Blizzard may only have seven active games listed on its Battle.net launcher at the moment, but that list includes some of the biggest in the gaming world. So when the company announces it's shifting its development priorities away from one of those ongoing online titles, it's a big deal.
So it is with last night's surprise update on the status of Blizzard-universe MOBA Heroes of the Storm. Blizzard now says "we need to take some of our talented developers and bring their skills to other projects," and thus have "made the difficult decision to shift some developers from Heroes of the Storm to other teams."
This doesn't mean the immediate end of the game or anything of the sort. Blizzard promises continued active support, "with new heroes, themed events, and other content that our community loves, though the cadence will change." We're guessing that last part means the "cadence" will get less frequent, for what it's worth.
When does the risk of a publisher dropping support for an online game platform hurt the chance that gamers will pony up in the first place?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday December 16 2018, @03:14AM (7 children)
When the gaming industry gives up bro-tier dudes like John Romero and dorky but horny female developers like Brenda Romero in exchange for fat androgynous pink-haired dykes who insist that every game should be like angry birds and that Medieval British knights should have African skin-color and features, that's when.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 16 2018, @03:33AM (1 child)
What's wrong with using creative license to educate bigots? And in any case, you're wrong; the average Englishman is a shade of brown.
(Score: 4, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday December 16 2018, @04:13AM
If that's your purpose when you set out, it's going to be a pile of steaming evangelism not an enjoyable game. And Englishmen being anything but pasty white is a rather recent development and not applicable to medieval knights. Mind you, you'd have had to scrub the thick coating of dirt and shit off to see what color their skin was back then because they thought bathing threw the humors out of balance.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday December 16 2018, @04:28AM (4 children)
Or someone with African skin color has British Knights [youtube.com].
Jokes aside, there is evidence of occupation of Britain by descendants of Africans since Roman times [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 16 2018, @04:30AM (3 children)
Don't pop his hate boner, can't have minorities infesting our glorious history!
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday December 16 2018, @04:52AM
I guess Female Thor would have been a better example to prove my point. And Wikipedia is pozzed with AIDS, fortunately, you can download previous versions of their archive.
(Score: 2) by Captival on Sunday December 16 2018, @05:05AM (1 child)
Why not? You bitches sure froth when it happens to you. Even invented another magical incantation, 'cultural appropriation', to shout whenever it happens to you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 16 2018, @07:57PM
Ha, ok POP HIS HATE BONER! Make them suffer!!!!
(Score: 2) by IndigoFreak on Sunday December 16 2018, @05:19AM (4 children)
HoTS is FTP. It was released in 2015. How long can you expect a game to last? Any single player game would be long over with by now. Most of them give about 20 hours worth of content with limited replay value. So how long are developers suppose to support their games? They don't have to hand over information on how to run private servers, and are completely in their right(legally) to shut down people trying to. I'm just not sure how much $50 gives you. How far can developers really stretch that money. Servers and support cost money and if it runs for years, I don't think $50 is enough.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by tibman on Sunday December 16 2018, @05:50AM (3 children)
Free still wasn't the right price for me. For a multiplayer game it had very little team communication. Just wasn't fun (imo). DOTA2 wasn't for me either. Too much creep last hit stuff. Tedious game mechanics. League of Legends was fantastic... right up until you hit higher levels. Then it gets incredibly toxic. Really enjoying Overwatch at the moment though : ) Blizzard keeps making new maps, characters, events and rebalancing/tweaking existing characters. I'm hoping they add a story mode or something to further flesh out the universe. If you want to get into a game fandom then Overwatch is it.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by exaeta on Sunday December 16 2018, @02:40PM (2 children)
Overwatch is just a lame Team Fortress 2 ripoff. Enough said.
Though seriously it's still better, if you don't mind the occasional bug.
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 2) by tibman on Monday December 17 2018, @05:41PM (1 child)
I have played a lot of MegaTF/TFC/TF2. Bought TF2 the day of release. My hats are probably considered ancient relics from a bygone era. So believe me when i say that OW is very different.
The key differences between the two is that TF2 is class based. OW is character based (29 of them so far). The rock/paper/scissors system for OW isn't based on class but by character. Even then most counters aren't hard-counters. The character abilities are also a lot more dramatic than in TF2.
Take sniping, for example. In TF2 there is one sniper. In Overwatch there are several sniping characters but they each play differently. Widow is a classic sniper with scoped rifle. Has a gas mine she can place to keep people from sneaking up on her. She has a grapple to get to higher spots. Her ultimate is a kind of vision that lets her entire team see through walls for a short duration. (wall hacking). Hanzo is a different character and snipes with a bow. Think something like a ninja with a bow. He can can climb walls and do long jumps. He has a rapid shot ability for doing significant burst damage. Very useful against tanks and shields. His ultimate is a special kind of arrow that summons giant (chinese style) dragons that twist through walls and kill all enemies in the path. It's slow but when combined with other character's ultimates it can kill an entire enemy team. The third sniper is Ana. Except she is a healer! She fires "biotic" darts that heal friendlies and DOT enemies. Her abilities are a sleep dart (skill shot) that will drop any enemy. Extremely useful to stop an ultimate from going off. She has a kind of biotic grenade for AOE heals and stops the enemy from healing for a period of time. Her ultimate is a nano injection to a teammate that makes them resistant to damage and deal more damage for a short period of time. Very useful when combined with other ultimates. Some could even argue that Zen is a sniper too.
The other difference is that TF2 is typically 8v8 or more. OW is almost always 6v6. In TF2 your team could easily have 1 of each class. In OW the character selection is so wide that team composition picks are very important. The picks drastically change how the round is played.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by exaeta on Monday December 17 2018, @06:10PM
I've played both. Overwatch gets boring after a while.
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Sunday December 16 2018, @10:13AM (2 children)
WoW Classic is coming on a big hype wave. They are not prepared.
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Shire on Sunday December 16 2018, @01:46PM (1 child)
Wait till you find out they're releasing it only on mobile.
(Score: 1) by Goghit on Sunday December 16 2018, @06:19PM
The old 1-40 grind on a small screen? I am breathless with anticipation!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 17 2018, @09:21AM
https://www.soccermanager.com/crypto/ [soccermanager.com]