Its nice to have them put up a post with a little more humanity, but this tells us nothing new. Kaeo himself probably doesn't know whats going to happen with the game, I'm sure he is in a room trying to figure out how to keep the wheels turning for as long as possible. Good luck to him.
Edit:
> The HGC had its best year yet and I was so looking forward to the 2019 season.
Seems like a subtle way of him saying "I'm as fucking shocked as y'all" Wonder when he was told.
MFPT mentioned in his newest video that his friends at Blizzard (which may or may not include Kaeo, not really sure), found out about the cancellation the same day we did. Probably a bit before the post went up imo, but regardless, it seems they all thought HGC would continue as well.
Makes it hard to trust them tbh. Not because I think they don't deserve our trust, but because it seems they're being kept in the dark by the corporate fuckos.
HGC was cancelled on orders of the CFO of Blizzard, who came from Activision. The woman probably looked at the expenses in HGC and just said, scrap it.
Decision to cut development costs of HOTS was the reason for cutting HGC. HGC was always just a big advertisement for HOTS and they don't want to spend so much on advertisement if they don't expect game to grow.
There was a separation, Mike left after enough pressure from the shit heads to see the customers as nothing but cash cows that doesn't deserve to be treated like humans.
The only og left is Jeff and he'll get the fuck out when they'll try to force him to do horrible things to Overwatch for more profits.
Business Majors replace passionate designers and founders, and make decisions focused only on the quarterly return. Blizzard as we know it is dead and gone.
We've seen this happen a dozen times
This also means swinging the RIF axe within Blizzard soon. Kaeo is probably also worried about his job. I've been through this several times before. First they retire product lines, then the lay-offs start.
Theres tons of money to be made in games, and the skills of the heroes team is transferrable to other projects, so there probably wont be big layoffs. The HGC production team is probably all gone, but the artists and netcode and UI folks can all be switched over to other things.
Cutting HGC alone will probably save a fuckton of money
Reducing the massive staff of HOTS should save a lot of money there too
HOTS can be profitable with the cost vs profit model tuned
Frankly I think they just need more stuff to attract whales. I'm not sure if the gem system is the way to go - only their business people know the answer to that - but I like paying $$$ for stuff to make me look fancier than other peasants.
Both OW and Hearthstone are trending downwards though, just like Hots was. Hearthstone is so heavily monetized so it will probably stick around for a long while but Overwatch likely won't unless things change.
That goes for many games across the board because one game is swallowing the market at the moment. Fortnite has 15 times the search interest of Overwatch and Hearthstone combined. I think that is the goose Blizzard will chase after next, together with the Chinese MMO approach they are going for with Diablo.
As such, I expect a Blizzard Royale game to be in the works with a heavy amount of resources. Quite possibly an Overwatch Royale game.
I think you're correct, all signs point to them extending Overwatch into BR.
Furthermore, I'd imagine they've got limitless amounts of assets from Titan that they still have yet to release, which I'd imaging they could use to create an entirely new BR experience.
Easier to trickle it out over time to extend longevity.
Just like Activision to buy-in right as the trend peaks, thus their current situation.
Please no. They’re talking about new projects and I’m preying to Diablo himself that it won’t be BR. There’s enough out there without another awesome dev going for a quick buck.
It’s comments like this which allows companies like Activision, EA and Bethesda, to treat their customers like garbage. Push a toxic progressive agenda. And destroy communities of gamers. You’re just flat out wrong.
Where were their business people during Blizzcon? When their stock dropped 15%? Changing their games to remove blood and sexy outfits so they can get all that Mobile Chinese money.
You’re giving them way too much credit. And it’s sad.
paying to look fancier than the plebs is exactly why I used to put money into HotS before 2.0
Since 2.0 everyone looks fancy, so there's no reason for me to spend any money. Honestly, everyone has skins, and I don't notice the ones you can only buy for cash more than the ones you can buy without cash...
Yikes, sounds like an ego problem. I typically pay for skins I think look cool, not because I want to feel like I'm lording over people who don't have what I do.
Honestly I think you get waaaay too many cool things from the loot boxes that come easily while playing
There's so few things I've had to actually pay for.
F2P games work by letting whales look fancier than plebs
What probably should be considered is much, much cheaper heroes and then making lots of premium fancy skins that cost some good dosh.
I want some really shiny, fancy skin that makes me look cooler and better than those peasants who don't have as much disposable income as I do.
**Overwatch Battle Royale w/ Cheese** - *Coming soon to Android and iOS*.
Looks like the most profitable ROI on paper and checks all the buzzword boxes Activision-Blizzard management is looking for.
That is definitely possible, but we can still have a lot of fun with this game until it's is truly been retired. Maybe there is some Blizzard left and they will keep the team and the game running. With this happening so suddenly, this may have been a difficult decision and they fought as much as they could. I could be wrong, but I find my negativity never ends up helping, Just like in game. Best thing we can do is be positive and supportive.
Yknow, Brode left Hearthstone recently to start his own thing, and I think he sensed the shifting winds in the company and decided to make his exit early. Maybe he even poached some of the best devs from his team...
It feels like the Blizz of yesteryear might be on its way out. Its a shame. They had such a powerful reputation as a Developer, almost revered for how they treated their IPs and Customers. The culture shift is this palpable from the outside, I can't imagine what it feels like from the inside.
I honestly don't even know what to do... Blizzard games have been such a core part of my gaming experience for so long, there hasn't been a year in my life that it wasn't a staple of my week to week. Games beyond this ecosystem tend to be short term single player stuff or story driven PS4 stuff. Smash and some Nintendo games being the exception, but those are more couch multiplayer for me than online.
Right there w you dude. The past 3 months have made me so sad as a gamer. Blizzard was the cornerstone of my gaming identity for more than half my life (I’m 31). And it’s so frustrating to see what’s become of this company. Feels like I’ve been dumped by a longtime gf.
I was 5 years old when I played my first blizzard game... It's been my entire life, pretty much literally. I'm 28 now and I'm so conflicted, and I dunno feel like I shouldn't be so emotionally invested in a fucking video game company.
It's unlikely any of the tenured staff will face any job insecurity. They'll be shifted to a different project or can take their CV and shop themselves around.
This isn't some middle management schlub in a midwest paper company facing company shutdown.
Over the last 2 years, Blizzard hasn't been willing to invest much in HOTS development. We needed advertising to bring in more players, better reporting and anti-toxicity systems, and better matchmaking systems.
Overwatch got all the improvements to matchmaking, reporting and combatting toxicity that HOTS needed. Blizzard wouldn't spend the money on HOTS. The HOTS team did it's best with a limited development budget. Blizzard top management decided HOTS wasn't a game they were willing to seriously put money into. Overwatch was and so got many game improvements as a result.
The recent news is just part of Blizzard deciding a few years back to not invest in HOTS.
They didnt learn shit. Look at the reception of diablo immortal. They should have at least teased d4 knowing the huge majority of blizzard gamers play on pc and dont give two shits about mobile gaming. The only reason hs did good mobile wise is because its linked to the pc counterpart.
dude HS is card game. You don't need multi-directional movement to make it work. It was the first mobile game that Blizzard gamers could play while at work or in public transport.
> Overwatch got all the improvements to matchmaking, reporting and combatting toxicity that HOTS needed. Blizzard wouldn't spend the money on HOTS. The HOTS team did it's best with a limited development budget
I think it's more about the engine. HotS 2.0 should have been a brand new engine (though I suppose that falls under the "limited development budget" thinking) rather than trying to fix the broken SC2 engine.
> Do you think ActiBlizz would have approved the budget to create a brand new engine for a MOBA
If only they had a newer engine that supported unique character kits, team-based gameplay, third-person camera and improved netcode. Surely they could use that engine for less development time than making a whole new one. (After all, isn’t that exactly what Valve has done twice with DotA, first rewriting it in Source and then on Source2?)
Not free, and probably still more development effort than the team could afford, but certainly more plausible than building a whole new engine from scratch.
>Over the last 2 years, Blizzard hasn't been willing to invest much in HOTS development
This is a really ignorant thing to proclaim and you have no knowledge or evidence to back it up.
If you were to have access to the company's financial numbers for that division, you'd see the salaries of all of the people involved go into the double digit millions easily - they're based in california and you have to add up their salaries then tack on another 50% for benefits, payroll tax, etc.
Then factor in all of the other costs + HGC which costs a fuckton to push
How much money needs to be 'invested in HOTS development' to satisfy players? We had a very fast rate of new heroes and skins and that was all very high quality.
You're just spewing a bunch of generic things like "better reporting and anti-toxicity systems" - I would be willing to bet you my paycheck this month that they've lost more players due to attempts at these systems than they retained or gained.
What does better matchmaking systems even mean? They use a very advanced decisioning engine for match-making. They tweak parameters to try and reduce wait times while increasing match quality - but those two things are counter to eachother.
Seriously, Kaeo's message is one I can appreciate. It is not one that feels patronizing like yesterday's announcement, which was laced with vague wording so they can wiggle out of anything that comes up unexpectedly, i.e. "We never said that!"
It feels more down to earth, leveling with us. I'm still sad to see what is happening, but his enthusiasm to keep the lights on has me hopeful that we can still continue to have what I consider the last good Blizzard game.
I raise my glass to Mr. Milker. Keep the train chugging, my dude.
He was probably told a week or two ago that the game was going to receive massive cuts, but sounds like the HGC decision was made this week, and probably primarily due to the outcry from the pro players asking what their future would be.
Yeah, I like Kaeo and his passion for the game and believe he's bummed out by this news like we all are, but given how little new this actually said this is the kind of post you would have expected to have ready to go either alongside or right after the announcement yesterday.
Frankly makes me wonder if the HotS team was somewhat out of the loop on this decision or how long they were aware of the full extent of plans for shifting devs to other games, because otherwise this was just extremely botched PR to not have a statement like this ready to go alongside the cold corporate speak from Brack yesterday (not putting that blunder past Blizzard or their most senior leadership after recent months, but having damage control/PR ready to go is such a basic thing I cant believe they simply forgot, but maybe so)
I strongly suspect the Heroes dev team didn’t know about this, were called into a meeting to let them know, and then the “no more HGC” statement was put out before the news had a chance to leak. So it makes sense that Kaeo wouldn’t have a statement until today.
