Heroes of the Storm ends new content, enters “Maintenance mode”

It’s the end of an era for one of Activision Blizzard’s biggest titles. In an official announcement made on Friday, July 8, the publisher told players that Heroes of the Storm will no longer receive new updates to the game, but the servers will still be up.

“Moving forward we will support Heroes in a manner similar to our other longstanding games, StarCraft and StarCraft II. In the future, we’ll continue seasonal rolls and hero rotations, and while the in-game shop will remain operational there are no plans for new for-purchase content to be added. Future patches will primarily focus on client sustainability and bug fixing, with balance updates coming as needed.” Activision Blizzard said in their official announcement.

HOTS came out on June 2, 2015, and just celebrated its seventh birthday. The popular MOBA-esque title has had quite the run over the years. When it came to esports events, HOTS had two marquee events each year. The Heroes Global Championship functioned as the tournament that crowned the world’s best players as well as Heroes of the Dorm, a collegiate tournament series that was run to determine the best college teams in North America.

Two years post-release, the game entered its “Heroes of the Storm 2.0” phase; releasing several changes to the game, like removing player level caps and Loot Chests, as well as a plethora of quality of life upgrades.

December 2018 was the beginning of the end for HOTS, as Activation Blizzard announced that development for the game would be downsizing and that updates to the game would be coming out at a slower pace than before. At this time, it was also announced that the official HOTS esports events run by Activation Blizzard were being canceled.

In the official announcement, it was said that all players will be receiving the extremely rare Epic Arcane Lizard mount as a token of gratitude and as thanks for playing the game all these years. According to Nexuscompedium.com, this mount is rare because it was “slated as Twitch Bits rewards during the HGC, but never seemed to become obtainable.”