It's been made official that the pro scene at least as far as HGC is concerned is canceled. Heroes of the Dorm is also gone for 2019 and they are shifting some. developers from HOTS to other projects.
We’ll continue actively supporting the game with new heroes, themed events, and other content that our community loves, though the cadence will change. Ultimately, we’re setting up the game for long-term sustainability.
There has been lots of speculation about this, but none of the major organizations believed it. In fact Tempo Storm coach Kala said he spoke to high up Blizzard reps at blizzcon and they said everything would be at least as big if not more support coming this year. As of 2 days ago this was his outlook on the prospects of HGC being canceled. And here is his rant after the news today:
It's hard to see a path where this won't lead to a dead game in a year or two. No pro scene, less competition at the top of the hero league scene with no pros, less content, and less incentives to fix problem areas. Those issues are only likely to further decrease the player pool. That in turn makes it even less profitable to support the game and so on...
Too bad, because it really is a great game at it's core. Not without issues, but lots of great times. There is a lot more to go into when I have more time, but wanted to get the initial post visible for people.
I don't really like HOTS that much but the people that are into it seemed pretty content with the game.
I get it. It's better to kill off competitive circuit and downscale the game from a business standpoint but this is a pretty brutal way of killing your game. If Starcraft 2 didn't have it's second wind as of recently, you could see a world where Blizzard shoots down WCS too, not that WCS is remotely safe from getting what I would call the J Allen treatment.
me as a casual player expected this to happen, the queue time just keeps getting longer. The peak didn't even feel that significant in team of exposure.
Also thought the game becomes less unique when they removed quite a lot of elements like tower bullet counts etc.
While the alpha and beta truly felt great, this game, much like all the other Blizzard „live games“ constantly declined in terms of quality and fun over the years, mainly due to their inability to maintain proper balance while adding new content (started with the introduction of OW heroes).
Nevertheless the official announcement is just terrible and I feel sorry for the people invested in the esports scene of the game, kinda worries me when I look in StarCraft‘s direction.
I guess it shows more than anything that esports around a game is mostly marketing platform and it's livelyhood depends on that context. Apparently someone mishandled the situation, although I can imagine that there was massive miscommunication at BlizzCon on Blizzard part
HoTS was never going to be a top tier esport. It came to the scene too late, and everyone that actually gave a damn about MoBA esports was already invested in one of the other two big games.
HGC from the very inception was unsustainable. Every penny from it came directly out of Blizzard's pocket, and they were broadcasting 3 weekend streams from every major region plus major LAN tournaments. They were paying SALARIES for every tournament team in all regions. All for a game whose popularity was stuck in somewhere near mediocre levels from the get go due to the timing of its release.
That said. I still play HoTS, I still play it and I don't play DOTA or League of Legends. I play it, because it's fun. I find HoTS fun, I don't find those other games fun.
While I did enjoy HGC while it lasted, I never had this delusion that it was going to last forever while the game itself never increased in popularity. It was too big, too ambitious for that to happen.
I also don't see Overwatch league lasting long the way IT is set up. That game's popularity has also plateaued and OWL suffers from the same overreach of too big too fast that HGC was.
In the end. Not every game is going to last as an esport. Starcraft has stood the test of time, because quite simply, there is nothing else like it. HoTS was directly competing with DOTA2 and LoL for views, Overwatch is directly competing with FPS games, MoBAs (to a degree) and now Battle Royale games which are the new fad.
Does that mean that HoTS itself is dying? No, because as long as people continue playing it and content keeps being produced for it, it is alive and well. Is it dying as an esport? Well that's a different question and I think it's easy to argue that it was BARELY alive as an esport in the first place.
On December 14 2018 17:43 Ej_ wrote: ^SC2 is also almost exclusively sponsored by Blizzard.
Reminder they haven't announced anything about WCS yet either
There's a lot of importance in that "almost."
IEM already announced SC2 will be at IEM Katowice. So long as independent tournaments still pop up for Starcraft 2 the game will continue to do fine as an esport even if it means the overall pool of players it can support will shrink.
Is it bad that Blizzard is clearly looking to cut back on expenses related to esports? Well yea, that's obviously bad for all of their esports scenes. But does it mean that every game will suffer the same fate as HoTS? Not necessarily.
With the recent patch, it feels like an intentional suicide
Ah well, time to move on I guess. Was fun while it lasted. Maybe I'll play the occasional QM but I will not pay an additional cent for this (though I really need the new Stitches and Dehaka skins ^^')
EDIT: Big thank you for all the interesting content created by our beloved TL writers, you did an awesome job!
Not unexpected, but even after a string of questionable design decisions in the last ~18 months undeserved.
Still going to play and occasionally pay for this game and Warcraft III, but my overall attitude towards new Blizzard releases will be a strict 'not touch with a ten foot pole' after buying everything from Warcraft II till Cataclysm on release. And I do have a phone fuckers...
And let me echo Harris with a thank you to our writers here and TL for sponsoring the HotS team.
On December 14 2018 19:24 Sjokola wrote: Fucking shit. I really enjoy this game...