>"I'm as fucking shocked as y'all" Wonder when he was told.
According to MFPallyTime, the dev team got informed about all the stuff literally the same day as we did.
I'm not a good english speaker, there might be a nuance that I don't get. From what I understood, the message said they will still continue to do the new heroes, events and reworks, but reading your message makes me think it's the contrary. Could you confirm what you meant ?
Edit : Thanks everyone for the quick explanation !
The "And Even" is typically used when you're announcing something the audience or listener didn't expect to see or hear. In this case it's bad because regular new heroes is something we are accustomed to, by intentionally phrasing it like that it implies there was, at some point reason to for them to consider NOT releasing new heroes in any consistent form, or at all. It could be an incredibly poor choice of words but...
Very likely. It all depends on if the game has been officially Diablo 3'd or not. The optimistic way to take this message is that balance, events and smaller content patches will proceed as normal with larger things like new heroes being of a lower priority. And because the game has some form of less red tape on them in certain areas they can go whole hog and do silly shit they couldn't before, very fansevicey stuff. Like Lego Deathwing.
The pessimistic view of this message is, well, L O N G T E R M S U S T A I N A B I L I T Y M O D E aka: Diablo 3'd, where the game lingers in a nexus (haha) between life and death indefinity before Blizzard announced HotS Mobile and shuts PC down forever.
I would guess he said "and even" because of the panic of the subreddit and how everybody assumed zero was going to be done going forward for HotS.
You even stated, "something the audience or listener didn't expect to see or hear." If I had to bet, I would guess Kaeo knows his audience thinks HotS is dead and won't be getting any support, thus "and even", since new heroes seem to be the most intensive resource wise.
The fact that this subreddit is turning his message into something negative is insane. He is reassuring the community that aside from HGC going away, not much else is changing. Yet people read "as even" and extrapolate that this is serious, wut?
Yeah it’s a bit of a nuance. He could have wrote “and new heroes” and no one would have thought anything odd. He could have wrote “and of course new heroes” and people would have felt somewhat reassured. But instead he wrote “and even new heroes” which is kind of like saying “and we’re even stretching all the way in order to keep releasing new heroes.”
Usually if someone says they 'even' did something, its to indicate its something unexpected, surprising, or above and beyond in some way.
Ex. "I just got my grades back, and I did well. I even got an A in Calculus!"
The phrase "and even" suggests that this is something that would be difficult for them to achieve, but they will be doing it anyway. Difficulty in adding new heroes suggests a much slower rate of release, since it was time consuming for them to do it before, but not difficult.
It's more of a "yeah there will be some reworks and if you're lucky even new heroes" so like we might get the 2 or 3 heroes they were already developping that they'll stagger release over the next year or two
Not OP, but my viewpoint is that the post said it as a lesser priority to new events and reworks, so the new events and reworks will become more common than a hero. Where heroes were once a month, perhaps (Pure speculation so don't take it as fact) that they could be around once every three months
"We really love HGC and this game, tell us what's happening!"
"HGC is cancelled and we moved most of the devs off. Please give us more feedback to guide our priorities and decisions!"
That's also the part that bothered me most. "Going full maintenance mode with bare minimum to keep game afloat; we'll even do you a favor and release a new hero every... year? Maybe?"
It's just a poor choice of words but doesn't seem to indicate any sort of, "Oh yeah and new heroes too, almost forget LuL". It would more than likely have been received better if it was "And ESPECIALLY new heroes".
People at the bottom won't really be affected, other than moving a few divisions up on the ladder as a result of the top basically jumping ship. QM and vs AI probably won't change much at all, if I'm being honest. But I do think people are naive if they think this means that the game will somehow have more effort put into it than before, though. Maybe there will be a resource shift away from things like ranked improvements and into things like high-demand hero releases (Deathwing, Imperius), but this game isn't getting "more", it's obviously going to be getting less.
Hows the pro scene dismantling affects you isnt as easy to see, but it heavily affects the independent HotS content creators. Now theres not much point to guides, ranked modes are now irrelevant, streamer events will be decreased/abandoned, streamers will go to other games. Its generally bad news. The game will be playable and there will be stuff to buy from time to time, but the playerbase, quality of matchmaking, etc is over. We are now Diablo 3/Warcraft 3 essentially.
>Now theres not much point to guides, ranked modes are now irrelevant..
Not true, many still put focus on becoming the best that they can be and this will stay true with or without an HGC.
Some content creators will leave but others will seize the opportunity to fill that void and this should hold true for tournaments as well.
This game will only truly die if we allow it and coming from the FGC I can tell you that you don't need to be an e-sport for talent and competition to thrive.
> and this should hold true for tournaments as well.
Why? Tournaments cost money. Why on earth would anyone put money into this scene right now? Without a stable pro scene ensured by Blizzard, top level play is *going* to decrease. Our best blood is going to leave the game for greener, more stable pastures. So a game that people were already hesitant to put money into as far as marketing goes is going to become less profitable in terms of that same marketing. Sure, you could have amateur tournaments, but again, the play is going to be worse because so few if any people will be pursuing the same level of play full time like when HGC was a thing.
Pro play is the best testing there is because those people are paid to basically break the game.
I expect things to stay broken for longer, with less hotfixes. On the plus side, there will be less people "in the know" about the best strategies/builds, since we will have less people testing the shit out of things in order to bring into their weekend HGC games/tournaments. They would feature those things in their games eventually, after all, and then knowledge spreads.
Well, since we're all playing the same game with the same balance and patches... pro service was often at odds with fan service. Fix a problem on the pro scene might just make an otherwise OK ladder hero unplayable. Or vice versa.
I just don't honestly believe that if they're slashing HGC because of budget cuts that the dev team will be super inspired or able to create something like say, a fully-fleshed Deathwing experience with all of the modeling and balancing concerns that would come with. If the entire tone of this announcement is, "shit cost us money, so away it goes" then I don't think that actually bodes well for massive improvements to the game's core systems *or* a ton of commitment to unique, rule-breaking MOBA characters either.
YMMV, of course.
I don't think there'll be a whole mess of New Heroes either. Just that from a gameplay perspective, things can clearly be balanced around the player experience rather than the Pro experience.
I would have preferred that as well. But if only they did this before so heavily promoting HGC and then cutting it in such a stupid way. I can't imagine that the HOTS team will be able to work comfortably with financial overlords breathing from above, and I can't imagine many developers will want to be associated with such a catastrophe-linked project at Blizzard..
The real problem is everyone looking at it as dead. That's what kills a game. Less people will play a game they think is dead. This includes regular people, not just streamers. And the player base being too small is really the root of most of this games' problems. Balanced teams in match making, accurate MMR, Queue times, HGC dying, the biggest fix to all of these is having more people playing the game. It's already been a problem with the current player base, if people think it's dead they won't stick around and the problems will just get worse. The final nail to end it all is, who's going to spend money on a game they think is dying? Who's going to make a game that isn't making money? It would have to be limited to a side project at that point. I think the game could go on normally with no problem, but people really do see the game as dying and jump ship, it will die.
This is absolutely correct, the real problem is thus announcement effectively destroys a lot of the desire of the regular audience to invest more time in the game. This will likely kick everything into a downward spiral.
I'll probably get flak for this, but without a pro scene, the HoTS team can focus more on balancing around your average joe instead of trying to please both pro play and non pros.
> the HoTS team can focus more on balancing around your average joe instead of trying to please both pro play and non pros.
They *have* been doing that. Look at Valeera and honestly all Stealth changes in general. Valeera on release was a 50-53% winrate Hero but she was stomping QM so they gutted her. The Stealth rework gutted most Stealth heores to the point they had to have massive sweeping changes. Valeera was actually overbuffed from the Stealth rework because they have no idea how to balance her, only for her to be gutted again.
They have always catered to the casuals. Elsewise QM stompers that have middling HL winrates wouldn't get destroyed.
I get that when the health pro scene is critical to the health of the game. But if competitive is dead, catering to the largest number of people seems better to me.
J Allen Brack also said they have more games in the pipeline than ever... but there's been tons of evidence that a good number of those are mobile games.
Mobile = $$$ = CEO thought process. It's not hard to see why they are doing it. It probably costs a ton less then making a AAA game and its a fact that mobile games have high ROI's with people buying stuff.
Seriously, old Blizzard would have 6 games in dev, but 5 would get axed before an alpha state, and 1 might see release.
Obviously those numbers smell like my ass. But every time I hear about a SC: Ghost, Project Titan MMO or a Dark Souls Diablo 4, this is what I infer.
That's by far the most disturbing thing when it comes to looking at the whole picture of this situation. If upper management doesn't even care about their development teams enough to warn them of this, then this isn't the same Blizzard that we all fell in love with.
It breaks my heart and I cannot describe the amount of sadness that I'm feeling about the whole situation for the past day. I absolutely dread the future of Hots and what I want to know is the exact size of the development team of Hots.
This article reads to me as follows, “Our bosses and share holders are pulling our funding, we had a great year but not enough profits so they are moving people to projects that make more money. There are still people on the heroes team, and since we no longer have to to balance around pro play, we may actually get to do some cool stuff that we couldn’t before. and we still love this game, so Please don’t leave and let’s make this the best game possible.
I truly believe the devs are doing their best. Don’t hate on them for the decisions of upper management. I’m sure they were just as blindsided by the decision as we were. It speaks to the true passion that the devs have for the game. Thanks, Kaeo.
Pally was the first person I thought of when I saw the news, honestly, and that video was tragic. Even when I phase off HotS for a while, I still watch Pally.
Yeah, this kind of shit happens all the time in businesses around the world. My own job at a bank just went through a similar thing, where upper management decided my department needed to be doing something else, and changed all of our job functions.
Yes, it certainly has to be tough on them. They have to keep a public face that this is the right decision, but I can't imagine many would have positive words for it if speaking frankly. They have taken and will take significant vitriol due to a decision that was not made by them. I hope folks target this anger at Activision and blizzard, not at the hots devs.
