14 DAY TRIAL // The development team at Blizzard announces that it is launching a very limited technical alpha stage for its upcoming Multiplayer Online Battle Arena title Heroes of the Storm, which is designed to test the core infrastructure and tech for the title.
The company says that it only plans to invite a very small number of players to experience the game and help it with the process of seeing which ideas work at the moment and which do not.
The official announcement from Blizzard states, “This initial testing phase is intended to help us better examine how our infrastructure and tech will function across a much broader spectrum of machines and connection types. What’s more, inviting external Alpha testers will allow us to take a closer look at our hardware needs so that we can be absolutely sure we’re able to support the entire Heroes population as the community grows.”
The team explains that many heroes are not fully fleshed out yet and that there are placeholders for many graphics and user interface elements.
At the same time, the core mechanics are in a state of flux and the current state of Heroes of the Storm is not an indication of the quality that the experience will offer when it is fully launched.
Blizzard says that it is currently only inviting gamers from the United States to test the MOBA experience and that it will soon work with fan sites in other territories to recruit a small group of international players who are ready to also play the game in the coming months.
It’s not clear for how long the technical alpha for Heroes of the Storm will run and whether those taking part will be automatically invited to the beta, which is expected to arrive later this year.
The company adds, “This initial testing phase will include a very limited pool of players. While a few participants may be selected from opt-ins during this time, we will likely wait until the closed beta phase before we begin granting access to a larger number of players who have opted in via Battle.net.”
It’s interesting to note that Blizzard does not intend to use a Non-Disclosure Agreement for those who enter the alpha technical test for Heroes of the Storm, which means that details about the MOBA might be coming soon.
The title will compete with DOTA 2 from Valve and League of Legends from Riot Games.