What Happened to Heroes of Newerth?
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- Опубликовано: 22 авг 2024
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It’s never a happy moment when a game closes down, but sadly it is that time for Heroes of Newerth. A Facebook post detailed HoN’s final plans. After 12 years of service, the servers are shutting down in June 2022.
If HoN doesn’t look familiar to you, then maybe League of Legends would
or Dota 2. Like League of Legends and Dota 2, HoN was developed as the next step to the Warcraft III MOBA mod, Dota. It was released in early 2010, a few months after Riot’s League of Legends’ release.
Riot had made it clear that League was to have the core concepts of Dota 1 but be its own game. Using the mod as a foundation and adding their own spin to it. But this wasn’t what all Dota fans wanted, so when the developers of HoN, S2 Games, had promised to make a more faithful adaptation of the original Moba, people were excited.
The idea was to modernize Dota and free it from the Warcraft III shackles by adding matchmaking, voice chat, a streamlined UI, and the ability to track a player’s stats. And when it was discovered that one of the key developers of the Warcraft III mod, the fabled IceFrog, was working with S2 Games, people got even more excited.
Yet if you follow esports, or the MOBA genre, or even just the video game industry in general, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of Dota 2 and League of Legends. But you may not have heard of Heroes of Newerth, so what happened?
HoN had a lot going for it leading up to its release; it was poised to fill the demand that Riot had left open, of being the next Dota. It would have all the features players asked for, especially matchmaking. It would look better but still feel familiar to veterans. There was no real reason not to jump from Dota to HoN. Until S2 Games gave them some.
Dota was not free to play; you had to own the Warcraft III games to play, but everyone who was playing Dota 1 already owned that. League of Legends was free to play, so there wasn’t a monetary barrier to giving it a shot, if not jumping altogether.
HoN was $30 on release. Now I’m not going to sit here and act like the developers are so evil or dumb for waiting to get paid for their work. And even back then, $30 was still cheaper than many games at the time. But, in hindsight, it was a mistake, a rather costly one ironically.
For many people all over the world, MOBA’s lived and breathed in Internet Cafes. And that $30 was steep; it was a barrier. This compounded with the issue that MOBAs are team games, which often meant you played with your friends. So even if you were one of the lucky ones who could afford the new game, there’s a good chance, not everyone in your friend group could.
Also, Dota didn’t shut down with the release of HoN, so if you couldn’t play or your friends couldn’t play, you just kept playing Dota or maybe even tried that new League thing that was free. What could’ve been or should’ve been ‘no reason not to jump to HoN’ ended up being ‘No reason not to stay.’
Instead of swallowing the Dota 1 player base that hadn’t fully jumped to League, it instead fractured the player base. What was once one pool of players in Dota was now three, between Dota, League, and HoN. And while initials sales of Heroes of Newerth weren’t bad, they were the smallest piece of the pie. And it’s almost entirely attributed to the fact that HoN was the one people had to buy out of the three. Unfortunately, it was not the only barrier.
MOBA’s are notoriously difficult games to get into with… we’ll call it an “unfriendly” community. While HoN was a more faithful evolution of the original Dota, it still had its differences. Even though most heroes and abilities carried over, many of them were still tweaked ever so slightly. As minute as some of these changes may have been, a Dota 1 player had to relearn a lot. A player may have hit every Mirana Arrow, but Valkyrie’s Javelin of Light just didn’t feel the same. They may have dominated with Puck but just fed with Bubbles. Oh, and their team is flaming them.
There will always be a learning curve of some sort when playing a new game, but in this scenario, there was a good chance a lot of their friends were still playing Dota 1. Because, as mentioned previously, HoN had failed to swallow the Dota 1 player base. This meant that instead of new players learning with their friends finding their feet in this challenging genre, it was easy for many players to just go back to Dota. Where a lot of their friends were still playing anyway. Now, if you’re familiar with this story or you recognized Dota 2 at the beginning, you’re probably waiting for the decisive blow. Well, here it is.
