On September 11th, 2018, the release of Mythic Uldir ignited a race within World of Warcraft. The game’s most skilled raid teams all vied to become the first in the world to complete the new dungeon and its never-before defeated enemies. One week later, with over 250,000 viewers watching them on Twitch, the guild known as Method (yep, the same Method from HGC) finally killed G’huun, the final boss.

Method’s decision to openly stream their raids live was world-shattering within WoW’s community, breaking long-standing conventions that raid strategies must be guarded secrets. The impact of that decision within World of Warcraft can be read further on WoW community sites like Wowhead, but the ripples extend beyond the game itself. Method’s victory carries implications for esports as a whole, including Heroes of the Storm. The big revelation from the Uldir race is this: there is a huge untapped potential for PvE esports, and no one is in a better position to take advantage of it than Blizzard.

Method have done it! G'huun World First, 8/8 and claiming their 10th endboss WF! Great job and congratulations to the team! #RaidProgress #BFA https://t.co/MImNq6jSAc@discordapp @msitweets @msiUSA @Wowhead @Twitch @redbullesports pic.twitter.com/6T81IRr4Jc

— Method (@Methodgg) September 19, 2018

Historically, Blizzard’s attempts to grow WoW as an esport have emphasized the game’s PvP side. The Arena World Championship has been WoW’s representation on the BlizzCon stage, and typing “worldofwarcraft.com/esports” into a browser brings up the AWC’s event info. But while professional teams in the AWC are unquestionably skilled players, the Arena mode is divorced from most players’ World of Warcraft experience. The majority of players focus on PvE content, but conventional wisdom has never seen PvE play as esports material. Since 2017 that has begun to change, thanks to WoW’s first foray into PvE esports: the Mythic Dungeon Invitational. The MDI is a young tournament, and one with growing pains, but already its popularity has eclipsed the AWC’s after the MDI summer finals rang in almost twice the Twitch viewership of the AWC’s own summer cup.





But if the Mythic Dungeon Invitational was a first step, Method’s Uldir raid is now a full sprint. Throughout the week, Method’s streams consistently made World of Warcraft the most viewed game on Twitch, with guild leader Sco the most-watched individual streamer. If that weren’t enough, the Arena World Championship’s first Fall Cup was held on Sunday the 16th, and streamed live at the same time Method was raiding. Though both events were well-outside NA’s peak hours, Method’s stream still managed to pull in nearly twice as many viewers.

This hunger for PvE content (especially skill-demanding PvE content) is not a unique phenomenon to Warcraft. Overwatch has experimented with small PvE modes in holiday events, starting with “Junkenstein’s Revenge” during Halloween. The response has always been positive, enough for Kaplan to mention the feedback in a developer update that introduced the next PvE mode. While Overwatch remains PvP at its core, every temporary PvE event in the game has brought forward the same vocal reaction. Other competitive games have had success with cooperative content, including StarCraft 2’s Commander mode. The ongoing legacy of franchises like Dark Souls and Monster Hunter further show that players have a strong desire for challenging, skill-based content, even against AI opponents.

Method’s race shows that the hunger is deeper than that. The enormous success of their stream was great for WoW, but it was also great for Method as an organization—and their sponsors, Red Bull and Discord. The viewer metrics, subscriptions, and donations throughout the race reveal an enthusiastic audience for PvE content, one ready to support their favorite teams and organizations just like any esport. That the whole event was done without involvement from Blizzard itself shows that, with developer involvement, the reach could be even bigger. A game that truly embraced a competitive PvE community can find huge success as an esport.

Heroes of the Storm could be that game

Heroes of the Storm inherits all of Blizzard’s combined legacies, even as the game creates its own identity. The game's hero roster obviously pulls from Blizzard's universes, but there's more to it. HotS inherits more than just character designs from the other Blizzard franchises, it also draws on decades of gameplay design and community involvement. Part of that pedigree is a strong, competitive esports heritage, passed on from Warcraft 3 and Brood War.