So do I, and nothing about the removal of HGC changes that.
If anything, without HGC the game can change directions again and really focus on creating fun and interesting heroes instead of trying to cater to a competitive traditional moba metagame.
There's a lot to be said for the influence that HGC had in hyping up and marketing the game, but I think people are deluding themselves when they believe that it was more important to the game than it actually was.
On December 14 2018 19:24 Sjokola wrote: Fucking shit. I really enjoy this game...
So do I, and nothing about the removal of HGC changes that.
If anything, without HGC the game can change directions again and really focus on creating fun and interesting heroes instead of trying to cater to a competitive traditional moba metagame.
Fun interesting heroes like Vikings and Cho'gall :DDD????
On December 14 2018 19:24 Sjokola wrote: Fucking shit. I really enjoy this game...
So do I, and nothing about the removal of HGC changes that.
If anything, without HGC the game can change directions again and really focus on creating fun and interesting heroes instead of trying to cater to a competitive traditional moba metagame.
Fun interesting heroes like Vikings and Cho'gall :DDD????
Vikings are my favorite hero, just saying.
Was trying to get a draft game going where I could play them with the new XP changes, but jerks kept making me tank or heal based off of where I was in the draft.
On December 14 2018 19:24 Sjokola wrote: Fucking shit. I really enjoy this game...
So do I, and nothing about the removal of HGC changes that.
If anything, without HGC the game can change directions again and really focus on creating fun and interesting heroes instead of trying to cater to a competitive traditional moba metagame.
Fun interesting heroes like Vikings and Cho'gall :DDD????
Vikings are my favorite hero, just saying.
Was trying to get a draft game going where I could play them with the new XP changes, but jerks kept making me tank or heal based off of where I was in the draft.
They are fun to play and probably the least fun hero to play against in the entire game.
On December 14 2018 19:24 Sjokola wrote: Fucking shit. I really enjoy this game...
So do I, and nothing about the removal of HGC changes that.
If anything, without HGC the game can change directions again and really focus on creating fun and interesting heroes instead of trying to cater to a competitive traditional moba metagame.
Fun interesting heroes like Vikings and Cho'gall :DDD????
Vikings are my favorite hero, just saying.
Was trying to get a draft game going where I could play them with the new XP changes, but jerks kept making me tank or heal based off of where I was in the draft.
They are fun to play and probably the least fun hero to play against in the entire game.
Depends honestly. For me, nothing is worse than playing against Chromie. Not even that it's difficult necessarily just that it's annoying.
But that CAN be true of any hero really, so long as they have a strong quirk of one variety or another.
Junkrat is another hero I hate facing off against, long range, super strong and consistent displacement, irritating heroics. But I bet he's a blast to play on the other side.
I'm more worried about the game feeling streamlined and generic than I am worried about how much or rather not fun it is to face certain heroes as opponents. Not every hero needs to be as outlandish as Cho'gall and The Vikings, but what we've gotten so far in 2018 have all been very standard and even boring hero archetypes. Yrel and Mal'Ganis have strong tools in their kits but there's very little that really separates them as unique or interesting heroes. Blaze at least has his Bunker. Whitemane is as generic of a healbot as Morales except at least Morales has an interesting Heroic.
I'm just saying. We've been caught in an extreme "cater to the stable pro meta" design philosophy this year both in terms of new hero releases and the reworks to existing heroes. If there's no pro scene to cater to, then that doesn't need to be the case for 2019, we can vary it up some more.
On December 14 2018 19:24 Sjokola wrote: Fucking shit. I really enjoy this game...
So do I, and nothing about the removal of HGC changes that.
If anything, without HGC the game can change directions again and really focus on creating fun and interesting heroes instead of trying to cater to a competitive traditional moba metagame.
Fun interesting heroes like Vikings and Cho'gall :DDD????
Vikings are my favorite hero, just saying.
Was trying to get a draft game going where I could play them with the new XP changes, but jerks kept making me tank or heal based off of where I was in the draft.
Yeah, I liked TLV pre-rework, like most other heroes. I really liked Thrall, Dehaka, Kerrigan, Sylvanas, Khael’Thas, Medic... Pre-rework. Their “keeping things fresh“ approach paired with power/mobility creep sadly made the game worse and worse over time and that’s exactly what I dislike about the annual balance patch in SC2, although I hope this year’s really was the last major one.
On December 14 2018 19:24 Sjokola wrote: Fucking shit. I really enjoy this game...
So do I, and nothing about the removal of HGC changes that.
If anything, without HGC the game can change directions again and really focus on creating fun and interesting heroes instead of trying to cater to a competitive traditional moba metagame.
Fun interesting heroes like Vikings and Cho'gall :DDD????
Vikings are my favorite hero, just saying.
Was trying to get a draft game going where I could play them with the new XP changes, but jerks kept making me tank or heal based off of where I was in the draft.
They are fun to play and probably the least fun hero to play against in the entire game.
Nope, that spot is reserved for Valeera. I fucking hate her with every fiber of my body
EPT
