Heroes of the Storm

• 1. Introduction

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  Heroes of the Storm arrived on the 2nd of June 2015, a game that dared to ask what would happen if every hero Blizzard Entertainment had ever created could fight in the same arena. Diablo, a demon lord of destruction, on the same team as Uther the Lightbringer, a holy paladin from a fantasy world. Jim Raynor, a space marine from a distant star sector, crossing blades with an undead necromancer. This was the promise: a crossover event so vast it spanned four distinct fictional universes.

  Blizzard called the setting the Nexus, a limbo where clashing dimensions collide. How did a company best known for slow, epic role-playing games end up building one of the most fast-paced competitive battle arenas of its era? What legal battles nearly derailed it before it launched? And why did one middling review score from a single publication become an internet meme that Blizzard themselves eventually acknowledged in a promotional video? Those are the questions this documentary sets out to answer.

• 2. From Mod to Machine

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  Defense of the Ancients, a community-made mod for Blizzard's own Warcraft III, was the unlikely seed from which Heroes of the Storm grew. Blizzard did not create that mod, but it was born inside their game, and they watched it become the foundation of an entirely new competitive genre. When Valve announced Dota 2 and sought to trademark the name, Rob Pardo, Blizzard's executive vice president, made his concern public. His objection was not purely commercial. His argument was that the name had originated inside the Warcraft III community and should not belong to a rival company.

  Blizzard filed an opposition to Valve's trademark claim and, along the way, acquired DotA-Allstars, LLC., the original company behind the original mod. The legal dispute was settled on the 11th of May 2012. Under that settlement, Valve kept the commercial rights to the Dota name for its own products. Blizzard retained the right to use the name non-commercially, including for community-made DOTA-style maps within their own games.

  The game that would become Heroes of the Storm had actually been announced at BlizzCon 2010 under the name Blizzard DOTA, presented as a custom map for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. After the settlement, Blizzard renamed it Blizzard All-Stars. The name change to Heroes of the Storm came later, on the 17th of October 2013, by which point the project had evolved far beyond its origins as a StarCraft II arcade feature.

• 3. Building the Nexus

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  Dustin Browder, the director of StarCraft II, was one of the key voices shaping the project during its early years. In June 2012 he confirmed there was no release date and that the game would ship after StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm. By February 2013 it appeared in an Activision Blizzard earnings report as one of Blizzard's areas of continued investment. That spring, Browder mentioned that a few artists had moved over from the Heart of the Swarm team to work on what was still called Blizzard All-Stars.

  The art team faced a genuinely unusual problem. Senior art director Samwise Didier described the challenge as bringing three separate art styles together: Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo each had their own visual language, their own color palettes and proportions. Unifying them into a single coherent game required decisions that neither of those franchises had ever needed to make. The internal testing phase began in August 2013, and Blizzard president Mike Morhaime described the result as the company's take on an "action real-time strategy" game.

  The team grew in May 2013 when Blizzard's ambitious Titan project was rebooted and downsized. Some of the resources freed up from that project were redirected to Heroes of the Storm. Technical alpha testing began on the 13th of March 2014. It went offline on the 22nd of September 2014, then came back on the 7th of October 2014 for North America, Latin America, South East Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. European, Korean, Chinese, and Taiwanese servers followed in the weeks after. By February 2015, more than nine million players had registered to be considered for a beta invite. The open beta launched on the 19th of May 2015.

• 4. A Different Kind of Battle Arena

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  Most multiplayer online battle arenas of the era rewarded individual skill with individual rewards. A player who worked harder earned more experience and leveled faster than their teammates. Heroes of the Storm rejected that design entirely. Experience points gathered from fallen minions go into a shared team pool. When that pool reaches a threshold, every player on the team levels up together. A player who makes a selfless play in a distant lane improves every ally on the map simultaneously.

  The 15 battlegrounds in the game each carry distinct secondary objectives that can swing a match. These are not optional extras; completing them grants substantial advantages that help push through enemy defenses. Teams must decide whether to contest these objectives or press into enemy territory, and that choice is different on every map. At level 10 players choose between two powerful heroic abilities. At level 20 they gain access to storm talents, a second major power spike. The maximum level is 30.

  The game currently features 89 playable heroes, organized into six roles: tank, bruiser, ranged assassin, melee assassin, healer, and support. Heroes can be purchased with Gold earned in-game or with Gems bought with real money. A rotating weekly selection is always free, letting players test any hero without spending anything. If a hero dies, they respawn at the Hall of Storms at the rear of their base. The Hall restores health and mana and repels enemy players who attempt to enter.

