I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it a million times more; If you’ve even remotely considered getting into the MOBA craze, Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm is the best place to get started. It stripped away part of what makes other titles in the same genre difficult; namely items, gold management, and even skill selection to a certain extent. The open beta kicks off today, meaning that if you somehow didn’t grab a key over the past few months already, you can hop into the Nexus right this second. Alternately, if you’d rather skip the clicking, and favour drawing instead, you can enter Blizzard’s new design contest; there are $13000 worth of prizes up for grabs!
The open beta comes just 13 days before the game is due to officially launch. Here’s the announcement and trailer from Blizzard:
Get ready to unleash the Burning Hells with Diablo, kick up a revolution with Raynor, and seek vengeance with Sylvanas, because Heroes of the Storm Open Beta testing has officially begun! If you didn’t get the chance to leap into the fray during our Technical Alpha or Closed Beta phases, right now is a great opportunity for you and your pals to dive headlong into our raucous online team brawler before the game launches on June 2. That’s right—no more keys, codes, or opt-ins; you can click here to start downloading Heroes and embark on your conquest in the Nexus, for free, today.
Oh Blizzard, you can call it a team brawler as much as you like, but it’s still a MOBA at the end of the day. I will admit it though that it deviates from the standard formula quite a bit thanks to multiple battlegrounds and different objectives.
As stated earlier, if you couldn’t be bothered with actually playing the game, at least you can still win some prizes – assuming you have some sort of artistic talent. Blizzard are teaming up with DeviantArt to bring this competition to life:
Sharpen your favorite weapons and prepare to fight, because now you and all of your friends can join the fight for the Nexus! To celebrate the upcoming launch of Heroes of the Storm™, Blizzard Entertainment and DeviantArt have joined forces to bring you a truly epic fan art contest. With over $13,000 worth of prizes and an original sketch from Sam Didier up for grabs, we’re calling all talented artists from this side of Azeroth, the Koprulu Sector, Sanctuary, and beyond to take up their styluses to defend the Nexus!
Sounds awesome. Here’s the brief:
Your challenge, Heroes, is to assemble the mightiest heroes from across Warcraft®, Diablo®, Starcraft®, and more and create an original artwork depicting characters from two or more different Blizzard universes engaged in battle. With powerful heroes including all of your favorites awaiting your call, who will you choose?
There is just over a month left to enter this competition. If you’re interested, best you get cracking!
Artistic shenanigans aside, does the open beta of Heroes of the Storm interest you? Will you be diving into the Nexus?
Last Updated: May 20, 2015
Ottokie
May 20, 2015 at 08:40
I agree with Matty that HOTS is probably the best MOBA to start off with if you wanna get in the game, no complicated item buying trees or masteries, slow and steady paced with a good learning curve… Then you get DOTA that has a learning “cliff”.
Hammersteyn
May 20, 2015 at 08:47
*Plays Dota
Kromas,powered by windows 10.
May 20, 2015 at 08:53
* Plays Witcher Wild Hunt 😛
Loftus
May 20, 2015 at 09:01
I am Jack Jealous rage 😛
Kromas,powered by windows 10.
May 20, 2015 at 09:07
Apparently Eskom was also Jealous. 🙁
Loftus
May 20, 2015 at 09:30
No? Really ? In the middle of day one patch or during game play ?
Kromas,powered by windows 10.
May 20, 2015 at 09:32
1 Hour into gameplay they decided to remove illegal connections at the informal settlement nearby. Completely crashed the grid for half the day.
Loftus
May 20, 2015 at 09:42
urghh!! that is BS!
Kromas,powered by windows 10.
May 20, 2015 at 08:48
Has anyone actually played the Witcher Moba?. My wild hunt came with a character key but I really could not be bothered right now.
Ottokie
May 20, 2015 at 08:49
Nope and its the first I hear of it XD, I actually hate MOBA’s, not because of the games but because of the community.
Kromas,powered by windows 10.
May 20, 2015 at 08:50
http://thewitcher.com/twba
Blood Emperor Trevor
May 20, 2015 at 08:54
I also saw that, and thought “MOBA… euw”.
Kromas,powered by windows 10.
May 20, 2015 at 08:54
Who knows maybe it uses Hairworks. 😛
Blood Emperor Trevor
May 20, 2015 at 08:55
So it’ll run on my S3 like it’s a Nokia 3310 then.
Kromas,powered by windows 10.