![Eminem - Somebody Save Me (feat. Jelly Roll) [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Vwa0HenQMi4/mqdefault.jpg)
Cheers to all hon fans/players .
I partially disagree with you. I was there, i bought the game when it was in beta. It was a healthy comunity but then they got greedy. They would release heroes that where only available if you bought them from the shop, after some time they would release them to the general public. The problem was that while they where in the shop, they would be super over powered. The balance came whem they became free to play. Although i enjoyed HoN allot, this was the main reason i switched to dota2. Even if i had the money to buy every new hero, i would never support a company that would do this
yeah greedy 100% was the cause, everybody could play dota for free or with a war game 1 time pay.
@@banishedbr its not only that - the game was plagued by bugs. several years in and they still didnt manage to fix undestroyable trees - even tho they announced the fix patch after patch. balance was terrible too
if you had bought the game you got all heroes on release. but yeah it was a greedy move
Couldn't agree more
@@viktorbengtsson676 nope. First time the game was 30euro. After some time they made ftp but with restriction on heroes (similar to LOL). The ones that bought the game had all the heroes except the new released ones that where only available in the shop for a few months.
HON was such a good game, I'm really thankful for all the fun times I had playing it. The taunts/announcer packs were absolutely next level and so fun to use.
I still can't believe Samuel L Jackson did an announcer pack for HoN. How can anyone beat that lmao
@@justpino7 agreed, after i got that announce i became better at the game, first time i got 1900mmr and just stopped. HON was really truly something else.
@@justpino7 You also had John St. John... Aka... DUKE NUKEM in the original Duke nukem 3D :)
Along with the ninja warrior pack voiced by the I forgot who the f* but it is ALSO the original voice actor of Hanzo in Ninja Blade back on... DOS ! :D
Such a level of dedication and searching for people... These guys, even if extinct now... They deserve a medal. They went above what blizzard did in their finest years and constantly listened to the community. Hats off.
Should I ever win the lottery I'm resurrecting the whole game/studio. And that's a promise.
By far the best announcers of any game ever IMO. Even the default announcer was amazing. I also love the way they named kills (mainly "double tap" and "hat trick").
My personal favorites were the Duke Nuke Em and the Unicorn one. "Bitch slapped" after I taunted someone made me laugh every time.
i started playing HON in 2011, then switch to Dota2 and LOL...and found my self going back to HON
there is something about HON that Dota2 and LOL couldn't get, the smooth gameplay, the items, the map light and shadow, the heroes and creeps
this game will always be my fev moba, it's truly unique and enjoyable
Hon always felt both slightly faster paced and smoother/crisper mechanics. I think it probably had something to do with dota2 turning rates and long cast points. Hon was a great experience. Unicorn rampage and monarch butterfly were some special concepts that kept things lighter than what dota has turned into. I burned out on hon at the higher levels, tried dota2, didn't like it at all, but brute-forced myself into getting into the game itself (versus getting in with the community). The people kinda suck (entitled trolls and abusive memers), and i didn't have the same energy for trying to make it better.
HON really delivered on its promise to the original dota fans even with its subtle unique changes.
For whatever reason in Dota2 all the heroes i liked playing got tweaked into something else or became ineffective as they changed the meta. Dota2 is...something...now, but i don't know if it's good. It could be an interesting game, but i got tired of being told to kill myself whenever i wanted to learn a new hero. I enjoyed the concepts of their holiday events but even those had some severely broken/boring aspects. Grind 100 games of Aghanims Labyrinth in order to get a courier...still don't get it due to RNG.
👌👍👍
I agree 100 procent, the feeling was much better in HON
@@eboyce24 skill issue
HoN was ICONIC. For me everything about the asthetic was just iconic. I dont know how else to describe it. Every sound every character made was recognizable and distinct. Every spell, the general ambiance and music was less bubbly and cute which is just aesthetic i appreciate more.
Release the Kraken!
HoN was truly ahead of its time. It was fast paced and dynamic. It was creative to the point where LoL and DotA2 took 5-6 years to catch up to HoN's mechanics. It was looking like it would be the best MOBA of all time...... the problem wasn't the price tag or the community. Maliken was our patron saint after all.
