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Heroes of the Storm will let you try heroes before you buy them and reward you for testing the store

Heroes of the Storm details

The sleuths over at Heroes Nexus have uncovered a veritable dragon’s horde of information about Blizzard’s upcoming not-a-MOBA, Heroes of the Storm. Most notable among the plethora of details is the likelihood that Heroes will be giving out rewards for testing the store by spending money, much like in Hearthstone, and confirmation that Blizzard will be implementing a free-to-play model much like the one found in League of Legends.

Hidden in the strings inside the client, though not confirmed by Blizzard, is a message to players who use the shop during the testing phase.

“Please be advised that real money purchases will be capped during Technical Alpha. Also, be advised that all gold, progression, and purchases will be deleted from your account in the future during a planned Technical Alpha account wipe. Following the wipe, purchases made with real money from the store will receive the equivalent amount in credit.

As a thank you for helping us test our store, you will receive a special gift!

Real money purchases can only be transacted with an accepted US payment method in USD. Real money purchases are capped at $325. At the time of the wipe, purchases made with real money from the store will receive the equivalent credit (e.g. in Battle.net balance or by other means). WARNING: Changing your battle.net balance from USD to another currency will result in the inability to process this credit.”

Datamind information also reveals some aspects of Heroes of the Storm’s business model, which bears a lot of similarity of League of Legends with F2P hero rotations and purchasable characters.

Two rotations were discovered in the client, the first with six heroes and the second with five. The first rotation includes heavy metal tauren, E.T.C.and Warcraft’s Lich King, while the second includes Starcraft’s Jim Raynor and Diablo’s Archangel Tyrael.

You won’t have to worry about buying a hero and then discovering that you hate it, as you can test drive characters along with mounts and skins in single-player before deciding if you want to buy them or not. You’ll be able to gift these things to friends as well.

Gold, the F2P currency, is accrued by questing and playing matches, and you’ll get bonuses for things like your first win of the day, playing with friends and playing on featured maps.

Feature unlocks occur as you level up, giving you access to new quests, maps, shops and ranked play. While new heroes can be unlocked by purchasing them. Cosmetic items can still be bought for heroes you haven’t unlocked, but you’ll only be able to apply them when that hero appears in the rotation.

All interesting stuff, but it’s the single-player testing that really piques my interest. It’s a bit of a pain in LoL to have no personal experience to go on when you buy a champion. It’s all well and good to read about someone else’s experiences with them, but nothing can beat taking them for a spin yourself.

Cheers, Heroes Nexus.