Also I think it's probably a pretty safe bet that hots has never made enough money to cover it's dev team costs at any point in its development - and that probably includes right now.
I don't know the exact time window, but at one point hots had the largest dev team out of blizzard - no idea how that was determined but I've seen it stated at least.
Do you ppl remember how slow those bars filled in in hots 1.0 - there is no chance it made real $$$. It was also a bad system because heroes were expensive; don't really remember when draft was introduced compared to 2.0 but how limited everyone was in what heroes showed up was just bad.
HOTS 2.0 is actually what got me into the game. I had tried it briefly way back in the beta and couldn't get into it. MOBAs in general are a hard sell for me. Now granted, it was mostly to do with the huge hero packs they were giving away along with 2.0 more than the 2.0 store changes. Being able to have access to a decent pool of heroes, and ways to get heroes for free ultimately is what got me to check it out again and kept me sticking around. Unless I'm misremembering (or maybe it was just a beta thing), you had to buy each hero right? There wasn't a way to get them for free? Or maybe it was just a lot harder to earn the gold to buy them?
I've bought some gems a couple times if I remember right, because I bought those xp boost things or whatever they were, and you had to use gems for them.
Edit: I should add, also @milk ducks continually telling me to try it again may have helped get me into it too, lol. A combination of "Hey check out this great game again!" along with "also get like 25 heroes for free!"
Also I think it's probably a pretty safe bet that hots has never made enough money to cover it's dev team costs at any point in its development - and that probably includes right now.
I don't know the exact time window, but at one point hots had the largest dev team out of blizzard - no idea how that was determined but I've seen it stated at least.
Do you ppl remember how slow those bars filled in in hots 1.0 - there is no chance it made real $$$. It was also a bad system because heroes were expensive; don't really remember when draft was introduced compared to 2.0 but how limited everyone was in what heroes showed up was just bad.
Draft came in before 2.0, and then bans came in a little later but I think still before 2.0? And as I recall you were locked out of the mode if you didn't own a minimum number of heroes (before 2.0 gave all accounts ~20 heroes to start).
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The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
alright I got curious, here's the full extent of my HotS purchase history
HOTS 2.0 is actually what got me into the game. I had tried it briefly way back in the beta and couldn't get into it. MOBAs in general are a hard sell for me. Now granted, it was mostly to do with the huge hero packs they were giving away along with 2.0 more than the 2.0 store changes. Being able to have access to a decent pool of heroes, and ways to get heroes for free ultimately is what got me to check it out again and kept me sticking around. Unless I'm misremembering (or maybe it was just a beta thing), you had to buy each hero right? There wasn't a way to get them for free? Or maybe it was just a lot harder to earn the gold to buy them?
I've bought some gems a couple times if I remember right, because I bought those xp boost things or whatever they were, and you had to use gems for them.
Edit: I should add, also @milk ducks continually telling me to try it again may have helped get me into it too, lol. A combination of "Hey check out this great game again!" along with "also get like 25 heroes for free!"
You got to pick one hero for free from a selection of 3 or so pre-2.0. I think it was a reward for getting to a certain account level. I think it was like Tyrande, Muradin, and someone else. I recall players got Diablo free from some sort of Diablo 3 cross promotion, and there might have been another hero here or there that was given in a promotion?
Overall though, free heroes were very scarce and you had to buy almost all your heroes with gold/$. If you played a fair amount, it wasn't too difficult to pick up all the 2k/4k gold heroes. But since the roster was quickly growing and most heroes were in the 7k/10k price slot, there was realistically no way you'd ever get all heroes for free unless you were playing regularly from the beginning of retail (or beta), and strategically grinding levels on heroes you didn't have yet when they were available in the weekly rotation.
alright I got curious, here's the full extent of my HotS purchase history
Holy crap a Hero was $10??
I think you could also buy with gold before 2.0, right?