• 5. A Universe Woven Together

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  The Nexus, where every match takes place, is described in the game's lore as a trans-dimensional cosmic storm sitting at the center of interconnected universes. It exists in a limbo where worlds are ripped in and out of existence, and some realms within it have been pulled into relative stability. Raven Court, King's Crest, and Luxoria are named among these stable points. Each realm contains a stone called a Singularity. Whoever wins it through conquest becomes the Realm Lord, gaining near-demigod status but not immortality.

  The heroes pulled into the Nexus come from Azeroth, Sanctuary, and the Koprulu sector, meaning the worlds of Warcraft, Diablo, and StarCraft respectively. Among them is Qhira, a hero whose entire home world of Iresia was destroyed along with its Singularity stone. She arrived carrying only a shard of it, which she calls the "mother crystal." Tutorials take place in this setting explicitly: the tutorial has players control Jim Raynor, a StarCraft character, who is teleported into the Nexus and receives guidance from Uther the Lightbringer, a Warcraft character.

  The soundtrack reflects this crossover design. Glenn Stafford and Jason Hayes composed the original score for Heroes of the Storm, and Stafford's piece "The Battle Begins" serves as the game's main theme. Alongside that original music, the game pulls tracks from across Blizzard's catalog: the Terran and Zerg themes from StarCraft, Obsidian Sanctum from World of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King expansion, Jungle from Diablo II Act III, the Overture from Overwatch, and even a track from The Lost Vikings 2 called Smugglers Cove.

• 6. Cross-Game Promotions

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  Blizzard used Heroes of the Storm as a connective tissue across its entire product lineup in ways no other studio had attempted at that scale. Players who reached account level 12 in Heroes of the Storm received a themed card back in Hearthstone. Players who won 100 play-mode matches in Hearthstone received a Hearthstone-themed mount in Heroes of the Storm. World of Warcraft players who reached level 100 received a mount in Heroes of the Storm, and Heroes players who reached level 20 received a battle pet in World of Warcraft.

  The Nexus Challenge event, which ran from the 15th of November 2016 through the 4th of January 2017, pushed this further. Players who completed 15 games alongside a friend received the Oni Genji skin and accompanying cosmetics in Overwatch, plus Zarya as a free hero in Heroes of the Storm. Completing 30 games together unlocked four additional heroes in Heroes of the Storm: Auriel, Greymane, Kerrigan, and Li-Ming.

  The For Azeroth! event ran from the 14th of February 2017 through the 26th of March 2017 and required players to complete 15 games while playing as a Warcraft character. Doing so rewarded a mount and a ten-day stimpack in Heroes of the Storm, as well as a Primal Flamesaber mount usable in World of Warcraft. A second Nexus Challenge ran in April-May 2017, offering bundles grouped by role: Assassin, Flex, Support and Specialist, and Tanks and Bruisers.

• 7. Reception and Decline

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  Metacritic calculated an aggregate score of 86 out of 100 from 57 reviews when Heroes of the Storm released, placing it in "generally favorable" territory. GameSpot awarded it 9 out of 10, calling it a fantastic casual-competitive game. Destructoid's Chris Carter scored it 9.5 out of 10 and described it as "A hallmark of excellence." PC Gamer's Chris Thursten gave it 84 out of 100 and praised it as the most any studio had done to open a complex genre to a new audience.

  Not every review was warm. A 6.5 out of 10 from one publication characterized the game as "flawed" with "poor objectives." That score provoked a strong reaction from the game's community and eventually became an internet meme. Blizzard themselves acknowledged it in a humorous promotional video for a game update. A later review from the same publication, published in March 2018, raised the score to 8 out of 10 and credited the game with packing "a ton of variety and excellent characters." The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences gave Heroes of the Storm the Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year award at the 19th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards.

  On the 13th of December 2018, Blizzard president J. Allen Brack and chief development officer Ray Gresko announced that developers would be reassigned to other projects and that the esports leagues, Heroes Global Championship and Heroes of the Dorm, were cancelled. Production director Kaeo Milker confirmed updates would continue at a slower pace. In July 2022 Blizzard officially stated that major development had ended. Following Microsoft's acquisition of Blizzard, the game has continued to receive balance updates, hero ability adjustments, and bug fixes.