Heroes of Newerth Open Beta About To Start 118
You may recall last summer when we discussed Heroes of Newerth, a title from S2 Games that's based on the popular Defense of the Ancients mod from Warcraft III. We passed out some closed beta keys, and there seemed to be a ton of interest, in part due to the fact that they have a Linux client. Well, if any of you missed it or want to see how the game has progressed since then, now is your chance — the open beta begins tonight (March 31). There's a countdown on the sign-up page that shows when you can register.
I've joined the beta .. (Score:3, Informative)
bought it to support them, played a while but stopped for 6 months since it was too unbalanced and not buggy enough to warrant beta testing, and just came back to it a few days ago. The game has progressed a lot and it's very fun to play :)
Re:Be warned, the community is noxious (Score:4, Informative)
There's a tutorial now, and an auto-matching making service for solo players ( you get dumped with 9 others into a 5v5).
Re:Dota based game that already exists... (Score:2, Informative)
If you can stand the LOL graphics.
Beleive it or not, LOL is more geared to casual gamers. It's not really for the super-competitive demographic HON is geared towards. Last hitting in LOL gets you about 1/2 the gold you would get in HON. Also, LOL gives more gold per tick. Honestly, LOL is like HON with bad graphics on EM (easy mode).
So, LOL is you want an easy learning curve, HON if your willing to put in the time, or you already know all the DOTA characters.
Re:DotA legacy (Score:2, Informative)
Beta tester since release, played it fairly casually however.
I don’t want to get into a big discussion on various game play aspects, all ill say is that many aspects of DotA/HoN that seem tedious are in fact fairly core parts of the game play that add depth. I think there is room for a few games that are not streamlined/simplified to appeal to the widest audience possible.
As for the community, elitistism is definitely rampant, but I don’t believe DotA was any different. These games are not casual friendly, my advice is don’t bother playing alone, play with 1-2 friends at all times, that is what I do and I find it far more enjoyable.
I am not a developer, but as a long time competitive multiplayer gamer I feel some of the most interesting aspects of HoN are the overall frame work of features it has:
Full match statistic recording of every game played. (Can be viewed in game or via the web).
Full demos that are automatically recorded that anyone can simply 'fetch' within the game and watch with full camera functions - complete media player type control over the demos.
You can join the chat channels and stay in the channel while moving seamlessly into a game lobby and now even while the game loads in the background you can remain talking in the channel. (I have been wanting a feature like this for so many years, why must every multiplayer game force you to sit through a loading screen with no ability to communicate).
I feel the user interface overall is fairly well designed and you can modify it to suit your taste.
If you drop from the game you have a 5 minute window that allows you to reconnect and retain everything you had without penalty. After 5 mins you are considered kicked and your gold/items are distributed amongst your team.
People can easily see your stats on how many games you simply disconnect from so they can make informed decisions about allowing you to play in their game. No system is perfect but this sort of thing is a nice deterrent to stop people simply bailing on every game they are not winning within the 1st 10mins.
There are many more features, overall it just feels really well polished, game play balance will of course always be an issue that requires constant tweaking, but as far as I am concerned this is the case with most games.
I think some game developers could learn from what the S2 team have done with HoN. Multiplayer game features seem to be going backwards, I don’t understand why a lot of what is in HoN is not simply standard for any decent multiplayer game.
For me personally I find it a breath of fresh air that the developers actually seem to care what the community is looking for and don’t just tack everything on as an afterthought or simply ignore features altogether.