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Heroes of Newerth

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Heroes of Newerth
Developer(s)S2 Games
Publisher(s)S2 Games
EngineK2 Engine
Platform(s)Windows, Mac OS X, Linux
Release2010
Genre(s)RTS Arena
Mode(s)Multiplayer

Heroes of Newerth is a game by S2 Games which is heavily based upon the Warcraft III scenario Defense of the Ancients (DotA).

Heroes

Currently there are a total of sixty heroes consisting of thirty for each faction, although concept art for a sixty first hero has been released. Heroes are additionally organized by their main attribute - either strength, intelligence, or agility. A main attribute, along with the set of abilities that is provided for a hero, loosely assigns the role that they will fill in the game - such as a "tank" who is able to absorb a lot of damage and often starts team fights or "clashes", a "carry" who scales very well the longer the game moves on and deals massive damage and "support" - heroes which have a range of abilities from healing and buffing to damage and disables. Each hero in the game has four unique abilities that can be learned as levels are gained from the death of opposing heroes or creeps. Some abilities are active and must be manually executed, while some are passive and are often left to chance. Not all heroes fit precisely into a category, with some heroes having abilities which would place them into multiple categories.

Hero selection is dependent on the type of game being played. The main game types are Normal, in which players can select from the entire pool of heroes from their faction in a first-come first-picked method; Single Draft, in which a player is randomly assigned three heroes, one hero of each attribute type, to select from; Random Draft, in which players alternately pick from a common random pool of heroes in a 1-2-2-2-2-1 fashion (first selection gets a single pick, then the opposing team gets the next 2 picks to balance out early selections, etc...); Banning Draft, which is similar to Random Draft, with each team captain (the player in the top slot on each team, which is the player with the highest rating if auto-balance was used) first disqualifying two heroes from being selected by anyone; Banning Pick, where Team Captains first ban 3 heroes from the entire pool and then teams alternate hero selection similar to Random Draft; and Deathmatch, which is currently disabled. An extra option called "All Heroes" is available, which modifies all the game modes to allow the heroes to come from the entire pool of both factions, rather than just the side the player is on.

Here is a list of all the Heroes in the game distributed in to the two sides, Legion and Hellbourne. [2]

Legion:

(agility) Night Hound, Swiftblade, Moon Queen, Wildsoul, Zephyr, Magebane, Scout, Andromeda, Valkyrie, Engineer.

(intelligence) Blacksmith, Nymphora, Glacius, Thunderbringer, Pollywog Priest, Tempest, Ophelia, Pyromancer, Vindicator, Witch Slayer.

(strength) Armadon, Behemoth, Hammerstorm, Pebbles, Keeper of the Forest, Legionnaire, Predator, Jereziah, Pandamonium, Rampage.


Hellbourne:

(agility) Chronos, Slither, Blood Hunter, Soulstealer, The Dark Lady, The Madman, Arachna, Corrupted Disciple, Sand Wraith, Forsaken Archer.

(intelligence) Defiler, Demented Shaman, Vodoo Jester, Puppet Master, Hellbringer, Torturer, Wretched Hag, Succubus, Plague Rider, Soul Reaper.

(strength) Devourer, Electrician, Kraken, War Beast, Pharaoh, Accursed, Pestilence, Maliken, Magmus, Deadwood.

New features

Most heroes in Heroes of Newerth have a direct correlation from Defense of the Ancients, with similar abilities and statistics. The additions that differentiate Heroes of Newerth from DotA are non-gameplay features such as tracking of individual statistics, in-game VOIP, and GUI-streamlined hero selection (draft mode, etc). Post-game MVP awards and matchmaking are upcoming but not currently implemented in beta. The game also uses S2 Games' proprietary K2 Engine, and a client-server model similar to that used in many modern multiplayer games.[3]. This differs from the peer-to-peer networking model used for Warcraft 3 which can cause network connectivity issues for all players when one player has issues.[4] [5].

Beta testing

Heroes of Newerth is currently in Closed Beta with over 1,000,000 users registered. [6] On average, over 40,000 active users play the game at any given point in time. S2 Games used a Facebook fan page and word of mouth to attract players. Registered users can also send out invites to others, which allow for the creation of a beta account.

On August 22, 2009 the pre-sale of Heroes of Newerth began for members of the beta. Pre-sales of the game includes the benefits of name reservation, gold-colored nameplate, gold shield insignia (which will both remain once the game is released), in-game taunt ability, and well as additional beta invitations (3 for every pre-ordered account).

The game's Non-disclosure agreement for beta members was lifted on September 8, 2009.[7]

Development

S2 has announced that the game will be supported on multiple operating systems, including Windows, Linux and Mac OS.

S2's Idejder (forum username) has stated that "Heroes of Newerth has been in development for around 3 years. The first 13 months consisted of further developing S2's K2 Engine used by previous projects for Heroes of Newerth, while the remaining time was spent replicating DotA mechanics and content as correctly as possible, re-skinning the game with new art, and developing a small amount of new content in the form of maps, items, heroes and hero tweaks."[8]

References

  1. ^ "Heroes of Newerth System Requirements". Heroes of Newerth. Retrieved 2009-09-22.
  2. ^ http://www.heroesofnewerth.com/heroes.php
  3. ^ http://www.heroesofnewerth.com/ HoN Front page, briefly mentions advantages of client-server
  4. ^ http://classic.battle.net/war3/faq/features.shtml Battle.net FAQ explaining Warcraft 3's basic network model
  5. ^ http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/soar/Classes/494/talks/lecture-16.pdf University of Michigan lecture notes on network programming in games -- Page 7 relevant w/ regards to Peer to Peer disadvantages
  6. ^ http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=58717 We Just Broke 1,000,000 Accounts. Retrieved on 2009-12-23.
  7. ^ http://beta.heroesofnewerth.com/news.php Terms of Service. Retrieved on 2009-10-31.
  8. ^ http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=29265 Ask S2 Games #1 Retrieved on 2009-10-31.
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