14 DAY TRIAL // Video game developer Blizzard is continuing to mine its massive franchises to power the future of Heroes of the Storm, and the two new characters that will be added to the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena are Xul and Li Ming, both of them drawn from Diablo.
Dustin Browder, the game director working on the title, tells Metabomb that his team is actively exploring both new and old releases to find the kind of interesting abilities that can power a cool hero.
Li Ming's builds in Heroes of the Storm include Magic Missile, Arcane Orb and teleport, each of them suited to a particular type of match and designed to give players a wide variety of choices when it comes to team synergy.
The character is drawn from the Diablo 3 lineup, and gamers can also get access to Xul, the necromancer from the second installment in the same series, and his unique powers.
Browder suggests that there are plenty of other characters in the same series that would be easily translatable into Heroes of the Storm, but he also states, "We definitely want to bounce around a lot. We want Heroes of the Storm in its right groove where it's doing crazy stuff all the time. We'll definitely do some new universes going forwards, but we'll bounce back to Diablo, and just try to keep it as fresh as possible."
Blizzard also has long-term plans to continue to offer special events modeled on its other big franchises, although they will be live for limited periods of time.
Heroes of the Storm will continue to improve matchmaking
The game director says that the MOBA is currently set to try and deliver a very small number of bad matches, even if that means that it takes about 30 seconds more for a gamer to find someone to play with.
Blizzard is continuing to look at the data generated by Heroes of the Storm and will tweak the system to make sure that the community is satisfied with the results based on the kind of feedback that they deliver.
The studio is also trying to eliminate the situation where five solo players are required to take on an already-organized team, but Browder also suggests that many of the imbalances that fans are reporting tend to be linked to perception rather than reality.
According to the developer, the MMR might get tweaks in the future so that it better reflects the performance of one player when they use their favorite hero.
Future plans for Heroes of the Storm also include tweaks to the stun meta, which will feature nerfs for some character abilities as well as bigger power changes to some characters, with Browder mentioning Raynor, Tyrande, and Muradin.
There are currently no plans to introduce more social features to Heroes of the Storm, although full support for clans might be something that Blizzard continues for the future.
Blizzard has recently announced a Global Championship for the MOBA, which will involve the biggest teams in the world in a series of competitions that will have a prize pool of more than 4 million dollars (3.7 million Euro).