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wra
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The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
edited September 2022
I still think the skin designers on HotS were a cut above. "what if the siege tank was driven by an orc, junkrat was a goblin, and d.va's mech was a dragon" are fuckin' inspired design choices
not to mention how much extra customization you got out of the mounts (and the forty ungulates they released to pander to me, specifically)
Looking back through my purchase history, the first hero I bought was ETC for 2k gold in 2016. After that, I slowly bought the other heroes with gold. Then in 2017, everything I bought was with Gems and Shards. At no point did I ever buy either, so I literally spent $0 on this game during it's lifetime.
Meanwhile, I played HS from 2014-2019 and dropped a few hundred dollars in total. Yuck.
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Also I think it's probably a pretty safe bet that hots has never made enough money to cover it's dev team costs at any point in its development - and that probably includes right now.
I don't know the exact time window, but at one point hots had the largest dev team out of blizzard - no idea how that was determined but I've seen it stated at least.
Do you ppl remember how slow those bars filled in in hots 1.0 - there is no chance it made real $$$. It was also a bad system because heroes were expensive; don't really remember when draft was introduced compared to 2.0 but how limited everyone was in what heroes showed up was just bad.
The money model that seems to work well for league is: champs/heroes are easy to get for free. Skins are easy to buy for money. But specific skins are hard to get otherwise.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
You can pretty much tell entirely how a Medivh game is going to go if they have the Q quest completed before level 10, or if at 10 they're back at 0 stacks.
I honestly think if that Greymane had just shifted into Worgen form, popped Inner Beast, and Gone For the Throat, he would have traded. He got Kharazim down to almost 50% by stutter-stepping ranged autos on his way out. The Alarak would have still killed him, but it would have been something.
This dude also picked Wizened Duelist in a match versus KTZ and Alarak, so I'm willing to concede that his decision-making skills are ... clearly questionable.
I doubt he would have been able to trade. Ant didn't even use his heal there, and presumably would have burned his Heroic if it started getting even close.
Antaeus also had Earth Ally, so he had options. Maybe its more in Kharazim's favor than I first thought.
I just want to see any play from Greymane other than to get wailed on for three seconds of physical damage before granting himself armor, and just generally resigning himself to death from the moment he got engaged on. Greymane is a hero that wants you to man-fight him, typically.
Greymane has a few viable builds: one where he constantly harasses with ranged autos (eventually splashing them backwards from the enemy Tank toward the other team) and then hard-engages to score a pick when he sees someone weak; another where he's built for brawling and burning down single targets incredibly quickly; etc. But this guy's sort of tried to play them both, in a scenario where he really needs to pick one.
Against Kel'Thuzad and Alarak, honestly, I wouldn't poke around too much on the outskirts -- its really only a matter of time before you get caught by some Chains and blown up. Which is why Wizened Duelist is dumb here; GM can get blown the fuck up at just about any point in this match with absolutely no counter-play potential on his end. I'd have probably played a single-target blow up build, and tried to burn down KTZ whenever he was on cooldown, or to sacrifice my life for Alarak's stacks if he's playing well.
Antaeus also had Earth Ally, so he had options. Maybe its more in Kharazim's favor than I first thought.
I just want to see any play from Greymane other than to get wailed on for three seconds of physical damage before granting himself armor, and just generally resigning himself to death from the moment he got engaged on. Greymane is a hero that wants you to man-fight him, typically.
Yeah I also had SSS up and I didn't bother popping W early even though I could've gotten it off cooldown after 2 Q rotations. A properly-specced level 20 Kharazim is a monster duelist, and most heroes also can't run away from him. In a team game I would probably change several talents (especially the 20) or even spec out of burst damage and into Cleanse spam, but in QM I'm legit just running around looking to punch something. Even if I die I usually trade 2v1 or 3v1 for funsies.
I don't remember how much I have in any of those categories, but I know I'm nowhere near close to any of you guys. How is that possible? Does everyone else just not buy stuff? I have every Banner, every Announcer, every Hero, every gold sink Mount, etc. Just trying to figure out how I could have been that far behind everyone lol
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Also I think it's probably a pretty safe bet that hots has never made enough money to cover it's dev team costs at any point in its development - and that probably includes right now.