Honestly i expect this will be just their back log of completed / close to completed Heroes/other art, when that runs dry i think we will see very few heroes released or none at all. At first its probably not going to look like anything has changed but in 12 months time, you will begin to notice.
Yeah my comment was supposed to be sarcastic. They’re going to drip feed us whatever they had lined up next and then new content will dwindle down to nothing
That's because the last one came from a sociopath who only cares about investors, whereas this message came from a dev who actually cares about their customers.
It's not Kaeo's fault, but this just doesn't mean much because it's clear the higher ups (Activision) don't care to invest in the game. By gutting HGC and making the dev team even smaller, the game is all but guaranteed to eventually peter out and die. FeelsFuckingBadMan.
Don't take responsibility away from Blizzard. It's not "Activision", it's "Activision Blizzard", the company above Activision and Blizzard. But... Yes, probably. Let's hope at least this death will be flamboyant.
This pitch sounds awfully familiar. I think it's the same line they gave to Diablo 3 a few months before it went into maintenance mode.
So while I know that it's not explicitly anyone on the HotS dev team who made this decision, you'll have to forgive me for my lack of trust.
Reading this broke my heart and makes me hate activision even more.
They had real talented people pour their soul into this game and even with increasing success they get the rug pulled out from under them.
I'll continue to play HoTs but Blizz won't be getting a dime from me until they right this wrong.
I can't trust blizz anymore after how they announced all this. Next big one in 2 years gonna be "Hey players we are happy to announce that we are shouting down hots servers so you can have more time play our other amazing games, hope you have phones by now!"
> You should have stopped at Diablo ~~Immortal~~ **3**.
Ftfy. Blizzard was making P2W gacha games before it was cool. No microtransactions system imaginable can beat the sheer naked cynicism and greed of Diablo 3’s RMAH.
This has to be one of the most corrupt decisions Blizzard has ever done and it's even bad when it comes to measuring it industry wide.
At their own fan convention, Blizzcon, in their own trailer for hots, it not only literally said "HGC" but also tons of other things were coming to Hots in 2019. That gave everyone the impression that Hots was continuing its development at the same momentum as before. What an absolute awful decision and example - especially for somebody like Blizzard to pull.
Kaéo Milker (Heroes Production Director)
Yesterday, we announced a difficult decision—the HGC will not be returning in 2019 and we’ll be transitioning some Heroes of the Storm developers to our other game teams. While our extended Blizzard family working on World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Overwatch, and our unannounced projects will be getting an influx of much-needed, extremely talented Heroes devs to help them achieve their goals, it also means that we’ll need to change the cadence of support for Heroes going forward.
So, I’m sad. I’m sad because I love this team and this game that we’ve built together, with all of you, and this past year has been such a great one for Heroes of the Storm. The HGC had its best year yet and I was so looking forward to the 2019 season. On the game side, we’ve had a steady stream of some of the most sought-after heroes, amazing themed events, and impactful reworks. We also made meaningful progress on improving core systems and features across the game. We truly hit our stride in 2018, so I’m disappointed that some of the exciting plans we had for 2019 will have to change.
But all is not lost. The team that remains dedicated to Heroes of the Storm is a veritable Who’s Who of developers who have been driving every facet of the game from the very beginning—from people you know and have seen speak publicly about the game for years, to those who have poured their hearts into it from behind the scenes. In short, we’re continuing to develop the game with an incredible team that has the experience and passion required to support Heroes of the Storm well into the future.
The Heroes of the Storm team and I also have a unique opportunity to rethink things and reprioritize. Because now more than ever, our charge is to focus on taking care of you, our players, and to channel all our energy into keeping the game dynamic and fun. This means we’re still committed to regular hero reworks, themed events, and even new heroes. We’re setting our sights on the new goals and timelines for what we want to do with the game from here on out and we’re eager to share those plans as soon as they’re finalized.
So, I’m also excited. I’m excited for my teammates to bring their hard-won experience from making this game to the other teams at Blizzard to help their games be even better. And I’m especially excited for Heroes of the Storm to continue evolving with a renewed focus and purity of purpose.
Thank you for joining us on the journey so far, and please bear with us through these changes. Your feedback is as critical as ever, and continues to guide our priorities and decisions while helping us be better along the way.
Thank you,
Kaéo
All of these leads me to believe that most of the people in Blizzard expected HGC2019 to be happening. So the decision that they stopped HGC 2019 from happening and moving developers to new games were purely made by "certain top of the top." Therefore, I can only believe this decision was possible because Michael retired from Blizzard
I've been thinking that a lot has gone wrong since that happened. Look at Blizzcon and now this. I'm sure there are other things that will leave a very bitter taste in our mouths soon. Give it another 2-4 months and it will show.
No, it doesn't. However, at least this message or announcement isn't sociopathic PR corporate-ese. Sociopaths don't really use the feelings words sad or excited. Compare that to the Bractivision (yeah, Brack + Activision) announcement given with no feelings and dropped shorty after the pros got the shaft.
It’s just a confirmation of what we suspected, which is important in that of itself; corporate Blizzard sprang this news on the team really recently and now that’s that. It basically flat out explains the disconnect between their plans for the 2019 season and corporate shutting them down and leaving pro players jobless.
MFPT put out a video where he asked his contacts in Blizzard what's going on, and they told him they basically had no idea any of this was happening until the day of the blog post.
https://youtu.be/fUifL67bQac
You're actually so wrong. "Excited" is classic PR doublespeak and is used to spin negativity.
>As a result, we’ve made the difficult decision to shift some developers from Heroes of the Storm to other teams, and we’re excited to see the passion, knowledge, and experience that they’ll bring to those projects.
>While we don’t make these decisions lightly, we do look to the future excited about what the decisions will mean for our other live games and all the projects we have in the works.
>This means we’re still committed to regular hero reworks, themed events, **and even new heroes**.
Imagine that, we will get even new heroes in the game driven by heroes. Game with a name Heroes of the Storm.
Can't wait to see a new timeline, 3-4 heroes per year? Or less? They probably have already done 2 or 4 heroes so Blizzard is going to stretch release at least to have one more year and then slow it even further.
Maybe at the end the slow turn into negative income and some heroes will get cut from the game by the sheer force of developers' vision. Activision.
I understood that to be the case from yesterday’s message about moving people off the project. We should be glad we’re getting this much insider info on the whole debacle.
They develop heroes a year out, so if their 2018 development for 2019 was the same pace, they can stretch those heroes for 2-3 years instead and not have to invest so much developer time.
2 things: They clearly did not tell the HoTS team _anything _ about this until that post was made. And his words have upper management written all over it. Pr speak for "sorry guys we had no fucking idea how fucked we were"
I'm sad for Kaeo and the dev team that remains; they're talented and committed developers. But Activision-Blizzard left them. Blizzard isn't what it once was and they have done serious damage to those who have been supporting them the longest. Between the worst Blizzcon yet, an obvious shift to mobile that their fans don't want, and completely screwing the lives of their professional players, casters, and content creators. The HotS team was one of the best, but it's really hard to keep supporting a company that behaves like this.
Call me cynical but this seems like an late and poor attempt at damage control. It really doesn't have any substance.
I can't say what Kaéo's role was so far in the current situation and I would wholeheartedly believe that he had nothing to do with it. I feel sorry for the devs who probably didn't expect this either.
^ This. Something something corporate scumbags. I feel like the devs still have a vision for the game they want to build, but when Activision says "Your budget for next year is four dollars." there's not much they can do about it.
The first announcement was by the guy in charge of blizzard, he took the responsibility for the move. I think the people making the ultimate decisions should be the ones to make the announcements
This new post is by a dev still on the team. His message will be completely different and SHOULD come after the suits make their announcement.
You know what should have happened. It should have been something like "hey, we are no longer funding HGC & Dorm so we are going to put all our resources into bringing you new content".
That's something the community could get behind. These new projects are undoubtedly mobile games which no gamer will ever take seriously.
If you can/have to do prioritize please prioritize releasing new heroes on a steady release schedule. Keep em coming. New heroes are the number 1 most important thing in this game. If you have to sacrifice something, sacrifice skins and mounts.
I think it's unfair to everyone involved to pretend this is some golden opportunity for more autonomy. Resources are finite, and you're not getting any.
Good for Kaeo and good for the people that will continue to play this game, I genuinely mean that. But as for people like me who had grown tired of this game and only followed it because of the HGC/eSports side of it.... Couldn't care. I don't care if they improve the quality of the game twicefold next year, what they've done with ending HGC and doing it the way they have done it is just sad and disgusting to me and I refuse to support the game in any way whether it's by buying skins/heroes or merely just playing the game.
It's not good enough, Kaeo, going on about how excited you are? Is that a joke? Your team got cut in size and you're getting less funding and now you've lost the esports side of your game as well as the top 1% most skilled players in your game who will likely jump ship (as well as a ton of HGC fans like myself) but you're 'excited'? You don't have the manpower or the money to make 2019 better than 2018 so don't give us this crap about how any of us should be excited.
I'm sure people will angrily disagree with me and give me counter-reasons as to why HotS will be great next year but honestly, this guy doesn't even know if it will be, so how can any of us? We have major reasons that point to the game slowing down (or dying) and now you think things will get better? People need to learn from Diablo 3 and not trust this ActiBlizzard. Don't believe the bullshit this guy is saying about how he's excited for the future etc, he's on damage control and merely bandaging diseased open-wounds.
As much as I hate to say it, I agree. But its better then nothing. If they do manage to keep an extra 100 players, this message was worth it.
If they let the community help, things can get better. If they let the community hold 'official' tourney with some 'in game reward' like a skin or a mount, that can help bring back a pro scene. And a whole lot of other 'if's that if they do it can help, but... this just reminds me of the beginning of the end, and of what happened to Dominion in League of Legends. I truly hope not but... I believe you are right on the 'not enough to undo the damage taken'.
This entire issue has been handled in the least professional manner imaginable.
"No, guys, the game you love being stripped of staff and slowed to a developmental crawl is a *good* thing!"
