HoN goes free to play!

[Starbrow]

Soooo, let's all welcome our Polish and Russian friends who are sure to flood in and fill all our games, just like it is in LoL?

Anyway, now noone has any excuse not to play with us all!

[Palmar]

WELL HOW ABOUT YOU GET ONLINE AND PLAY INSTEAD OF TROLLING ZE FORUMS?

[Veilas]

Change is scary, me not like

[kawe]

Soooo, let's all welcome our Polish and Russian friends who are sure to flood in and fill all our games, just like it is in LoL?

Anyway, now noone has any excuse not to play with us all!

Eastern europe got segregated in lol recently!

2.1.0.0
---------
- Heroes of Newerth is now Free to Play!
* Please read Maliken's Letter to the Playerbase
* Please refer to our forums for an FAQ that will answer most questions about what this means to you


== Account Type Explanation ==

- Basic: The standard, free account new players will receive upon sign up.
* Access to the weekly 15 free heroes
* Matchmaking restricted to All Pick
* Can purchase access to additional Heroes through the in-game store

- Verified: Basic accounts that have been upgraded through a show of commitment to their account, by either purchasing Goblin Coins or surpassing a certain threshold of play time
* Access to everything a basic player has, plus the ability to participate in Verified Only Matchmaking, to guarantee separation from Basic players if desired
* Can choose to play all matchmaking modes, however the use of Tokens or Passes are required (some tokens are awarded once a Basic account upgrades to Verified)

- Legacy: anyone with a paid HoN account before the F2P switch has automatically been upgraded to a "Legacy" account
* Access to Verified Only matchmaking
* Can continue to play all game modes without the need for Tokens or Passes
* Will continue to enjoy free access to the general hero pool

...

- Early Access
* New heroes may be released as part of the Early Access Program
* Early Access is a new system that allows Legacy players to purchase the ability to play these heroes prior to being available for FREE in the general hero pool
* Early Access Heroes are disabled in Tournament Mode
* For Basic/Verified ("Free to Play" accounts), purchasing a hero that is in the Early Access period will unlock access to that hero for all time

I'd like to address in particular the 'Early access' system that they're introducing for some heroes. I'll start with an analogy. Imagine this: 'New Game X' is coming out. A release date and price is set at February 1st 2015 and ?30. Except if you buy the 'early access' version - the exact same, idential product, but released in January 1st 2015 and for ?40. This is essentially how this system looks to me (as a 'legacy' player, that is; I'd have little issue with this system as a free player, since I'd be paying my coins for the hero itself too. As legacy however, you pay the same price but only for the earlynormal release date of the hero).

There are of course arguments to be made, such as, 'ah, but for the money you paid for the original copy of HoN, you got full access to all the heroes, which is better value than what the new players get'. There's definitely some merit to this, too, although it also doesn't address another gripe I have with the early access system; simply that it's very similar to that rather hated phenomenon of 'DLC on the disk' - the hero is complete, implemented in the game, but withheld from players arbitrarily as a money making scheme. Additionally, The strange mention that for tournaments they will disable heroes that are in 'early access' state, rather than enable everything, makes me wonder about what they must think of the state of balance of these heroes that they're selectively picking for the 'early access'.

I should mention this is all centred on my own personal perception of worth. The way I see it is that you pay your 250 coins, and get access to a hero, but in one month that investment has vanished. Compared to vanity items/skins/whatever that you pay for and then have permanent access to. Others may consider that simply having that one month where they can play that hero and others can't as some kind of worth - for me, it's just too far from tangible to justify.

To round off, I think it worth bringing up that the lack of details given about tokens or passes seems ominous, and it sounds as though they could perhaps form limitations on either casual or hardcore playstyles, I'm guessing hardcore ("whoops! you've ran out of tokens. You can now only play ap until next week, or choose to buy tokens from our store.") will be punished most. That's only speculation for now, but I'm not sure what other purpose it could serve.

[Gaeios(Graxlos)]

The tournament thing is also used in dota, and has been for as long as I remember. There was always and official balanced version for tournaments and the current beta that everyone was playing.

[Grilldyret]

If you made a free account, you'd now have to pay 90 dollars to unlock all the heroes.. Harsh!

Also, not liking the glowing outlines everywhere!

[Gozhell]

It's certainly a smart move, should've seen it coming with the extended "ONLY 10$ ACCOUNT SALE".

There are ups and downs with this, but I'm not happy that I continously have to keep playing in order to stay up to date with new heroes... ;\ Or buy coins of course! Or I could just get used to being a casual and not having what top players have. hmm...

The biggest up (apart from the brittish announcer) as mentioned before is certainly that everyone from Iron Edge can now join in on the fun! Maybe the HoN part of Iron Edge will increase and SCEC will be recruiting somehow

- Randoming in All Pick no longer gives bonus Gold

I don't know what I'm going to do anymore... More than a whole year of nothing but going random in AP... and now this?! I have to think with the team and not let the team think around my randomed hero!?!??!

- If a player is ignored then the player who has ignored them will no longer receive messages about them when the ignored player silences them from a channel or bans/unbans them from a channel

Been waiting for this for ages. Will probably come in handy with all the new players if they're as ugly in the mouth as the majority of the HoN community already are :p

[Veilas]

The biggest up (apart from the brittish announcer) as mentioned before is certainly that everyone from Iron Edge can now join in on the fun! Maybe the HoN part of Iron Edge will increase and SCEC will be recruiting somehow

We currently have about 20 ppl in the guild who had HoN,and about 3/4 of them are active, it would be nice to get more so we can do 5vs5 more frequently or even have in guild tourneys(3vs3 teams or i dont know what) like we had with SC2!

[Starbrow]

WELL HOW ABOUT YOU GET ONLINE AND PLAY INSTEAD OF TROLLING ZE FORUMS?

BECAUSE I AM IN COPENHAGEN AND THUS WITHOUT A GAMING PC!

[delling]

They didn't just introduce paid-for perks did they? In a highly competitive game?

[Gaeios(Graxlos)]

Afaik only in terms of access to more heroes.

[Gozhell]

It is silly :p



Monkey King is pretty OP until he gets tweaked, seems like an in-game advantage to me. And also learning the hero before it is free to the public.

[Gaeios(Graxlos)]

You wont be able to play the new heroes in tournament games. But yes the early access is an advantage clearly.