The problem was S2 games kept betraying the player base by doing things they promised they would never do or breaking promises of things they would do. For example, people that purchased the game in beta were supposed to have all shop articles unlocked once the game went free to play but this didn't happen. Later they made heroes purchasable for "early access" so only some players could have them, which weren't awarded to people that bought the game in beta despite being promised that they would. Basically S2 games ruined the most promising MOBA of the second generation of MOBAs.
Maliken selling soap
None of that is true. The cause is much simpler: Money. More specifically, money to nurture the competitive scene.
Nah, dota2 crash hon
@@CharlesJamlin95 Nope. In that era, DotA 2 was easily the worst of the 3 on every level. HoN & LoL were even with 500k active players+few million accounts in closed beta/release. DotA 2 far below them and kept losing players to both. HoN mechanics were years ahead of both but LoL at least worked while DotA 2 was a mess. Even DotA (1) handled better than DotA 2 at the time.
It took years for DotA 2 to get it together but to be fair, DotA 2 devs/executives hung in there and things got better. HoN devs/executives kept going scorched earth till nothing remained. GG
@@Montrovantis That's **really** not what happened. When HoN crashed & burned, there was no real 'competitive scene' as the 3 second-generation MOBAs were still ironing out major issues.
For instance, you think LoL could have a 'competitive scene' back when you could use dashes/blinks _while snared_ and black shield blocked true dmg? heh. Flash desyncing projectiles was funny too.
Really good game, I never find a game so good like this one and the good moments it gived to me and my friends. I'll miss him. A game of my teenage age.
it was so ugly though. everything way too dark and and not clearly silouetted. heroes didn't look good/cool/appealing. just a mess of more "dark" ugliness and not a very distinct artstyle. the zero turnrate of the game made it feel like a browser game to me or something. no weight at all is not a good thing, people don't realize this all the time. thats why everyone loves dark souls so much. the big delay in attacks gives combat weightiness and satisfaction. also the UI was really confusing, the 3 converging click-walk arrows to show where your hero has been ordered to walk were way too massive. weird proportioned things all around, funky unclear animations. Feels cheap all around and had the slimiest people ive ever seen in its player base. Hon is pretty bad sorry man it deserved to be killed. actually thinking about the game makes me feel sick and unwell, i think it's cursed.
10k hours in dota 2 and no plan of stopping. fantastic game, rewards creativity, has weightiness, big patches often enough for me, great heroes with lore and great voice acting, very pleasing artstyle not to bright not to dark and realy unique and defined style, its faithful to the original vision of the game, not some arcady spinoff. its just so far and above the best MOBA idk how everyone else doesnt see it
@@Aycheffe tell me your name of D0ta2 maybe i'll join you
@@MrTarongeta Kiki. My profile would have mostly elder titan games and my avatar is a mushroom wizard
Personally, I liked the dota all starts better, and I know where you are coming from, but let’s be real, without a player-base these games are trash, and dota2 is the best there is out there for those who liked dota/hon, while the remaining player-base can stay in LOL.
@@Aycheffe the darkness is exactly what I love in hon graphics. Cartonish LOL like looking of dota2 makes me stop playing it every time I try. I agree that Dota has amazing development team on its back though.
How much they wanna to keep the game alive ???? I love this game I still wanna play him I am a rich guy and I wanna pay 💰
Just buy some private server and it can be playable to community..
@@WaleedSaraijy88 you should take the classes with him waleed, your English isn’t much better habibi
I dont think you can save HoN unless you do a private server or something. I suggest switching to dota 2 as early as possible
@@Arcenic81 Is dots 2 somewhat easy to learn for Hon players?
@@matthewfernandes9518 probably, because in what ive heard some dota 2 pros came from hon and dota 1 (never heard any pros that came from lol)
Valve should bring on some HON heroes to Dota2, as they are amazingly creative and fun to play. Chipper, Nomad, Midas, Deadwood and alot of others
please take below heroes to Data2:
Maliken
Midas
The dark lady
forsaken archer
Nomad
Bombadier
@@elvishu1420 maliken sounds like a good addition. definitely a good terrorblade rework by S2.