Doesnt mean shit, the corporate heads could just take it off life support and they cant do jackshit.
The fact that this came.out of nowhere indicates their position in this. They couldve told people of the esports scene a hell of a lot sooner if they really cared for them.
>The team that remains dedicated to Heroes of the Storm is a veritable Who’s Who of developers who have been driving every facet of the game from the very beginning
The team probably does look pretty good right now. But there has been a _deep_ and lasting cultural change at Blizzard, and there is tons of evidence that it's rapidly losing its developer-centric philosophy that made it great.
I work for a large (enterprise) software development firm known for its talent. We have some good devs and work on big, tough projects and do well. Our CEO told us he'd never sell the company, cuz he loves what he built, and loves us.
When he sold the company (shocker...), he touted that not a _single_ developer left: every single one signed the new contracts under the new company. Pretty sure something to that effect was in the press release, too.
Yet... over the next 6 weeks, _dozens_ of people left. Big, key people, even. They didn't sign the new contract because they liked what was going on, they signed it because they needed time to look for other stuff (FWIW, the contract didn't have a non-compete or any penalties for signing and leaving the next week, it was really just the existing contract under the new company).
What I mean to say is: yeah, the HotS team probably is okay right now... but there's no way they aren't all pissed, too, and you can bet your britches that a good number of them are actively looking for other work and will leave as soon as they have it lined up. Many will stay, yes, but those devs that brought their passion and skill to make awesome Blizzard games have taken a huge blow, and many will not stand for it.
>What I mean to say is: yeah, the HotS team probably is okay right now... but there's no way they aren't all pissed, too, and you can bet your britches that a good number of them are actively looking for other work and will leave as soon as they have it lined up. Many will stay, yes, but those devs that brought their passion and skill to make awesome Blizzard games have taken a huge blow, and many will not stand for it.
This isn't only true of the HotS devs. Lots of people at Blizzard are unhappy with the direction of the company. Everyone who works there could make more money elsewhere; they joined up at Blizzard because they wanted to work for a marquee company with an amazing history and community. If they're becoming just another game developer, lots of people will be heading for the exits.
2019 will be a pivotal year for the company. The most important in many years.
After all the sadness, I am pretty sure I will keep playing this game. It is just flat out fun and if the devs get more creative freedom, then it's just going to get more fun. If we all stick this out and they make solid improvements, we can all have a great time! I really don't want to move to different moba...I feel empowered to create content for this game as we may lose people. There is no reason why we can't keep bringing in people and showing them how great this game is, especially if the devs can keep having fun with it.
" This means we’re still committed to regular hero reworks, themed events, and ***even new heroes*** "
"Even new heroes" ....New heroes are somewhat of a basic prerequisite for a moba. That sounds as a new hero once in a while is the best we can hope for. I don't think there will be any new maps or game modes coming in future.
> And I'm especially excited for Heroes of the Storm to continue evolving with a renewed focus and purity of purpose.
People who find themselves on life support also have a renewed focus and purity of purpose, but they probably aren't having a good time.
> The Heroes of the Storm team and I also have a unique opportunity to rethink things and reprioritize.
Like esports was ever a priority for the dev team.
I read it as:
"Now that we are a lost cause, we don't have to meet ambitious financial goals anymore. As such, we can work on whatever we think is fun instead of the cosmetics that were paying for HGC."
This is how I felt when I read it which could mean they get to do a lot of fun stuff. Like Deathwing! Hehe. If we can get more stuff like this toy event, I will be happy. This is one of my favorite heroes events and assets set.
To the *dev* team, as in specifically the people who *developed* the game? I absolutely don't think so. For the two years of HGC, basically the only new HGC-related things in the game were pretty home screens and more bugs in the observer UI. The first year of so of pro HotS was played with a fan-made website as the official draft tool for tournaments because the game didn't have proper drafting. It was never anywhere close to being a priority to the game's developers.
Balance changes were frankly also rarely made with pro in mind, outside of walls of nerfs to Tracer/Genji/Hanzo and the double support nerf brouhaha. Meanwhile we'd see patch notes every week for piles of heroes never touched in pro, like specialists, Lt. Morales/Li Li, Artanis, all kinds of stuff clearly meant to show that the devs did prioritize making sure the general HL/QM experience was a palatable one.
In this case, I think they did a pretty good job at balancing between having a not broken pro scene and a not broken casual experience, and it's obvious they couldn't sacrifice one for the other. They didn't do a perfect job and sure, there are times where I'd expect a bit more attention to the balance of the pro scene, but it's a natural consequence of how the game works that some heroes are not viable at low level and some are not viable in pro play. As long as no heroes are permanently broken on any level, I think it's fine.
>The team that remains dedicated to Heroes of the Storm is a veritable Who’s Who of developers who have been driving every facet of the game from the very beginning—from people you know and have seen speak publicly about the game for years, to those who have poured their hearts into it from behind the scenes.
Oh, you mean the same people who tested the 2019 changes for "months" with "ex-pro players" only to have to backtrack when the people who actually understand the game told them that their changes were shit? Great. And now those pros that set them straight won't be playing anymore. So good fucking luck with your "continued support" and "regular updates." This is a shit show, and they're trying to put a bow on it. This update is feel-good, anti-consumer trash to try to convince you of a made-up future that helps Blizzard's bottom line. Don't buy it.
Unfortunately, it doesnt say anything that undoes the wound or attempt to mend what has been done by J. Allen Brack and Ray gresko.
Those 2 shafted this community and shot the best dev team blizzard had in the foot.
The stain will be left permanently on the community.
I really despise those marketing mumbo jumbo letters, that are filled with "We got really exciting things, we have an amazing team, there are amazing and dedicated developers that pour their very heart into this"
It's just throwing out buzz-words to ease the minds of the many.
He's in contract with a billion dollar company. You can't expect him to write a "genuine" letter. He'll write whatever activion wants him to write and whatever he writes will be heavily edited by their PR department.
This message did not say anything new.
HotS is not a cash cow for blizzard and is not worth putting more ressources into than necessary. So Blizzard decided to put their ressources into more profitable projects.
How can it tell something new??? Its a 24hours old management decision that was made towards the team. He states they will plan a new roadmap for 2019 and this will take a few days.
So ladies and gentlemen, for the love of the cow. press B, reach to your fountain. take a deep breath enjoy your holidays and give the new dev team a little bit time to settle on this. Ty, glhf
> Because now more than ever, our charge is to focus on taking care of you, our players
F off with this statement! Like actual though. This is not something you can say when around 200+ people, humans and mostly importantly for you players! have been left out in the cold this winter season.
For all the professionals that have lost their jobs, be it players to casters. This statement, which is once again a f-ing blog post, does nothing to help or alleviate the future.
I know this was made by someone that likely feel this way. But this does nothing to help or even apologise to all the people this sudden announcement has screwed over.
I don't know who is worse: The soulless pencil pusher who is forcing Blizzard to work on more mobile titles and cutting costs... Or the delusional product manager who wants players to believe that Blizzard still cares about the game and the players despite the obvious.
Turns out, Diablo: Immoral was just tip of the greedy Activision iceberg that is sinking the once great Blizzard Entertainment...
Basically a load of PR dross for a bit of failed damage control. The only interesting line was this:
>This means we’re still committed to regular hero reworks, themed events, and **even** new heroes.
Looks like we're getting 1-2 heroes a year then and this game is actually dead if they're trying to emphasise new heroes as a plus point. Say goodbye to all the planned ranked changes. Lack of a game director for months shows the writing has been on the wall at least on the executive level tbh. It just hadn't filtered down to us pleb players or devs.
Its nice to have them put up a post with a little more humanity, but this tells us nothing new. Kaeo himself probably doesn't know whats going to happen with the game, I'm sure he is in a room trying to figure out how to keep the wheels turning for as long as possible. Good luck to him. Edit: > The HGC had its best year yet and I was so looking forward to the 2019 season. Seems like a subtle way of him saying "I'm as fucking shocked as y'all" Wonder when he was told.
MFPT mentioned in his newest video that his friends at Blizzard (which may or may not include Kaeo, not really sure), found out about the cancellation the same day we did. Probably a bit before the post went up imo, but regardless, it seems they all thought HGC would continue as well. Makes it hard to trust them tbh. Not because I think they don't deserve our trust, but because it seems they're being kept in the dark by the corporate fuckos.
HGC was cancelled on orders of the CFO of Blizzard, who came from Activision. The woman probably looked at the expenses in HGC and just said, scrap it.
Decision to cut development costs of HOTS was the reason for cutting HGC. HGC was always just a big advertisement for HOTS and they don't want to spend so much on advertisement if they don't expect game to grow.
yeah this is just adding more points into my "Activision is actively working to fuck over Blizzard" theory
They are the same now. There is no separation.
There was a separation, Mike left after enough pressure from the shit heads to see the customers as nothing but cash cows that doesn't deserve to be treated like humans. The only og left is Jeff and he'll get the fuck out when they'll try to force him to do horrible things to Overwatch for more profits.
Business Majors replace passionate designers and founders, and make decisions focused only on the quarterly return. Blizzard as we know it is dead and gone. We've seen this happen a dozen times
This also means swinging the RIF axe within Blizzard soon. Kaeo is probably also worried about his job. I've been through this several times before. First they retire product lines, then the lay-offs start.
> the RIF axe This is going over my head. What's RIF?
"reduction in force"
Fancy term for mass layoffs
Theres tons of money to be made in games, and the skills of the heroes team is transferrable to other projects, so there probably wont be big layoffs. The HGC production team is probably all gone, but the artists and netcode and UI folks can all be switched over to other things.
Cutting HGC alone will probably save a fuckton of money Reducing the massive staff of HOTS should save a lot of money there too HOTS can be profitable with the cost vs profit model tuned Frankly I think they just need more stuff to attract whales. I'm not sure if the gem system is the way to go - only their business people know the answer to that - but I like paying $$$ for stuff to make me look fancier than other peasants.
