Ever since Blizzard stated they would no longer be supporting a competitive Heroes of the Storm professional circuit, numerous crowd-funded tournaments have been popping up within North America and Europe. Now, Korea is getting involved in the action. On Thursday long-time Korean commentator Daniel “Gclef” Na shared on the Heroes of the Storm subReddit that a tournament featuring former pros was in the works. Today, specifics have been revealed. The event titled, “Heroes of the Storm League: REVIVAL” will begin on March 14, featuring a $6000 prize pool and includes eight teams made up of some of the most well-known and accomplished players to ever play the game.
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.
When Activision Blizzard announced that the company would no longer financially support the competitive Heroes of the Storm scene back in December, the community was split. There were those who didn’t particularly care as following the competitive scene wasn’t their cup of tea, others were concerned this would be the end of their beloved title and a wide range of feelings in between existed as well. Two months into a world without the Heroes Global Championship (HGC), a story is unfolding that may be an indication as to what the future could look like for the title on Twitch, the largest streaming platform in the world.
Late Tuesday night, a Korean member of the Blizzard Entertainment scene leaked some information via datamine related to the next hero slated to enter the Heroes of the Storm universe. Lord Anduin Llane Wrynn, the High King of the Alliance, King of Stormwind, son of Varian Wrynn, nephew of Jaina Proudmoore and nephew of Magni Bronzebeard, among the other numerous titles he posses, is rumored to be entering the nexus.
The future was looking bright for Endemic Esports in the Heroes of the Storm scene. Once the 2018 Heroes Global Championship circuit ended after BlizzCon in November, Endemic worked to put together their official roster for the 2019 season. It was settled. Josh “bkid” Choi, Sammuel “bigempct” Hua, Dane “Daneski” Coleman, Vi “ViN” Nguyen and Liam “Liam” O’Malley would be the squad that Endemic would rock and try to contend in the North American region with. Then, Activision Blizzard put an end to that dream with one swift press release on December 13, ending their support of the professional Heroes of the Storm scene. The community was shaken, organizations that had invested money into the 2019 season, furious, and players whose gaming careers relied on the income, lost. This past week, Endemic Esports, led by Chief Executive Officer, Michael Reilly, released a statement that they had partnered with ULT, an apparel company, to support the players who never got the chance to represent their org in the new year.
If you’re a fan of high-level Heroes of the Storm play, the past seven days have been kind to you. Not Heroes Global Championship (HGC)-level of kindness, but solid enough to give their pallets a small taste of what they may have been missing since Blizzard dropped the hammer on the competitive scene a couple months ago. Over the weekend, Heroes Lounge held a qualifier for their upcoming Division S tournament which is the first competitive event featuring former professional players since the HGC came to an end. Naturally, teams comprised of top-tier participants faired the best and qualified for the official event beginning in the near future.
The Heroes of the Storm team ended 2018 by announcing that Activision Blizzard would no longer be supporting the competitive circuit and moving developers off the title and onto other projects within the company. 2019 is not off to a much better start. Late Thursday night, Kevin Michael Johnson, also known as “Cloaken” within the gaming industry, announced that he will be transition off the Heroes of the Storm team and onto other projects.
As 2019 rolls around, the Heroes of the Storm creative team has a large task ahead of them: giving heroes who haven't received new skins over the past 18+ months, new toys to play with. Currently, that number is 22 or a little more than 25% of the current roster. While at face value that may seem like a lot of heroes that need love, and it is, Blizzard has one of the most talented creative teams in the gaming industry and, arguably, the world. Where should they start? Great question. How about some of the heroes that haven't been touched since their release, 2016 or 2015? Below is a deep-dive into a handful of heroes that the art team can flex their muscles on.
There are 150 million Americans who play video games, making the U.S. video game industry one of the nation’s fastest growing economic sectors.
Nearly two weeks ago, one of the most popular, beloved and talented former professional players in the history of Heroes of the Storm esports, Thomas “Ménè” Cailleux, had enough. While streaming the game on Twitch, he began talking to his chat about his love for the title, regardless of the tough times it has been through lately, and, visibly frustrated, he began pleading for Blizzard to work with him, other former professional players and content creators to help improve the game. His rant, which was immediately clipped and put on the Heroes of the Storm subReddit, has garnered nearly 12,000 viewers and was one of the top posts for that week. His message though is one that has circulated throughout the pro scene for years: “Why hasn’t Blizzard worked with those who play the game at the highest level and have a deeper understanding of hero’s kits, battleground mechanics and what the game needs better than the vast majority of the player base? What is there to lose?”