But satisfying, challenging encounter design are just as integral to Blizzard's legacy and are what kept players coming back to Diablo and World of Warcraft for a decade. Now, especially in light of Method’s success, Heroes of the Storm should strongly consider living up to that legacy of rich PvE design.





Within the dedicated HotS community, the Versus AI mode is often considered a joke. Even on “Elite” difficulty, it is not very challenging, especially for players who are used to climbing in Hero League. Yet, just as Quick Match continues to be the game’s most popular mode, there is a dedicated player base found only in Versus AI. While the mode itself is flawed, Heroes has enjoyable core systems and hero designs that interest players, even if competition does not. Currently, that Versus AI player base is not regarded as important or skilled, but if HotS received a richer, deeper PvE mode, that perception could change.

Early on, looking at a player’s profile in HotS had a section to display their ranking, both in Hero League and in Versus AI. The “Versus AI Rank” was always blocked off with a “Coming Soon” label, suggesting that Blizzard at some point had plans for a more comprehensive PvE ladder in the game. That section of the profile disappeared with HotS 2.0, and those plans might have been tabled as well. But after Uldir has made World of Warcraft the most popular game on Twitch, it’s time to give the idea another look.





Encounter design is what makes PvE content interesting both to watch and to play, and Blizzard’s teams have access to a wealth of experience there. Even within Heroes of the Storm, encounter design has grown stronger over time in the context of Battlegrounds. There is a visible evolution in the camps and boss interactions found on Blackheart’s Bay to Towers of Doom to Alterac Pass. While the match between two teams of five is still the heart of the game, the dev team has continued making advances in how HotS players interact with the game world itself. Already, the encounter design of Heroes of the Storm’s best battlegrounds is what gives the game its unique identity within the genre. A robust PvE mode would give Blizzard a place to push that even further, exploring even more outlandish battleground objectives where the objective itself becomes a challenge.

This doesn’t have to distract from Hero League or HGC, nor would Heroes of the Storm necessarily have to compete with itself. The Brawl system within HotS has already been used for PvE experiences as temporary game modes. 2017 brought Escape From Braxis to the Nexus, and the response was a resounding success. Users on the Heroes subreddit praised the mode for being interesting, asked for a more challenging version, and began tracking the competition for fastest times. Like the Mythic Dungeon Invitational or the amazingly popular GDQ events, Escape From Braxis showed that communities can and will get invested in comparing PvE skill between players. At the end of the event, the world’s best times were immortalized in Blizzard’s own official leaderboards.

Since Escape From Braxis, we’ve had Deadman’s Stand in 2018, but we could see so much more. New and interesting AI challenges could be a recurring or even permanent part of the Brawl system, keeping the focus on the core HotS experience. And on an esports level, the community is intimate enough to support all events, especially if Heroes PvE esports were scheduled without conflicting with the HGC season. Whether the HGC teams also compete in PvE races, or entirely new “teams” of high level PvE players emerged, the scene would still become greater.





Even better, new PvE modes would be the perfect place to expand on the lore of the Nexus. Throughout 2018, Blizzard has been using quest systems to tie players’ in-game experience into the larger storylines. The Fall of King’s Crest event is the current arc, and takes advantage of all the past ways HotS has told its stories to build the largest lore event so far. But even here, it’s easy to see how actual boss encounters with the Raven Lord’s generals could be another way to tell the story in a fun, challenging way for players to experience firsthand.

Heroes of the Storm stands out in the MOBA genre for defying established conventions and experimenting with new and innovative mechanics, and as such building a niche for a strong PvE scene within HotS makes perfect sense for that identity. Other MOBAs have done PvE experiments, including League of Legends and SMITE, but they lack the long history of great boss fights that Blizzard has. Method has proven that there is an audience for rich PvE content, both viewers and investors, and it’s an area ripe for the taking. A deep and satisfying new game mode could grow the Heroes of the Storm community and open up a whole new option of sponsors and organizations, especially given the potential to tap into the already existing PvE fanbase of Blizzard games.