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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) 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.
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(Score: 2) by exaeta on Monday December 17 2018, @06:10PM
I've played both. Overwatch gets boring after a while.
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