As we guessed, Heroes of the Storm has been revealed as the replacement name to Blizzard All-Stars, which was also formerly known as Blizzard DOTA. Blizzard’s take on the multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) genre appears to have been flipped upside down and will no longer be a custom map built off the StarCraft II map editor.
Based on the recent trademark, Heroes of the Storm looks to become a standalone game, which makes sense considering the success of DOTA 2 and League of Legends. If Blizzard hopes to make Heroes of the Storm a successful eSport game, it simply needs to take on a life of its own instead of being a fun side project, which Blizzard All-Stars was originally branded as.
Blizzard also announced that Heroes of the Storm panels and live matches will take place at Blizzcon this year, but for now we have an announcement trailer that makes the name change official. Blizzard teamed up with Carbot Animations on the cute, short video and the team has requested that we “set aside whatever you think you knew about Blizzard All-Stars, and get ready for what’s brewing at this year’s BlizzCon.”
Curiosity has us wondering if Blizzard did a whole switch-a-roo and decided to make Heroes of the Storm a more casual MOBA, perhaps even side-scrolling like Awesomenauts. With Blizzard’s recent love affair with consoles, a side-scrolling MOBA would fit better on consoles, and would reach out to a more casual crowd. We will have to wait and see when more is revealed in the coming days leading up to BlizzCon.