@@elvishu1420 Puppeteer would be a good addition as well, imo.
Zephyr's skill mechanic was way ahead of its time, that vector wind push is a game maker
Emerald Warden please
The biggest loss for me is losing the chance to play Gauntlet. I never had any other hero/character that I could play as well as Gauntlet. RIP HoN.
my pulse rised as soon as i read your comment. My main was gauntlet and i miss playing him so much. And I miss pastilence
For me it was the chance to play as Kane and Flux.
Still playing since 2010 best moba ever
Same here
same here, the only one moba I played
Aw so cute
same, i transitioned from dota 1 after countless hour, to hon . also played dota 2 for 5k hours.
still oldschool hon is best moba.
same here
I played HoN for like 1 year in 2012 as my first moba before switching to dota2. I have to say it is a shame that they did not make the most out of their headstart. For quite some time it probably was better than d2 in many ways.
I always felt like HoN was the real DotA 1. DotA Allstars on WarCraft III, while being the gold standard for mods, was still a mod. HoN felt like a complete experience. Then DotA 2 came along and it was like someone made a sequel without your input.
And like this video said, they still had some dated outlooks on game design because it was still new territory. Smart phones and mobile games were just coming around circa 2010, so ideas on monetization were still rooted in how games were made and sold since the 90s. HoN just wasn't accessible. It wasn't free to play, the UI was already looking dated next to its contemporaries, and matchmaking, while a step up from WCIII's banlists, was still lacking in a lot of areas.
Game is still up on Project Kongor. I just found out and started playing again.
Heroes of Newerth is No1 , i mean you understand heroes,spells and everything that happen in game is not only flash of lights on the screen like other games like Dota 2 and LoL.Dota was again really good.
Thx HoN team for all the good work.
Flash of lights on the screen? Lol yea stick to HoN brotha 🤗
Had they not charged $30 for the game, went complete F2P, gave full creative control to IceFrog, and maybe fired Maliken, DOTA2 wouldn't have had a leg to stand on to exist.
Oh HoN, you will be missed.
Yeah Maliken was the needle sticking out. fought with a lot of players, banned them if they said something towards him.
im gunna miss hon...
If they hadn't given full creative control to IceFrog, he would have never worked with them in the first place 😅 . That was one of his conditions for helping in Dota-based standalone games iirc.
Icefrog did help making HON 100%, reasons ppl quit the game = pay to play, went for free games, management was a piece of shit, and maliken was a racist guy who owned 2 porn websites + now soap company? how do i know? cuz i always spoke about it while playing the game in twitch, they had alot of time to fix stuff but they did not bother, wont even bother to mention alot of things including of employee's stealing money.
SO many things contributed to the decline of the game. Management and development was divisive, shady and highly concerning, yes. But for one I enjoyed that the community was a bit smaller. You got to play against and with many of the same people in the higher brackets. Made very good friends in the game. (But also grew to really dislike many too)
this video nails it.
it's actually what happend to me. I was heavily invested in dota1 - and the time when the big changes happend i simply switched to LoL, cuz it was free. half of my friends got HoN, but I don't wanted/couldn't justify to pay the 30$ at that time. in the end i spend like 100$ total in LoL over the course of time until i eventually got back to dota2.
Dota 2 is the best
" couldn't justify to pay the 30$ , in the end i spend like 100$ total in LoL" :D
Good man. League is inferior to both HoN and Dota 2 gameplay wise.
@@3SiiLVeeR3 that's the point of this comment and of the video. It was stupid idea to sell the game, because they'd have made more money selling cosmetics
You forgot to mention due to some technical legal BS of IceFrog leaving the HoN team they could no longer advertise freely, unlike LoL who's ad's were the internet plague back in the day, couldn't go anywhere without seeing them.