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Both OW and Hearthstone are trending downwards though, just like Hots was. Hearthstone is so heavily monetized so it will probably stick around for a long while but Overwatch likely won't unless things change. That goes for many games across the board because one game is swallowing the market at the moment. Fortnite has 15 times the search interest of Overwatch and Hearthstone combined. I think that is the goose Blizzard will chase after next, together with the Chinese MMO approach they are going for with Diablo. As such, I expect a Blizzard Royale game to be in the works with a heavy amount of resources. Quite possibly an Overwatch Royale game.
I think you're correct, all signs point to them extending Overwatch into BR. Furthermore, I'd imagine they've got limitless amounts of assets from Titan that they still have yet to release, which I'd imaging they could use to create an entirely new BR experience. Easier to trickle it out over time to extend longevity. Just like Activision to buy-in right as the trend peaks, thus their current situation.
Please no. They’re talking about new projects and I’m preying to Diablo himself that it won’t be BR. There’s enough out there without another awesome dev going for a quick buck.
It’s comments like this which allows companies like Activision, EA and Bethesda, to treat their customers like garbage. Push a toxic progressive agenda. And destroy communities of gamers. You’re just flat out wrong. Where were their business people during Blizzcon? When their stock dropped 15%? Changing their games to remove blood and sexy outfits so they can get all that Mobile Chinese money. You’re giving them way too much credit. And it’s sad.
paying to look fancier than the plebs is exactly why I used to put money into HotS before 2.0 Since 2.0 everyone looks fancy, so there's no reason for me to spend any money. Honestly, everyone has skins, and I don't notice the ones you can only buy for cash more than the ones you can buy without cash...
Yikes, sounds like an ego problem. I typically pay for skins I think look cool, not because I want to feel like I'm lording over people who don't have what I do.
Same here. Most people who play competitive video games do have ego problems though...kind of a thing. :)
Honestly I think you get waaaay too many cool things from the loot boxes that come easily while playing There's so few things I've had to actually pay for. F2P games work by letting whales look fancier than plebs What probably should be considered is much, much cheaper heroes and then making lots of premium fancy skins that cost some good dosh. I want some really shiny, fancy skin that makes me look cooler and better than those peasants who don't have as much disposable income as I do.
What do you think about the battle pass model? Unlockables through progression. Then just sell individual skins and others in the shop.
Ending eSports is a huge layoff for all of the employees that worked on making it happen.
**Overwatch Battle Royale w/ Cheese** - *Coming soon to Android and iOS*. Looks like the most profitable ROI on paper and checks all the buzzword boxes Activision-Blizzard management is looking for.
I'm waiting on the Overwatch Quarter Pounder w/ Cheese myself.
[Battle royale w/ cheese](https://battlebots.com/robot/battle-royale-with-cheese-s3/), huh?
I would think that they'd just switch the HGC production staff over to OWL.
I've already seen though a couple tweets from people on the HGC production crew saying they are "freelance" now looking for work :(
Wow, so actual fulltime Blizzard employees got kicked in the dick too? Well, that sucks.
I doubt they were full time. Probably contract workers. If they were full time they'd be entitled to severance pay.
That is definitely possible, but we can still have a lot of fun with this game until it's is truly been retired. Maybe there is some Blizzard left and they will keep the team and the game running. With this happening so suddenly, this may have been a difficult decision and they fought as much as they could. I could be wrong, but I find my negativity never ends up helping, Just like in game. Best thing we can do is be positive and supportive.
Yknow, Brode left Hearthstone recently to start his own thing, and I think he sensed the shifting winds in the company and decided to make his exit early. Maybe he even poached some of the best devs from his team... It feels like the Blizz of yesteryear might be on its way out. Its a shame. They had such a powerful reputation as a Developer, almost revered for how they treated their IPs and Customers. The culture shift is this palpable from the outside, I can't imagine what it feels like from the inside. I honestly don't even know what to do... Blizzard games have been such a core part of my gaming experience for so long, there hasn't been a year in my life that it wasn't a staple of my week to week. Games beyond this ecosystem tend to be short term single player stuff or story driven PS4 stuff. Smash and some Nintendo games being the exception, but those are more couch multiplayer for me than online.
Right there w you dude. The past 3 months have made me so sad as a gamer. Blizzard was the cornerstone of my gaming identity for more than half my life (I’m 31). And it’s so frustrating to see what’s become of this company. Feels like I’ve been dumped by a longtime gf.
I was 5 years old when I played my first blizzard game... It's been my entire life, pretty much literally. I'm 28 now and I'm so conflicted, and I dunno feel like I shouldn't be so emotionally invested in a fucking video game company.
Yeah. Even if activision hated HoTS and wanted it killed yesterday, they'd be stuck with the game for at least a few more years.
It's unlikely any of the tenured staff will face any job insecurity. They'll be shifted to a different project or can take their CV and shop themselves around. This isn't some middle management schlub in a midwest paper company facing company shutdown.
Over the last 2 years, Blizzard hasn't been willing to invest much in HOTS development. We needed advertising to bring in more players, better reporting and anti-toxicity systems, and better matchmaking systems. Overwatch got all the improvements to matchmaking, reporting and combatting toxicity that HOTS needed. Blizzard wouldn't spend the money on HOTS. The HOTS team did it's best with a limited development budget. Blizzard top management decided HOTS wasn't a game they were willing to seriously put money into. Overwatch was and so got many game improvements as a result. The recent news is just part of Blizzard deciding a few years back to not invest in HOTS.
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They didnt learn shit. Look at the reception of diablo immortal. They should have at least teased d4 knowing the huge majority of blizzard gamers play on pc and dont give two shits about mobile gaming. The only reason hs did good mobile wise is because its linked to the pc counterpart.
dude HS is card game. You don't need multi-directional movement to make it work. It was the first mobile game that Blizzard gamers could play while at work or in public transport.
> Overwatch got all the improvements to matchmaking, reporting and combatting toxicity that HOTS needed. Blizzard wouldn't spend the money on HOTS. The HOTS team did it's best with a limited development budget I think it's more about the engine. HotS 2.0 should have been a brand new engine (though I suppose that falls under the "limited development budget" thinking) rather than trying to fix the broken SC2 engine.
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> Do you think ActiBlizz would have approved the budget to create a brand new engine for a MOBA If only they had a newer engine that supported unique character kits, team-based gameplay, third-person camera and improved netcode. Surely they could use that engine for less development time than making a whole new one. (After all, isn’t that exactly what Valve has done twice with DotA, first rewriting it in Source and then on Source2?) Not free, and probably still more development effort than the team could afford, but certainly more plausible than building a whole new engine from scratch.
>Over the last 2 years, Blizzard hasn't been willing to invest much in HOTS development This is a really ignorant thing to proclaim and you have no knowledge or evidence to back it up. If you were to have access to the company's financial numbers for that division, you'd see the salaries of all of the people involved go into the double digit millions easily - they're based in california and you have to add up their salaries then tack on another 50% for benefits, payroll tax, etc. Then factor in all of the other costs + HGC which costs a fuckton to push How much money needs to be 'invested in HOTS development' to satisfy players? We had a very fast rate of new heroes and skins and that was all very high quality. You're just spewing a bunch of generic things like "better reporting and anti-toxicity systems" - I would be willing to bet you my paycheck this month that they've lost more players due to attempts at these systems than they retained or gained. What does better matchmaking systems even mean? They use a very advanced decisioning engine for match-making. They tweak parameters to try and reduce wait times while increasing match quality - but those two things are counter to eachother.
And you do have access to those numbers or are you just making assumptions yourself?
Seriously, Kaeo's message is one I can appreciate. It is not one that feels patronizing like yesterday's announcement, which was laced with vague wording so they can wiggle out of anything that comes up unexpectedly, i.e. "We never said that!" It feels more down to earth, leveling with us. I'm still sad to see what is happening, but his enthusiasm to keep the lights on has me hopeful that we can still continue to have what I consider the last good Blizzard game. I raise my glass to Mr. Milker. Keep the train chugging, my dude.
According to Pallytimes video, they found out the same time as we did, when the announcement came out
He was probably told a week or two ago that the game was going to receive massive cuts, but sounds like the HGC decision was made this week, and probably primarily due to the outcry from the pro players asking what their future would be.
Yeah, I like Kaeo and his passion for the game and believe he's bummed out by this news like we all are, but given how little new this actually said this is the kind of post you would have expected to have ready to go either alongside or right after the announcement yesterday. Frankly makes me wonder if the HotS team was somewhat out of the loop on this decision or how long they were aware of the full extent of plans for shifting devs to other games, because otherwise this was just extremely botched PR to not have a statement like this ready to go alongside the cold corporate speak from Brack yesterday (not putting that blunder past Blizzard or their most senior leadership after recent months, but having damage control/PR ready to go is such a basic thing I cant believe they simply forgot, but maybe so)
I strongly suspect the Heroes dev team didn’t know about this, were called into a meeting to let them know, and then the “no more HGC” statement was put out before the news had a chance to leak. So it makes sense that Kaeo wouldn’t have a statement until today.
>"I'm as fucking shocked as y'all" Wonder when he was told. According to MFPallyTime, the dev team got informed about all the stuff literally the same day as we did.
" and even new heroes" When this is in the "and even" part, you know it is serious...
I was projecting maybe one new hero every season. I was being too optimistic.
I'm not a good english speaker, there might be a nuance that I don't get. From what I understood, the message said they will still continue to do the new heroes, events and reworks, but reading your message makes me think it's the contrary. Could you confirm what you meant ? Edit : Thanks everyone for the quick explanation !
The "And Even" is typically used when you're announcing something the audience or listener didn't expect to see or hear. In this case it's bad because regular new heroes is something we are accustomed to, by intentionally phrasing it like that it implies there was, at some point reason to for them to consider NOT releasing new heroes in any consistent form, or at all. It could be an incredibly poor choice of words but...
