Heroes of the Storm, the next generation MOBA created by Blizzard Entertainment, has been in Alpha testing for quite some time. After announcing during Blizzcon 2014 that Alpha would soon be coming to a close, we were surprised to be announced earlier yesterday that the Closed Beta phase of the games development has begun! Beta key’s have been going out, and will continue to go out throughout the rest of this week.
Blizzard has added a few additional updates to the game, including; a new user AI, new content, ranked play, and much more. Check out some of the changes below as well as the official closed beta introductory video to learn more about what’s new in the games latest phase of development.
General
- Versus Mode has been renamed to Quick Match.
- All Daily Quests can now be completed in Practice Mode.
Hero League
- Initial implementation for Hero League, the first Ranked Play mode in Heroes of the Storm, has been added to the game!
- With Hero League, players will be able to queue up alone, or in a party of any size, for ranked, competitive matches against others of similar skill and party size.
- In order to queue for Hero League, players must meet the following requirements:
- Reach Level 30 or higher.
- Own 10 or more Heroes (weekly free rotation Heroes do not count toward this requirement.)
- Draft Mode
- After finding a match, players will enter Draft Mode, in which teams will take turns picking the Heroes they’d like to use for the upcoming game.
- Coin Toss
- A coin toss will determine which team will pick first.
- The team that wins the coin toss will be prompted to pick one Hero on the first turn, after which, teams will alternate picking two Heroes per turn until just one player remains on the team that lost the coin toss.
- Hero Selection
- Players may only choose from the pool of Heroes that they already own.
- Each player will have 30 seconds to select a Hero during their turn. If no selection is made, a Hero will be locked in automatically.
- Once locked in, a Hero can no longer be selected by any other player.
