Fans of the Heroes of the Storm franchise went through a lot this past week. From weird highs to depressing lows, the full spectrum of emotions was experienced. Maybe it’s fitting that the end of this week fell on 4/20 as the “holiday” can allow individuals who celebrate to cope with the pain or comprehend the oddness that occurred. An icon left the company, Heroes of the Storm is now labeled as a “Classic Game” and more took place that left us thinking...what?
Activision Blizzard loves making money. So much so, that their Chief Executive Officer, Bobby Kotick, during their most recent earnings call began his statement with: “We once again achieved record results in 2018.” What followed was him stating that the company would be laying off around 800 individuals but that’s a different story altogether. A few of the company’s entities: Overwatch, the Overwatch League, World of Warcraft and Hearthstone have reliably brought in income for the company in recent years. What has struggled-- and likely one of the reasons why developers were moved off the title and onto more profitable ones-- is a way for Heroes of the Storm players to be incentivized to spend money in or on a title they love. This isn’t a recent development either. All a die-hard fan of the game has to do is visit Blizzard’s official gear shop online or at a company-sponsored tournament and you will see very, very little Heroes of the Storm merchandise. Why this is so perplexing is the concept of Heroes lends itself well to merchandising.
We’ve all been there. You download the newest Heroes of the Storm patch on the launcher, anticipating the opportunity to jump into a Ranked game and try out the newest tweaks on your favorite heroes. You rush to click on “Hero League” or “Team League” when, like a Death Eater from Harry Potter, an estimated queue time of 803 seconds sucks the excitement out of your body. What’s there to do for over 13 minutes? You could pray to the Lord of Sin, Azmodan, and hope the stars align in a way that the wait is only a couple of moments. Or, if you’re truly cursed, the 803 seconds is a conservative estimation and, depending on your rank, you may be sitting in the queue for upwards of 20 minutes. You could cancel your attempt to play in Ranked mode and wait only a few minutes to play Quick Match or Unranked but, eh, that’s not your cup of tea. You’re a competitive fiend whose skin tingles when you see +3 for Performance Adjustment at the end of a hard-earned win. The good thing is that, while I cannot make your queue time any faster, I can present a list of cheap or free games that you can play in queue opposed to having your mind slip into madness as you watch your two favorite heroes spin in a circle as you wait for a game to begin.
The technological advancement following the Industrial Revolution had a huge impact and led to a massive decline in manual labor. Many average craftsmen resided in their village or town for almost the
Jake “SolidJake” Kulinski’s involvement in the Heroes of the Storm scene pre-dates the release of the full game being available to the general public. Between masterminding what is arguably the most popular Heroes’ podcast, TownHall Heroes, to casting the amateur Open Division scene and launching a community funded tournament with a $10,000 prize pool, Bloodlust, SolidJake has seen and done it all. While the list of accolades continues further in Blizzard games and the fighting game community (FGC), SolidJake has accomplished all that he has despite failing to look out for ‘numero uno’...himself. As long as his wife and her family’s business is taken care of, as long as the Blizzard community is taken care of, as long as the players and talent around him are taken care of, Jake is fine operating at a loss and putting himself at risk. The consummate ‘fall guy’ as it were. That’s not to say he hasn’t had opportunities to put himself first and selfishly look to further his career in the entertainment business; it has to be on his terms after everyone else around him is first taken care of.
BlizzCon, the Blizzard's game festival that any Blizzard game fans would have been waiting for the most, is nearly about to begin. At the BlizzCon, new information of each game and titles are revealed
