“When developingBlizzard DOTA, we started with things we already had”
The Blizzard of today is insanely different from the Blizzard of 11 years ago, andthis old video of theBlizzard DOTAconcept shared on theHeroes of the Stormredditfromthe Arkentass YouTube channelproves it.
Embedded below, you can watch footage from BlizzCon 2011, where the team showcased a build ofBlizzard DOTA: the MOBA that would eventually be released asHeroes of the Stormfour years later. Keep in mind this was back in 2011, when the MOBA genre was still very fresh andLeague of Legendshad barely been out (it was just two years old and Riot wasn’t quite the empire it is now); and there was some actual MOBA competition going on. By the time Blizzard actually shipped what becameHeroes of the Stormout of the door (mid-2015), it was a little late.
Here are some choice quotes and takeaways from theBlizzard DOTApresentation:
As anyHeroesplayer can attest to, it’s a pretty wildly different game in many respects. The thing that intrigues me the most is the “cyber world” concept, and how different that could have been from the in-game universe of the “Nexus,” which never really caught on the way some other Blizzard worlds did. The idea of a Blizzard“Mojoverse”is not only delightfully silly, but it’s a blank canvas to bounce creative ideas off of. At this point, I think I would have preferred it, as the team could have gotten a lot weirder and further differentiated themselves from the mostly fantasy-heavy MOBA fare.
At the risk of preventing anxiety out there, I’ll refrain from calling 2011 “retro.” It made you shudder to think about, right?