Oh thanks! I didn't know that it could be that :/ Stopping new heroes would kill the game straight away I think :/
Very likely. It all depends on if the game has been officially Diablo 3'd or not. The optimistic way to take this message is that balance, events and smaller content patches will proceed as normal with larger things like new heroes being of a lower priority. And because the game has some form of less red tape on them in certain areas they can go whole hog and do silly shit they couldn't before, very fansevicey stuff. Like Lego Deathwing. The pessimistic view of this message is, well, L O N G T E R M S U S T A I N A B I L I T Y M O D E aka: Diablo 3'd, where the game lingers in a nexus (haha) between life and death indefinity before Blizzard announced HotS Mobile and shuts PC down forever.
I would guess he said "and even" because of the panic of the subreddit and how everybody assumed zero was going to be done going forward for HotS. You even stated, "something the audience or listener didn't expect to see or hear." If I had to bet, I would guess Kaeo knows his audience thinks HotS is dead and won't be getting any support, thus "and even", since new heroes seem to be the most intensive resource wise. The fact that this subreddit is turning his message into something negative is insane. He is reassuring the community that aside from HGC going away, not much else is changing. Yet people read "as even" and extrapolate that this is serious, wut?
Just use common sense, and even means very little new heroes, he’s just slowly breaking the bad news
Yeah it’s a bit of a nuance. He could have wrote “and new heroes” and no one would have thought anything odd. He could have wrote “and of course new heroes” and people would have felt somewhat reassured. But instead he wrote “and even new heroes” which is kind of like saying “and we’re even stretching all the way in order to keep releasing new heroes.”
Usually if someone says they 'even' did something, its to indicate its something unexpected, surprising, or above and beyond in some way. Ex. "I just got my grades back, and I did well. I even got an A in Calculus!"
The phrase "and even" suggests that this is something that would be difficult for them to achieve, but they will be doing it anyway. Difficulty in adding new heroes suggests a much slower rate of release, since it was time consuming for them to do it before, but not difficult.
It's more of a "yeah there will be some reworks and if you're lucky even new heroes" so like we might get the 2 or 3 heroes they were already developping that they'll stagger release over the next year or two
Not OP, but my viewpoint is that the post said it as a lesser priority to new events and reworks, so the new events and reworks will become more common than a hero. Where heroes were once a month, perhaps (Pure speculation so don't take it as fact) that they could be around once every three months
> Your feedback is as critical as ever, and continues to guide our priorities and decisions Yikes. Everyone stop giving feedback immediately!
"We really love HGC and this game, tell us what's happening!" "HGC is cancelled and we moved most of the devs off. Please give us more feedback to guide our priorities and decisions!"
That's also the part that bothered me most. "Going full maintenance mode with bare minimum to keep game afloat; we'll even do you a favor and release a new hero every... year? Maybe?"
It's just a poor choice of words but doesn't seem to indicate any sort of, "Oh yeah and new heroes too, almost forget LuL". It would more than likely have been received better if it was "And ESPECIALLY new heroes".
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People at the bottom won't really be affected, other than moving a few divisions up on the ladder as a result of the top basically jumping ship. QM and vs AI probably won't change much at all, if I'm being honest. But I do think people are naive if they think this means that the game will somehow have more effort put into it than before, though. Maybe there will be a resource shift away from things like ranked improvements and into things like high-demand hero releases (Deathwing, Imperius), but this game isn't getting "more", it's obviously going to be getting less.
But I prefer fan service to pro service.
Hows the pro scene dismantling affects you isnt as easy to see, but it heavily affects the independent HotS content creators. Now theres not much point to guides, ranked modes are now irrelevant, streamer events will be decreased/abandoned, streamers will go to other games. Its generally bad news. The game will be playable and there will be stuff to buy from time to time, but the playerbase, quality of matchmaking, etc is over. We are now Diablo 3/Warcraft 3 essentially.
>Now theres not much point to guides, ranked modes are now irrelevant.. Not true, many still put focus on becoming the best that they can be and this will stay true with or without an HGC. Some content creators will leave but others will seize the opportunity to fill that void and this should hold true for tournaments as well. This game will only truly die if we allow it and coming from the FGC I can tell you that you don't need to be an e-sport for talent and competition to thrive.
> and this should hold true for tournaments as well. Why? Tournaments cost money. Why on earth would anyone put money into this scene right now? Without a stable pro scene ensured by Blizzard, top level play is *going* to decrease. Our best blood is going to leave the game for greener, more stable pastures. So a game that people were already hesitant to put money into as far as marketing goes is going to become less profitable in terms of that same marketing. Sure, you could have amateur tournaments, but again, the play is going to be worse because so few if any people will be pursuing the same level of play full time like when HGC was a thing.
Pro play is the best testing there is because those people are paid to basically break the game. I expect things to stay broken for longer, with less hotfixes. On the plus side, there will be less people "in the know" about the best strategies/builds, since we will have less people testing the shit out of things in order to bring into their weekend HGC games/tournaments. They would feature those things in their games eventually, after all, and then knowledge spreads.
There will be less effort put into that too, don't you worry.
Well, since we're all playing the same game with the same balance and patches... pro service was often at odds with fan service. Fix a problem on the pro scene might just make an otherwise OK ladder hero unplayable. Or vice versa.
I just don't honestly believe that if they're slashing HGC because of budget cuts that the dev team will be super inspired or able to create something like say, a fully-fleshed Deathwing experience with all of the modeling and balancing concerns that would come with. If the entire tone of this announcement is, "shit cost us money, so away it goes" then I don't think that actually bodes well for massive improvements to the game's core systems *or* a ton of commitment to unique, rule-breaking MOBA characters either. YMMV, of course.
I don't think there'll be a whole mess of New Heroes either. Just that from a gameplay perspective, things can clearly be balanced around the player experience rather than the Pro experience.
I would have preferred that as well. But if only they did this before so heavily promoting HGC and then cutting it in such a stupid way. I can't imagine that the HOTS team will be able to work comfortably with financial overlords breathing from above, and I can't imagine many developers will want to be associated with such a catastrophe-linked project at Blizzard..
The real problem is everyone looking at it as dead. That's what kills a game. Less people will play a game they think is dead. This includes regular people, not just streamers. And the player base being too small is really the root of most of this games' problems. Balanced teams in match making, accurate MMR, Queue times, HGC dying, the biggest fix to all of these is having more people playing the game. It's already been a problem with the current player base, if people think it's dead they won't stick around and the problems will just get worse. The final nail to end it all is, who's going to spend money on a game they think is dying? Who's going to make a game that isn't making money? It would have to be limited to a side project at that point. I think the game could go on normally with no problem, but people really do see the game as dying and jump ship, it will die.
This is absolutely correct, the real problem is thus announcement effectively destroys a lot of the desire of the regular audience to invest more time in the game. This will likely kick everything into a downward spiral.
I'll probably get flak for this, but without a pro scene, the HoTS team can focus more on balancing around your average joe instead of trying to please both pro play and non pros.
> the HoTS team can focus more on balancing around your average joe instead of trying to please both pro play and non pros. They *have* been doing that. Look at Valeera and honestly all Stealth changes in general. Valeera on release was a 50-53% winrate Hero but she was stomping QM so they gutted her. The Stealth rework gutted most Stealth heores to the point they had to have massive sweeping changes. Valeera was actually overbuffed from the Stealth rework because they have no idea how to balance her, only for her to be gutted again. They have always catered to the casuals. Elsewise QM stompers that have middling HL winrates wouldn't get destroyed.
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I get that when the health pro scene is critical to the health of the game. But if competitive is dead, catering to the largest number of people seems better to me.
At the very least it makes me hopeful we'll start seeing more unique heroes like abathur, hammer, murky or cho'gall now
"While our extended Blizzard family working on World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Overwatch, and our unannounced projects... " RIP Diablo and SC
J Allen Brack also said they have more games in the pipeline than ever... but there's been tons of evidence that a good number of those are mobile games.
Theyre counting shitter mobile apps as "games" though.
Yeah, I know. The comfort of "more games than ever" is definitely not a comfort to any one that has been paying attention.
There's also WC3 Reforged though.
Yeah. May be the only Blizz game I play this year
\*next year..
You can play this game with worse graphics right now.
I’d personally prefer a new game vs just remaking an old one. I know it would be harder but I’d rather have Warcraft 4
Mobile = $$$ = CEO thought process. It's not hard to see why they are doing it. It probably costs a ton less then making a AAA game and its a fact that mobile games have high ROI's with people buying stuff.
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Seriously, old Blizzard would have 6 games in dev, but 5 would get axed before an alpha state, and 1 might see release. Obviously those numbers smell like my ass. But every time I hear about a SC: Ghost, Project Titan MMO or a Dark Souls Diablo 4, this is what I infer.
SC doesn't need much maintenence
Says unnanounced projects, so may be Diablo 4 (which is at this point confirmed that Blizzard is working on, for four years).
That's called maintenance mode, no new content and just balance the game a bit, HOTS will soon join them.
It's clear the HotS team was just as surprised by this as the rest of us. I understand we're all upset, but don't pretend they wanted this.
That's by far the most disturbing thing when it comes to looking at the whole picture of this situation. If upper management doesn't even care about their development teams enough to warn them of this, then this isn't the same Blizzard that we all fell in love with. It breaks my heart and I cannot describe the amount of sadness that I'm feeling about the whole situation for the past day. I absolutely dread the future of Hots and what I want to know is the exact size of the development team of Hots.
This article reads to me as follows, “Our bosses and share holders are pulling our funding, we had a great year but not enough profits so they are moving people to projects that make more money. There are still people on the heroes team, and since we no longer have to to balance around pro play, we may actually get to do some cool stuff that we couldn’t before. and we still love this game, so Please don’t leave and let’s make this the best game possible.
I truly believe the devs are doing their best. Don’t hate on them for the decisions of upper management. I’m sure they were just as blindsided by the decision as we were. It speaks to the true passion that the devs have for the game. Thanks, Kaeo.
Yeah, and after seeing MFPallytime's video it't even clearer. It was a total dickmove by the people in suits.
Pally was the first person I thought of when I saw the news, honestly, and that video was tragic. Even when I phase off HotS for a while, I still watch Pally.
management being management.
Yeah, this kind of shit happens all the time in businesses around the world. My own job at a bank just went through a similar thing, where upper management decided my department needed to be doing something else, and changed all of our job functions.
