In addition to an account level requirement, you must have permanent access to ten heroes - NOT including the weekly free rotation - because you could theoretically get the 10th pick and watch the first nine players pick nine of the ten heroes you own. Ten characters matter in Heroes due to how the game has implemented draft mode for ranked play. This sum buys basically any two heroes of my choice, but could in principle have gotten me to a roster of ten characters if I had been starting from zero. I was then able to pick up my top five favorites from heroes I did not own - Anub'arak, Azmodan, Gazlowe, Valla, and Rehgar - for 33,000 gold, and left the alpha with the remaining 19,000. This skewed my experience slightly in that I already owned many of my staple heroes before I had to start spending my in-game currency. (Murky, who has yet to be free to play since the alpha reset, and the newly released Thrall are each worth another 500.) I.e., I pulled down roughly 30,000 gold in normal (not one-time) income over a three month period.Īs an early alpha player, I was able to take advantage of a heavily discounted bundle that offered ten heroes who cost a total of 64,000 gold for $29 - more than half off, as 10,000 gold heroes normally cost $10 in the store. Collectively, I hit level 40 with a grand total of 52,000 gold, including one time awards of 6000 gold that all accounts get in the early levels and 15,500 gold for leveling heroes. This unlocks all talents for the heroes and also a one-time payoff of 500 gold per hero. In the process, I advanced all but one of the game's heroes to at least level 5. At Christmas, they announced a unique portrait icon for reaching the maximum account level of 40 during alpha, so I made a push to do this. However, I will say that it is very striking how - and why - in this model widespread criticisms are known and simply do not matter to the developer's bottom line.įrom the reset in early October until Christmas-time I played this thing about 3-4 hours per week to complete daily quests and work on any heroes I did not own in that week's free play rotation.

My experiences in the game have been generally positive, and overall I am okay with the business model. The Heroes of the Storm 'technical alpha' wrapped up on Tuesday with a mostly uneventful patch to what they are technically calling 'beta' - seems like the same game it was on Monday, plus a new hero, some usual patch fixes, a new battleground, and addition of the game's new lower-tier ranked mode.

Heroes of the storm models