• BougieBirdie@piefed.blahaj.zone
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    3 days ago

    For those who thought the game was already shuttered, HotS went into maintenance mode a few years ago - 2022 I think? Basically that meant that they weren’t actively developing it anymore, I think they stopped balance updates and only committed to patching major bugs or security vulnerabilities.

    Of course, they never stopped taking your money if you wanted to buy their boosts.

    This news has me conflicted. On the one hand, HotS was my favorite MOBA - it does several things right that other games in the genre consistently fail at and they took some major chances on unique character designs. On the other hand, I wouldn’t piss on a Blizzard exec to put out a fire, I don’t even want to play their free games

    • mr_robot@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Blizz continued balance patches and hero reworks during “maintenance mode”. They rebalanced and reintroduced a previously disabled map (Haunted Mines) and continued adding skins.

      It’s been a long time since monthly character additions (Hogger was the last), in-game events or serious content updates, and of course the official esports aspect is long dead.

      It’s one of my favorite games of all time and I hope it continues to find new life.

    • rue@lemmy.zip
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      3 days ago

      I’m in the exact same boat. I finished writing off blizzard after all their failures and cover ups, but HotS was the only MOBA I ever enjoyed and I put so many hours into it. Made even more conflicting now that it’s owned by Microslop the Dev Butcher.

    • MashiroTenshi@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      I’m not defending blizzard by any means.

      Since 2022 there have been both character and map balance updates. They just recently put in (arguably) the biggest changes to several characters and how their baseline abilities work.

      Microsoft doesn’t have a moba of their own, maybe this is their push to be in that club?

      • BougieBirdie@piefed.blahaj.zone
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        2 days ago

        Huh, I guess that makes this announcement less surprising then

        I hadn’t heard they’d taken the game out of maintenance. Come to think of it, I hadn’t heard any news about the game, it’s like it dropped off the face of the earth