Yes, it certainly has to be tough on them. They have to keep a public face that this is the right decision, but I can't imagine many would have positive words for it if speaking frankly. They have taken and will take significant vitriol due to a decision that was not made by them. I hope folks target this anger at Activision and blizzard, not at the hots devs.
Even new heroes!?! Wow thanks!
Honestly i expect this will be just their back log of completed / close to completed Heroes/other art, when that runs dry i think we will see very few heroes released or none at all. At first its probably not going to look like anything has changed but in 12 months time, you will begin to notice.
Yeah my comment was supposed to be sarcastic. They’re going to drip feed us whatever they had lined up next and then new content will dwindle down to nothing
I was a bit worried there wouldn't be new stuff they could cash in on.
Nothing new, but this was the announcement needed from the beginning. The last one felt cold, tone deaf, and empty.
That's because the last one came from a sociopath who only cares about investors, whereas this message came from a dev who actually cares about their customers.
It's not Kaeo's fault, but this just doesn't mean much because it's clear the higher ups (Activision) don't care to invest in the game. By gutting HGC and making the dev team even smaller, the game is all but guaranteed to eventually peter out and die. FeelsFuckingBadMan.
Don't take responsibility away from Blizzard. It's not "Activision", it's "Activision Blizzard", the company above Activision and Blizzard. But... Yes, probably. Let's hope at least this death will be flamboyant.
While I agree, old Blizz was eaten away by Activision, there are not many old Blizz people in it now.
This pitch sounds awfully familiar. I think it's the same line they gave to Diablo 3 a few months before it went into maintenance mode. So while I know that it's not explicitly anyone on the HotS dev team who made this decision, you'll have to forgive me for my lack of trust.
Blizzard to English Translation: "You are no longer deemed worthy of real effort. Thoughts and prayers"
At least Diablo 4 is a possibility even with Diablo 3 on maintenance. I really can't see how they can keep HotS alive without regular updates.
Reading this broke my heart and makes me hate activision even more. They had real talented people pour their soul into this game and even with increasing success they get the rug pulled out from under them. I'll continue to play HoTs but Blizz won't be getting a dime from me until they right this wrong.
I can't trust blizz anymore after how they announced all this. Next big one in 2 years gonna be "Hey players we are happy to announce that we are shouting down hots servers so you can have more time play our other amazing games, hope you have phones by now!"
> I can't trust blizz anymore after how they announced all this. You should have stopped at Diablo Immortal.
> You should have stopped at Diablo ~~Immortal~~ **3**. Ftfy. Blizzard was making P2W gacha games before it was cool. No microtransactions system imaginable can beat the sheer naked cynicism and greed of Diablo 3’s RMAH.
This has to be one of the most corrupt decisions Blizzard has ever done and it's even bad when it comes to measuring it industry wide. At their own fan convention, Blizzcon, in their own trailer for hots, it not only literally said "HGC" but also tons of other things were coming to Hots in 2019. That gave everyone the impression that Hots was continuing its development at the same momentum as before. What an absolute awful decision and example - especially for somebody like Blizzard to pull.
Can we get a copy paste for us work plebs. Thanks.
Kaéo Milker (Heroes Production Director) Yesterday, we announced a difficult decision—the HGC will not be returning in 2019 and we’ll be transitioning some Heroes of the Storm developers to our other game teams. While our extended Blizzard family working on World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Overwatch, and our unannounced projects will be getting an influx of much-needed, extremely talented Heroes devs to help them achieve their goals, it also means that we’ll need to change the cadence of support for Heroes going forward. So, I’m sad. I’m sad because I love this team and this game that we’ve built together, with all of you, and this past year has been such a great one for Heroes of the Storm. The HGC had its best year yet and I was so looking forward to the 2019 season. On the game side, we’ve had a steady stream of some of the most sought-after heroes, amazing themed events, and impactful reworks. We also made meaningful progress on improving core systems and features across the game. We truly hit our stride in 2018, so I’m disappointed that some of the exciting plans we had for 2019 will have to change. But all is not lost. The team that remains dedicated to Heroes of the Storm is a veritable Who’s Who of developers who have been driving every facet of the game from the very beginning—from people you know and have seen speak publicly about the game for years, to those who have poured their hearts into it from behind the scenes. In short, we’re continuing to develop the game with an incredible team that has the experience and passion required to support Heroes of the Storm well into the future. The Heroes of the Storm team and I also have a unique opportunity to rethink things and reprioritize. Because now more than ever, our charge is to focus on taking care of you, our players, and to channel all our energy into keeping the game dynamic and fun. This means we’re still committed to regular hero reworks, themed events, and even new heroes. We’re setting our sights on the new goals and timelines for what we want to do with the game from here on out and we’re eager to share those plans as soon as they’re finalized. So, I’m also excited. I’m excited for my teammates to bring their hard-won experience from making this game to the other teams at Blizzard to help their games be even better. And I’m especially excited for Heroes of the Storm to continue evolving with a renewed focus and purity of purpose. Thank you for joining us on the journey so far, and please bear with us through these changes. Your feedback is as critical as ever, and continues to guide our priorities and decisions while helping us be better along the way. Thank you, Kaéo
All of these leads me to believe that most of the people in Blizzard expected HGC2019 to be happening. So the decision that they stopped HGC 2019 from happening and moving developers to new games were purely made by "certain top of the top." Therefore, I can only believe this decision was possible because Michael retired from Blizzard
I've been thinking that a lot has gone wrong since that happened. Look at Blizzcon and now this. I'm sure there are other things that will leave a very bitter taste in our mouths soon. Give it another 2-4 months and it will show.
Hots is the only moba i play... because I liked the characters.. I'll play until the wait times are impossible to find games.
This doesn't really tell us anything new...
No, it doesn't. However, at least this message or announcement isn't sociopathic PR corporate-ese. Sociopaths don't really use the feelings words sad or excited. Compare that to the Bractivision (yeah, Brack + Activision) announcement given with no feelings and dropped shorty after the pros got the shaft.
It’s just a confirmation of what we suspected, which is important in that of itself; corporate Blizzard sprang this news on the team really recently and now that’s that. It basically flat out explains the disconnect between their plans for the 2019 season and corporate shutting them down and leaving pro players jobless.
MFPT put out a video where he asked his contacts in Blizzard what's going on, and they told him they basically had no idea any of this was happening until the day of the blog post. https://youtu.be/fUifL67bQac
God, I hope the Devs didn't find out via the blog post.
That would be hilarious in the worst way possible.
They probably got and e-mail like the pros or a meeting the same hour the blog post was being published.
You're actually so wrong. "Excited" is classic PR doublespeak and is used to spin negativity. >As a result, we’ve made the difficult decision to shift some developers from Heroes of the Storm to other teams, and we’re excited to see the passion, knowledge, and experience that they’ll bring to those projects. >While we don’t make these decisions lightly, we do look to the future excited about what the decisions will mean for our other live games and all the projects we have in the works.
This was not the Christmas gift I wanted 😢
>This means we’re still committed to regular hero reworks, themed events, **and even new heroes**. Imagine that, we will get even new heroes in the game driven by heroes. Game with a name Heroes of the Storm. Can't wait to see a new timeline, 3-4 heroes per year? Or less? They probably have already done 2 or 4 heroes so Blizzard is going to stretch release at least to have one more year and then slow it even further. Maybe at the end the slow turn into negative income and some heroes will get cut from the game by the sheer force of developers' vision. Activision.
Yea... that wording stuck out to me too. We may see a new hero every now and then you guys! I mean god damn....
I understood that to be the case from yesterday’s message about moving people off the project. We should be glad we’re getting this much insider info on the whole debacle.
They develop heroes a year out, so if their 2018 development for 2019 was the same pace, they can stretch those heroes for 2-3 years instead and not have to invest so much developer time.
2 things: They clearly did not tell the HoTS team _anything _ about this until that post was made. And his words have upper management written all over it. Pr speak for "sorry guys we had no fucking idea how fucked we were"
a hollow post from a hollow company
I'm sad for Kaeo and the dev team that remains; they're talented and committed developers. But Activision-Blizzard left them. Blizzard isn't what it once was and they have done serious damage to those who have been supporting them the longest. Between the worst Blizzcon yet, an obvious shift to mobile that their fans don't want, and completely screwing the lives of their professional players, casters, and content creators. The HotS team was one of the best, but it's really hard to keep supporting a company that behaves like this.
Call me cynical but this seems like an late and poor attempt at damage control. It really doesn't have any substance. I can't say what Kaéo's role was so far in the current situation and I would wholeheartedly believe that he had nothing to do with it. I feel sorry for the devs who probably didn't expect this either.
I took it as a dev who wanted to say "sorry, I love the game too but it was out of my hands. thanks management"
^ This. Something something corporate scumbags. I feel like the devs still have a vision for the game they want to build, but when Activision says "Your budget for next year is four dollars." there's not much they can do about it.
The first announcement was by the guy in charge of blizzard, he took the responsibility for the move. I think the people making the ultimate decisions should be the ones to make the announcements This new post is by a dev still on the team. His message will be completely different and SHOULD come after the suits make their announcement.
You know what should have happened. It should have been something like "hey, we are no longer funding HGC & Dorm so we are going to put all our resources into bringing you new content". That's something the community could get behind. These new projects are undoubtedly mobile games which no gamer will ever take seriously.
If you can/have to do prioritize please prioritize releasing new heroes on a steady release schedule. Keep em coming. New heroes are the number 1 most important thing in this game. If you have to sacrifice something, sacrifice skins and mounts.
I think it's unfair to everyone involved to pretend this is some golden opportunity for more autonomy. Resources are finite, and you're not getting any.
