Heroes of the Storm

This article is about the video game. For the tabletop role-playing game formerly titled Heroes of the Storm, see Age of the Tempest.

Heroes of the Storm
Developer(s)Blizzard Entertainment
Publisher(s)Blizzard Entertainment
Director(s)
  • Dustin Browder
  • Alan Dabiri
Producer(s)Kaéo Milker
Composer(s)
  • Glenn Stafford
  • Jason Hayes
Platform(s)
ReleaseJune 2, 2015
Genre(s)MOBA
Mode(s)Multiplayer

Heroes of the Storm is a crossover multiplayer online battle arena video game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment. Announced at BlizzCon 2010, it was released on June 2, 2015 for macOS and Windows.[1][2] The game features various characters from Blizzard's franchises as playable heroes, as well as different battlegrounds based on Warcraft, Diablo, StarCraft, and Overwatch universes.

Players form into five-player teams and fight against another team in 5-versus-5 matches, with an average game duration of roughly 20 minutes. The first team to destroy opponents' main structure, known as the "King's Core", wins the match. Each themed battleground has a different metagame and secondary objectives to secure, whose completion gives your team massive advantages, typically through pushing power. Every player controls a single character, known as a "hero", with a set of distinctive abilities and differing styles of play. Heroes become more powerful over the course of a match by collecting experience points and unlocking "talents" that offer new abilities or augment existing ones, contributing to the team's overall strategy.

Heroes of the Storm is inspired by Defense of the Ancients, a community-created mod based on Warcraft III, another video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment. The game is free-to-play and is supported by microtransactions which can be used to purchase heroes, visual alterations for the heroes in the game, mounts, and other cosmetic elements.[3][4] Blizzard originally referred to the game as a "hero brawler",[5] but later started using the more common term for the genre — "multiplayer online battle arena" (MOBA).[6]

As of July 2022, Blizzard had ended major development of the game and entered it into maintenance mode.

  1. ^ "Blizzard's Worlds Collide When Heroes of the Storm Launches June 2 - Everyone's invited to join the battle for the Nexus when open beta testing begins on May 19" (Press release). April 20, 2015. Archived from the original on April 23, 2015. Retrieved April 20, 2015.
  2. ^ "Heroes of the Storm System Requirements". Blizzard Support. Archived from the original on December 14, 2018. Retrieved September 22, 2019.
  3. ^ Yin-Poole, Wesley (January 22, 2013). "Blizzard "actively working" on Blizzard All-Stars, so what's the hold up?". Eurogamer.net. Archived from the original on May 6, 2013.
  4. ^ Browder, Dustin (June 15, 2012). "Dustin Browder Interview - MLG Anaheim 2012" (Interview). Interviewed by StarCraft: Legacy - KDraconis. Archived from the original on October 13, 2012.
  5. ^ Gaston, Martin (November 9, 2013). "Blizzard explains why it doesn't call Heroes of the Storm a MOBA". GameSpot. Archived from the original on November 16, 2013. Retrieved November 17, 2013.
  6. ^ "Welcome to the Nexus: Getting started in Heroes of the Storm". news.blizzard.com. Retrieved March 16, 2023.