May 20, 2015 at 08:57
Sounds about right. Then again the hour of witcher I had yesterday before Eskom decided that we should have unexpected load shedding for the REST OF THE DAY was rather pleasent with everything at Ultra and my machine is a slightly overclocked AMD.
Blood Emperor Trevor
May 20, 2015 at 09:03
I’m running on Medium with a 6950, looks great. So I’m quite happy, was expecting to use Low because the min spec was a 7850.
And for those people saying you need 16gb RAM now. I alt-tabbed out the game when speaking to Mossel & checked its memory usage because I was curious to see how much it uses… 2gb.
Kromas,powered by windows 10.
May 20, 2015 at 09:05
16GB RAM is only needed if you are running 2 copies of the witcher on the same machine and doing video editing in background while watching youtube videos.
Basically right now 16GB RAM is still overkill.
Yet I have 16GB cause #JustMasterRaceThings 😛
Mossel
May 20, 2015 at 09:56
Yeah my graphics looked fantastic with my 560Ti on 1080p. But as soon as I moved my mouse I had no idea whats going on haha. Was probably like 15fps. I only used the GeForce experience’s “optimise” function after I quit the game. Will see what it looks like tonight!
Blood Emperor Trevor
May 20, 2015 at 10:44
First thing I did after walking about onto the balcony was switch off motion blur. Damn, but that stuff went overboard.
Mossel
May 20, 2015 at 10:54
Motion blur!! Didn’t even realize that’s what caused it. Also, I might have stared at Yennefer for too long.
Hammersteyn
May 20, 2015 at 08:54
I knew Geralt was a slut but that’s a bit much
hairyknees
May 20, 2015 at 09:02
I played a game or two back at Gamescom. It was… alright. Unless they’ve drastically changed it since though, I’d recommend Vainglory if you want a tablet MOBA.
Guild
May 20, 2015 at 09:45
The Witcher MOBA is terrible budd. Only decent MOBA on tablet is Vainglory. I’m still playing it everyday
Guild
May 20, 2015 at 09:44
Don’t bother with it. It is proper shite. The servers are terrible so there is more lag then usual. I gave it good go but it’s just really crap. It should never exist.
If you want a decent tablet MOBA play Vainglory. I play it at least one game everyday.
Sageville
May 20, 2015 at 10:54
*Plays Smite
Loftus
May 20, 2015 at 09:00
There is a reason why i need coffee before doing anything in the morning. The “Come in we’re open” in the header i read it as “Common we’re open” and my first though was : “vrot man,these okes tune me i is common” Bwahahaha
i played DOTA and LoL with my younger siblings and now HOTS. And i must agree with Matthew, Hots is much smoother intro MOBAs. no buying of boots of the swift unicorn and getting screamed at by some 14 year in a Europe that i am a noob and he had cookies with my mother and real players buy the boots of the nimble fox.
Kromas,powered by windows 10.
May 20, 2015 at 09:02
Diablo on a unicorn is the main reason to HotS.
hairyknees
May 20, 2015 at 09:02
And Stitches 😀
Hargrim
May 20, 2015 at 11:46
Diablo on a Wonder Billie is the most magnificent thing in the world
Christopher Adams
May 20, 2015 at 09:26
With Yahoo Faceboo twitter and lazygamer **** ………. ————-Join Free
SargonTheBatpandaOfTI5
May 20, 2015 at 09:43
I find this game a tad bit too slow for my liking. It’s fun… but that quickly drops off for me and I’m drawn back to DotA.
Hargrim
May 20, 2015 at 11:45
Really? Farming in lane for 30 minutes is more fast paced than a game that’s over by 20/25 minutes?
SargonTheBatpandaOfTI5
May 20, 2015 at 13:17
Yeah. Since I’ve never played a game where I’ve farmed in lane for 30 minutes. You play AM too often. 😛
z1n
May 20, 2015 at 17:21
I’ve never played an AM where I’ve farmed a lane for 30 minutes. It’s normally two lanes and a jungle by then 😛
R1ker
May 20, 2015 at 12:31
What is the latency currently like in HOTS? I tried it a while back but stopped after the training missions. Latency was just to high
SargonTheBatpandaOfTI5
May 20, 2015 at 13:17
It’s still EU latency. So 200ms+ most games.
Paul Fouche
May 20, 2015 at 13:44
still smooth thought we play on 200 ms just fine 🙂