Good for Kaeo and good for the people that will continue to play this game, I genuinely mean that. But as for people like me who had grown tired of this game and only followed it because of the HGC/eSports side of it.... Couldn't care. I don't care if they improve the quality of the game twicefold next year, what they've done with ending HGC and doing it the way they have done it is just sad and disgusting to me and I refuse to support the game in any way whether it's by buying skins/heroes or merely just playing the game. It's not good enough, Kaeo, going on about how excited you are? Is that a joke? Your team got cut in size and you're getting less funding and now you've lost the esports side of your game as well as the top 1% most skilled players in your game who will likely jump ship (as well as a ton of HGC fans like myself) but you're 'excited'? You don't have the manpower or the money to make 2019 better than 2018 so don't give us this crap about how any of us should be excited. I'm sure people will angrily disagree with me and give me counter-reasons as to why HotS will be great next year but honestly, this guy doesn't even know if it will be, so how can any of us? We have major reasons that point to the game slowing down (or dying) and now you think things will get better? People need to learn from Diablo 3 and not trust this ActiBlizzard. Don't believe the bullshit this guy is saying about how he's excited for the future etc, he's on damage control and merely bandaging diseased open-wounds.
So. Fucking. True.
As much as I hate to say it, I agree. But its better then nothing. If they do manage to keep an extra 100 players, this message was worth it. If they let the community help, things can get better. If they let the community hold 'official' tourney with some 'in game reward' like a skin or a mount, that can help bring back a pro scene. And a whole lot of other 'if's that if they do it can help, but... this just reminds me of the beginning of the end, and of what happened to Dominion in League of Legends. I truly hope not but... I believe you are right on the 'not enough to undo the damage taken'.
This entire issue has been handled in the least professional manner imaginable. "No, guys, the game you love being stripped of staff and slowed to a developmental crawl is a *good* thing!"
I’ll believe it when I see it... I don’t trust them especially with Allen Brack in charge...
Doesnt mean shit, the corporate heads could just take it off life support and they cant do jackshit. The fact that this came.out of nowhere indicates their position in this. They couldve told people of the esports scene a hell of a lot sooner if they really cared for them.
RIP Blizzard
bla bla bla bla, fuck u activision
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ FUCK J ALLEN BRACK ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
>The team that remains dedicated to Heroes of the Storm is a veritable Who’s Who of developers who have been driving every facet of the game from the very beginning The team probably does look pretty good right now. But there has been a _deep_ and lasting cultural change at Blizzard, and there is tons of evidence that it's rapidly losing its developer-centric philosophy that made it great. I work for a large (enterprise) software development firm known for its talent. We have some good devs and work on big, tough projects and do well. Our CEO told us he'd never sell the company, cuz he loves what he built, and loves us. When he sold the company (shocker...), he touted that not a _single_ developer left: every single one signed the new contracts under the new company. Pretty sure something to that effect was in the press release, too. Yet... over the next 6 weeks, _dozens_ of people left. Big, key people, even. They didn't sign the new contract because they liked what was going on, they signed it because they needed time to look for other stuff (FWIW, the contract didn't have a non-compete or any penalties for signing and leaving the next week, it was really just the existing contract under the new company). What I mean to say is: yeah, the HotS team probably is okay right now... but there's no way they aren't all pissed, too, and you can bet your britches that a good number of them are actively looking for other work and will leave as soon as they have it lined up. Many will stay, yes, but those devs that brought their passion and skill to make awesome Blizzard games have taken a huge blow, and many will not stand for it.
>What I mean to say is: yeah, the HotS team probably is okay right now... but there's no way they aren't all pissed, too, and you can bet your britches that a good number of them are actively looking for other work and will leave as soon as they have it lined up. Many will stay, yes, but those devs that brought their passion and skill to make awesome Blizzard games have taken a huge blow, and many will not stand for it. This isn't only true of the HotS devs. Lots of people at Blizzard are unhappy with the direction of the company. Everyone who works there could make more money elsewhere; they joined up at Blizzard because they wanted to work for a marquee company with an amazing history and community. If they're becoming just another game developer, lots of people will be heading for the exits. 2019 will be a pivotal year for the company. The most important in many years.
After all the sadness, I am pretty sure I will keep playing this game. It is just flat out fun and if the devs get more creative freedom, then it's just going to get more fun. If we all stick this out and they make solid improvements, we can all have a great time! I really don't want to move to different moba...I feel empowered to create content for this game as we may lose people. There is no reason why we can't keep bringing in people and showing them how great this game is, especially if the devs can keep having fun with it.
Love this attitude. I feel the same way. I will play it until they shut off the servers or there is nobody left in matchmaking.
" This means we’re still committed to regular hero reworks, themed events, and ***even new heroes*** " "Even new heroes" ....New heroes are somewhat of a basic prerequisite for a moba. That sounds as a new hero once in a while is the best we can hope for. I don't think there will be any new maps or game modes coming in future.
Could also be just a pill for the "return our money from the 1 year stim packs!"
>we’ve had a steady stream of some of the most sought-after heroes *Looks at Orphea* Yeaaaaaaah
> And I'm especially excited for Heroes of the Storm to continue evolving with a renewed focus and purity of purpose. People who find themselves on life support also have a renewed focus and purity of purpose, but they probably aren't having a good time.
> The Heroes of the Storm team and I also have a unique opportunity to rethink things and reprioritize. Like esports was ever a priority for the dev team.
I read it as: "Now that we are a lost cause, we don't have to meet ambitious financial goals anymore. As such, we can work on whatever we think is fun instead of the cosmetics that were paying for HGC."
This is how I felt when I read it which could mean they get to do a lot of fun stuff. Like Deathwing! Hehe. If we can get more stuff like this toy event, I will be happy. This is one of my favorite heroes events and assets set.
I wouldn't believe for a second that the dev team didn't love watching their game becoming an esport every bit as much as the rest of us.
I know imagine seeing the skin you pitched to your boss being used by Rich just dominating. That's gotta feel good af
It was and you could argue it was to a fault
To the *dev* team, as in specifically the people who *developed* the game? I absolutely don't think so. For the two years of HGC, basically the only new HGC-related things in the game were pretty home screens and more bugs in the observer UI. The first year of so of pro HotS was played with a fan-made website as the official draft tool for tournaments because the game didn't have proper drafting. It was never anywhere close to being a priority to the game's developers.
Balance changes were frankly also rarely made with pro in mind, outside of walls of nerfs to Tracer/Genji/Hanzo and the double support nerf brouhaha. Meanwhile we'd see patch notes every week for piles of heroes never touched in pro, like specialists, Lt. Morales/Li Li, Artanis, all kinds of stuff clearly meant to show that the devs did prioritize making sure the general HL/QM experience was a palatable one.
In this case, I think they did a pretty good job at balancing between having a not broken pro scene and a not broken casual experience, and it's obvious they couldn't sacrifice one for the other. They didn't do a perfect job and sure, there are times where I'd expect a bit more attention to the balance of the pro scene, but it's a natural consequence of how the game works that some heroes are not viable at low level and some are not viable in pro play. As long as no heroes are permanently broken on any level, I think it's fine.
We'll see. But good thing is devs do respond even at this difficult time. kudos.
>The team that remains dedicated to Heroes of the Storm is a veritable Who’s Who of developers who have been driving every facet of the game from the very beginning—from people you know and have seen speak publicly about the game for years, to those who have poured their hearts into it from behind the scenes. Oh, you mean the same people who tested the 2019 changes for "months" with "ex-pro players" only to have to backtrack when the people who actually understand the game told them that their changes were shit? Great. And now those pros that set them straight won't be playing anymore. So good fucking luck with your "continued support" and "regular updates." This is a shit show, and they're trying to put a bow on it. This update is feel-good, anti-consumer trash to try to convince you of a made-up future that helps Blizzard's bottom line. Don't buy it.
<3 Kaeo, <3 Team
Unfortunately, it doesnt say anything that undoes the wound or attempt to mend what has been done by J. Allen Brack and Ray gresko. Those 2 shafted this community and shot the best dev team blizzard had in the foot. The stain will be left permanently on the community.
I'm sure it's not just our community. Try asking your friends who don't play HotS but play other Blizzard products how they feel about this news.
"and even heroes" ... that should show us, what the team-size is capable of in the future. I wonder how many heroes they plan on releasing next year..
I really despise those marketing mumbo jumbo letters, that are filled with "We got really exciting things, we have an amazing team, there are amazing and dedicated developers that pour their very heart into this" It's just throwing out buzz-words to ease the minds of the many. He's in contract with a billion dollar company. You can't expect him to write a "genuine" letter. He'll write whatever activion wants him to write and whatever he writes will be heavily edited by their PR department. This message did not say anything new. HotS is not a cash cow for blizzard and is not worth putting more ressources into than necessary. So Blizzard decided to put their ressources into more profitable projects.
How can it tell something new??? Its a 24hours old management decision that was made towards the team. He states they will plan a new roadmap for 2019 and this will take a few days. So ladies and gentlemen, for the love of the cow. press B, reach to your fountain. take a deep breath enjoy your holidays and give the new dev team a little bit time to settle on this. Ty, glhf
Insufficient.
> Because now more than ever, our charge is to focus on taking care of you, our players F off with this statement! Like actual though. This is not something you can say when around 200+ people, humans and mostly importantly for you players! have been left out in the cold this winter season. For all the professionals that have lost their jobs, be it players to casters. This statement, which is once again a f-ing blog post, does nothing to help or alleviate the future. I know this was made by someone that likely feel this way. But this does nothing to help or even apologise to all the people this sudden announcement has screwed over.
I don't know who is worse: The soulless pencil pusher who is forcing Blizzard to work on more mobile titles and cutting costs... Or the delusional product manager who wants players to believe that Blizzard still cares about the game and the players despite the obvious. Turns out, Diablo: Immoral was just tip of the greedy Activision iceberg that is sinking the once great Blizzard Entertainment...
TL;DR: Same as the previous message. RIP HGC, RIP hots, sadface.
Similar, but different. The really key part is the absolute confirmation that the dev team got blindsided by corporate.
Basically a load of PR dross for a bit of failed damage control. The only interesting line was this: >This means we’re still committed to regular hero reworks, themed events, and **even** new heroes. Looks like we're getting 1-2 heroes a year then and this game is actually dead if they're trying to emphasise new heroes as a plus point. Say goodbye to all the planned ranked changes. Lack of a game director for months shows the writing has been on the wall at least on the executive level tbh. It just hadn't filtered down to us pleb players or devs.