I don't know the exact time window, but at one point hots had the largest dev team out of blizzard - no idea how that was determined but I've seen it stated at least.
Do you ppl remember how slow those bars filled in in hots 1.0 - there is no chance it made real $$$. It was also a bad system because heroes were expensive; don't really remember when draft was introduced compared to 2.0 but how limited everyone was in what heroes showed up was just bad.
I've bought some gems a couple times if I remember right, because I bought those xp boost things or whatever they were, and you had to use gems for them.
Edit: I should add, also @milk ducks continually telling me to try it again may have helped get me into it too, lol. A combination of "Hey check out this great game again!" along with "also get like 25 heroes for free!"
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Overall though, free heroes were very scarce and you had to buy almost all your heroes with gold/$. If you played a fair amount, it wasn't too difficult to pick up all the 2k/4k gold heroes. But since the roster was quickly growing and most heroes were in the 7k/10k price slot, there was realistically no way you'd ever get all heroes for free unless you were playing regularly from the beginning of retail (or beta), and strategically grinding levels on heroes you didn't have yet when they were available in the weekly rotation.
Holy crap a Hero was $10??
I think you could also buy with gold before 2.0, right?
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wra
not to mention how much extra customization you got out of the mounts (and the forty ungulates they released to pander to me, specifically)
Meanwhile, I played HS from 2014-2019 and dropped a few hundred dollars in total. Yuck.
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Share your hard-earned loot!
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wra
AKA: 1v9 speed run
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wra
The money model that seems to work well for league is: champs/heroes are easy to get for free. Skins are easy to buy for money. But specific skins are hard to get otherwise.
You're pretty close to me!
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Suspiciously close.
whoa.jpg
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wra
hero does six different things that are fundamentally unacceptable game design
Well technically he cheats, so...
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more like a rare treat of 'huh, if that team knew how to play with medivh they might be winning'
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wra
Change my mind.
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wra
$10 was standard for LoL heroes, at least back in 2011 at the height of my playing.
I think also the 20 that adds other lv 1s since his mana went the wrong way.
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wra
This dude also picked Wizened Duelist in a match versus KTZ and Alarak, so I'm willing to concede that his decision-making skills are ... clearly questionable.
I just want to see any play from Greymane other than to get wailed on for three seconds of physical damage before granting himself armor, and just generally resigning himself to death from the moment he got engaged on. Greymane is a hero that wants you to man-fight him, typically.
Greymane has a few viable builds: one where he constantly harasses with ranged autos (eventually splashing them backwards from the enemy Tank toward the other team) and then hard-engages to score a pick when he sees someone weak; another where he's built for brawling and burning down single targets incredibly quickly; etc. But this guy's sort of tried to play them both, in a scenario where he really needs to pick one.
Against Kel'Thuzad and Alarak, honestly, I wouldn't poke around too much on the outskirts -- its really only a matter of time before you get caught by some Chains and blown up. Which is why Wizened Duelist is dumb here; GM can get blown the fuck up at just about any point in this match with absolutely no counter-play potential on his end. I'd have probably played a single-target blow up build, and tried to burn down KTZ whenever he was on cooldown, or to sacrifice my life for Alarak's stacks if he's playing well.
Witty signature comment goes here...
wra
Yeah I also had SSS up and I didn't bother popping W early even though I could've gotten it off cooldown after 2 Q rotations. A properly-specced level 20 Kharazim is a monster duelist, and most heroes also can't run away from him. In a team game I would probably change several talents (especially the 20) or even spec out of burst damage and into Cleanse spam, but in QM I'm legit just running around looking to punch something. Even if I die I usually trade 2v1 or 3v1 for funsies.
He was doing really well, got to lv 11 with literally 0 siege dmg (spider map).
TIL that apparently, when taking a merc camp, any damage you do to the merc does NOT count as siege damage.
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wra
Turns out I am the Dorito king.