Hell, the only reason i knew about HoN is a Call of Duty Clanmate who played dota got some beta keys, and gave me one. In 2008, i still got the account with it's creation date. HoN had to rely on word of mouth, and when they had the $30 cost on release, many were turned away. Even the friend who gave me the beta key refused to pay for it, but returned once it turned free to play.
Despite being an absolute trash tier noob at first due to no familiarity with warcraft 3 or dota, there was something very special about HoN. I kept rage quitting, some times for over a year away from the game, but i always came back. I can remember the hellish climb back to starting rating (1500) literally the night before the only beta stat reset. This was only possible due to arguable the greatest part of Hon. BreakyCPK and HoNcast, watching the pro's helped me learn, but man Breaky's voice is god tier, no other e-sports caster I've heard since has ever came close. And his ability to cast and properly narrate a high speed team fight is just... art.
In the end, and with mostly solo queues in a team based game, i climbed up to the 1800's, a rating range that saw you being matched against some of the best pro's in the world, at least those who didn't care for MMR and were on the lower end due to playing for fun. I will never forget the day i played a few games with my fav pro, Freshpro of Fnatic.MSI, arguably the best HoN team ever. All in all, HoN will always be my most treasured game, and i honestly cried when i heard it was coming to an end.
But i will never forget it. After all, this game is the reason i cannot tolerate randoms anymore in a team game, i just go and do my own thing (jungle, solo mid, suicide, solo farm.) A bittersweet reasoning, perfectly reflecting the bittersweet nature of the game. To all those who never played HoN, you missed out on something truly special.
beatifully put. I didn't start uite as early as you did, but had my acc made in 2009. I saw a friend playing it at a LAN party and he showed me what HoN was all about the following weeks. He eventually stopped half a year later and I was just hooked. I also really got into HoNCast and would religiously watch every new video. I also ended up going to a dreamhack event and got to meet BreakyCPK live in 2012.
I started off playing 3v3 casual mode on grimm's crossing and after like a year switched to 5v5 normal mode. During that time i met one of my currently oldest friends who ended up moving to my country by chance and we still play games regularly.
In my first few games i remember not beating 30 apm and improved quickly by only playing single draft and forcing myself to pick new heroes every time. Over the years I have accumulated a friend group from all over the world which i talk to almost daily. We ended up also playing some lower tier hon-tour events (T3) and even got to play some of the really great teams (coL / stay green).
HoN will always have a special place in my heart. From the adrenaline, the friends, the fast-paced MOBA gameplay I cannot get anywhere else, the rage. No other MOBA is quite like HoN. League just is odd to me. I never really enjoyed playing it, even with some friends it just never felt right. I also gave dota 2 a really good try (ca 300 hrs), but it feels like HoN in jelly. Everythig feels slow, CC feels like it lasts forever and nothing dies.
Sad that hoN will go but happy I got to play it for many years. Dont think I would get into any MOBA for a very long time or ever.
Also I spent way too much money on skins, I'd like to have that money back lol.
@@xFjolnir The Single Draft part made me smile. How i forced myself to learn all the heroes and not just a few select ones i liked. That and the utter terror of no swaps and seeing three heroes you are trash with and knowing the abuse coming your way.
And i agree with the parts regarding LoL and Dota2. The only moba i could play on PC after HoN was Smite, and that's because the 3rd person view made it unique enough i never really compared them.
The part that upsets me the most regarding HoNcast, was the rather foolish decision to move to a rival, now dead, site of youtube. As such many of the games from before dota2 released are lost. Specifically in regards to Fnatic.MSI. I know they were dominant, winning back to back dreamhacks and other tournemounts. But i cannot prove if they were the best of all time or not without those videos.
Example i cannot find the game that made me fall in love with Freshpro as a player. Going stormspirit first on a suicide madman seemed like insanity, but turned out to be a clutch decision that won many team fights. It's what made me start experimenting with builds and really interested in learning all the nuts and bolts of the game to know how it worked. Always made me smile when i saw my modified builds become more common.
