: I'm a bit confused to add HoN rather than LoL since LoL has a considerably bigger fan-base. It's probably sponsoring benefits or something.
Most likely the fact that LoL has no working spectator or observer mode has something to do with it, alongside the fact that Riot is currently not prioritizing those. Instead they are putting all their eggs in the Dominion basket.
On September 09 2011 21:24 Monkooli wrote: I'm a bit confused to add HoN rather than LoL since LoL has a considerably bigger fan-base. It's probably sponsoring benefits or something.
Most likely the fact that LoL has no working spectator or observer mode has something to do with it, alongside the fact that Riot is currently not prioritizing those.
Just tried to watch some LoL games. Man, it's so boring. Every game is the same basically and there's really nothing happening throughout. At least nothing significant that could possibly swing the game heavily in one team's favor at 10 minute mark or even 20 minutes into the game. You know, stuff that makes games entertaining when big things happen and there's a comeback possibility etc.
Maybe it's just lack of my knowledge of the game but overall it seems boring (and looks atrocious, but that's my personal taste in graphical design).
Another thing that baffled me about LoL is the reasoning behind patch changes: Healer can cast multiple heals in long fights, which results in his teammates not dying = double the cooldown on heal in next patch.
What kind of sick reasoning is that? Can't the other team pick a healer too to even it out or something? Is it that big of a thing that it really needs to be patched? What's the reason behind taking a healer if not preventing people from dying after all?
One thing that I don't really understand is the talk about how DotA2 is supposed to be so good. I wasn't able to watch too much of the tournament but what I did see it just looked like DotA with new skins and slightly better graphics, but all of the same heroes. Does anyone know what actually took so long?
Why were LoL and HoN able to do the same thing so much sooner? What are the actual benefits of DotA2 over DotA1? Does anyone know?
On September 09 2011 21:24 Monkooli wrote: I'm a bit confused to add HoN rather than LoL since LoL has a considerably bigger fan-base. It's probably sponsoring benefits or something.
Most likely the fact that LoL has no working spectator or observer mode has something to do with it, alongside the fact that Riot is currently not prioritizing those.
Just tried to watch some LoL games. Man, it's so boring. Every game is the same basically and there's really nothing happening throughout. At least nothing significant that could possibly swing the game heavily in one team's favor at 10 minute mark or even 20 minutes into the game. You know, stuff that makes games entertaining when big things happen and there's a comeback possibility etc.
That's fairly true of all MOBAs, though (moreso with deny MOBAs, since it can be impossible to catch up). And if you know what to watch for it can be fairly interesting. But yeah, they're not that fun to watch.
On September 09 2011 22:53 Manit0u wrote:Another thing that baffled me about LoL is the reasoning behind patch changes: Healer can cast multiple heals in long fights, which results in his teammates not dying = double the cooldown on heal in next patch.
What kind of sick reasoning is that? Can't the other team pick a healer too to even it out or something? Is it that big of a thing that it really needs to be patched? What's the reason behind taking a healer if not preventing people from dying after all?
The problem was that it encouraged exactly what you dislike-passive play for 20 minutes. There was no reason to ever harass in one lane (bot) since the other player would just be topped up by their 0 CS support. You could see people never go back for 10 minutes.
The other issue was that playing the characters they nerfed/changed was boring as hell.
On September 09 2011 22:19 Thadenator wrote: Well said Axero.
One thing that I don't really understand is the talk about how DotA2 is supposed to be so good. I wasn't able to watch too much of the tournament but what I did see it just looked like DotA with new skins and slightly better graphics, but all of the same heroes. Does anyone know what actually took so long? Why were LoL and HoN able to do the same thing so much sooner? What are the actual benefits of DotA2 over DotA1? Does anyone know?
Well it's obvious to anyone that has played DotA why it's better than LoL, which is just a boring game hindered by its relatively low skill-cap. DotA 2 will be better than HoN because of valve support and Icefrog's superhuman ability to balance the game, as well as the huge existing community.
On September 10 2011 05:29 Fleebenworth wrote: DotA 2 will be better than HoN because of valve support and Icefrog's superhuman ability to balance the game, as well as the huge existing community.
On September 10 2011 05:29 Fleebenworth wrote: DotA 2 will be better than HoN because of valve support and Icefrog's superhuman ability to balance the game, as well as the huge existing community.
Let me comment it as blatantly as I possibly can:
Ha Ha Ha
Dota 1 is inferior to HoN and LoL in every aspect, its graphics is subpar, the server is a joke, there is almost no money to be made when compared to the other two. And yet, it has the biggest fanbase, the most rabid fanboys. Why? Because dota itself is that damn good, icefrog is that damn good and we know valve is that damn good. An out of date mod map maintained by a guy no one has ever seen hosted on a dead server is already giving you guys trouble.
So when dota 2 comes out with better graphics, dedicated coding, a real dev team, real servers, real publishers, real prize money. It's pretty easy to see how it'll play out.
Oh, did I mention Valve?
Edit: stumbled upon thread through google, dunno if 3 day is necroposting. my bad
EPT
--is here to stay and DotA2 will be the pinnacle and with Riot and Valve throwing promotion money to esports I have nothing to complain about.
the games that can handle the heat will stay as esports other games will disappear as esports after the promotion money is gone, even though it doesn't have to stop, since these games have on going profit model as suppose to buy once model, DotA2 will probably be like TF2, buy to play with hats and later on maybe f2p with more hats (also with steamworks and being able to stream directly on dota2.com with build in functionality in the client for easy stream set up, where valve takes a bit of the pie and pays you for your work as well like justin.tv).