Once Activision Blizzard announced that they would no longer be supporting the competitive Heroes of the Storm scene, Ian “workhorse” Anderson, the founder of HeroesHearth went to work. His goal, aside from growing his platform dedicated to entertaining and educating the community close to his heart, was to help establish a way for the competitive scene to not completely die due to the game developer’s decision.
Today it was revealed by Dot Esports' reporter Nicole Carpenter that five former professional Heroes of the Storm players for Team Naventic have filed a lawsuit against former owner, James Ross Elliot II, for more than $50,000 in unpaid earnings. According to the report and information provided to InvenGlobal, the players had tried to serve court documents to the owner 14 times. But, due to Elliot's unknown location, they had been unable to complete the process. The Dot Esports report claims that Christopher “zuna” Buechter, Ken “Kenma” Buechter, Sammuel “bigempct” Hua, Thomas “Tomster” Maguire, and Josh “bkid” Choi state that they are owed $55,125 in unpaid wages and prize money, not including interest.
Less than a week after Heroes Lounge opened sign-ups for their crowd-funded competitive tournament, Division S, 20 former professional Heroes of the Storm players have formed teams. Thomas “Mene” Cailleux, Dennis "HasuObs" Schneider, Jérôme "JayPL" Trinh, Filip "SmX" Liljeström and Aleksandar "ethernal" Milanov will make up one team from Europe. The former Leftovers squad from EU consisting of Maksym "Mopsio" Szczypa, Mark "Linked" Šepec, Arkadiusz “Bl3kitny” Czarnecki and Mikołaj "PotiBoss" Potera have teamed up together to assert their dominance.
The law firm Pomerantz LLP announced that they are investigating Activision Blizzard's fraud charge. Pomerantz LLP, a law firm that specializes in corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigations, disclosed in a press release that they have received information that Activision Blizzard did not notify investors beforehand of their split from their partner, Bungie, in concerns for the stock price falling; if this is true, they will be investigating whether this was a deliberate act or if some of the investors happened to not be aware of it. Activision Blizzard made an announcement on January 10th that they will be splitting from Bungie, the company that developed the Destiny series, after a 10-year partnership. Simultaneously, Bungie announced they have taken over the publishing rights for the Destiny franchise, which had been serviced by Activision Blizzard. This has caused Activision Blizzard's stock price to fall from $ 51.35 (10th 16:00) to $ 45.48 (11th 10:00) based on NASDAQ.
Less than a month after Activision Blizzard announced they will no longer be supporting the competitive Heroes of the Storm scene, the first replacement professional league will begin signups starting tomorrow. Heroes Lounge, one of the largest Heroes of the Storm amateur sites in the world, has announced that their pro league, Division S, has crowd-funded over $13,700 within the last few weeks in an attempt to create an appealing enough format where former professional players and up-and-comers can showcase their play for cash prizes. Signing up to join the league is a fairly simple process, according to Heroes Lounge.
Che Chou, formerly of Blizzard Entertainment, has joined Ubisoft as the company's Senior Esports Director.
Once the Heroes of the Storm World Championship concluded at BlizzCon in November, Mandon “Dittri0” Florent went to work creating his own tournament to supersede the Nexus Games event that weren’t returning in 2019. The appeal of the Nexus Games in the past was that it took place during the competitive offseason and pitted amateur teams within the same region against one another for pride and a cash prize. He took to Twitter to seek help from the general population as creating a tournament of this size is not a task he wanted to take on alone and, to his surprise, help arrived. One of those individuals, Arnaud "Ouille" Pontonnier, contributed half of the $2,000 initial prize pool and has worked with Dittri0 to acquire additional funding, a sponsor and has helped overall to organize the event. Currently, the event, which begins tomorrow, has accrued a prize pool over $2500 and has secured a partnership with Razer headsets to be given away to the winners.
Shocking news greeted Heroes of the Storm fans on December 14th -- the HGC, the official esports league for Heroes of the Storm, would no longer be held in 2019. It's natural that no tournaments are held when the popularity of the title falls short. However, the way that Blizzard announced the end of the HGC was quite shocking - not only because it came without warning, but also because it was very unlike Blizzard, who has a reputation as one of the best gaming companies in the world. Needless to say, this caused quite a bit of disappointment and anger. In just one announcement, Heroes of the Storm esports was wiped from the esports economy. Numerous people who were dedicated to HotS esports lost their jobs in just one day. Gen.G Jae-Won ‘Rich' Lee, who is known as the Faker in the HotS esports scene, also lost the chance to play on the stage.
In the wake of some seriously negative Blizzard PR and a growing list of veterans leaving the company, many fans are praising the 5 founders of Second Dinner for their prophetic decision to leave their former company.