It's true, the marketing was absolute trash. But the wife of S2 was the head of marketing, obviously put on payroll to do nothing.
@@TwistaCSS No wonder. They put a woman instead of putting someone competent enough.
I remember being a teenager and learning of HoN’s existence and naively writing to icefrog in my then bad English, asking him if he was aware of its development and if he was ok with people playing it when it was, as I then felt, a blatant ripoff. He actually replied and was really nice. He said he was aware of it and had been in contact with the devs, and was quite happy they were making his WC3 mod a stand-alone game. He also said he was working on his own stand-alone. A week later DotA2 was announced 😁
Ice frog actually was one of the creators of hon as i know :)
Man that's cool
@@kevinflynn4867 Hehe I may be mis-remembering that. Suffice it to say, he was very nice about it, and I think his reply was a little tongue-in-cheek.
EDIT: just read up on it, and I couldn't have remembered it bc he himself never mentioned it at the time and it only came out via some blogpost and later a lawsuit.
I do remember him writing to me that S2 had asked him for permission though and that he was fine with it. Again, this seems more cheeky in hindsight.
@@xTobsecretx nice to know ,ice frog is a legend.
Even though I'm a HoTS/LoL/Smite player, I was really sad when I learned that the game is closing. Back in 2011 this game was the one that made me fall in love with the MOBA genre, not the games I play nowadays.
Thanks for the video man , Ill also sub. Great to the point content , I think the downfall of HoN has many more details to it , but your video is to the point , clear , well produced and deals with the major points anyone needs to know. I am a beta player and stuck with HoN this whole time, you are right , this is and always felt like our game , I never played any other moba and I do not intend to (I simply went back to playing RTS games). The memories I made in this game will always be sweet , its sad that its closing down , but I can understand the decision on Garena and FrostBurn's part.
I will miss Samuel L Jackson voice pack , aint nothing sweeter than him cussing out everyone with those F bombs.
I hope Valve will acquire HoN and complete the all in sequel as Dota1's successor.
the Dota 2 lore 's THE GREAT CONFLUENCE
Also a lot of the hero concepts and abilities are just too good to be left in the shadows. I never played much of Shadowblade, but it's just too good.
@@Karanthaneos HoN is owned by Garena and they have the copyrights for most of the heroes ( some of which have been already been put into Arena of Valor, like pestilence ). So in conclusion, I doubt that Valve would buy HoN.
@@protz9914 I knew it was by Frostburn studios, but I didn't know Frostburn was of Garena after further reading. That kinda sucks. Although to be reasonable, Pestilence was already Slardar. Now I feel like it's something that will never happen, but I'll keep dreaming about it.
@@protz9914 pestilence was a clone of slardar
Closed beta player here who bought the game on release and loved it for the few years it was popular.
Without watching the video, I can confidently say it's because they weren't F2P from the start. When they released and made the game B2P it sealed their fate of irrelevancy against LoL. By the time they went F2P it was already too late with DotA 2 on the horizon and LoL's snowball consumption of the market.
I can't really blame S2 Games because it was back when B2P gaming was much more common for multiplayer games back then. You could argue it was a competitive game, but competitive gaming was still in it's infancy years. Look at all of the competitive games back then. ALL B2P. ANY RTS, DotA 1, ANY FPS, ANY FG, etc. Even TF2 was well known as a buy to play game designed around lobbies back then. F2P games back then were only known as scummy MMORPGs that either had paywalls to access gameplay related content or were P2W fiestas.
And it shows in how the game was designed. It was designed with triple A graphical quality and features around an era that was about to leave basically. LoL had nothing on it if price was not a factor.
You had imbalanced P2W mechanics in LoL (old rune system [spend RP to buy IP boosts = faster runes/rune page acquisition]; having lower tier runes or no runes was essentially the same as losing the lane to your opponent because you'd be behind 900~ gold worth of stats the entire game).
You had no functioning replay system in LoL for YEARSSSS on end.
No pause function in LoL (an archaic feature these days, but it was definitely valued at the time in HoN).
No compensation for a DC'd player in LoL (arguably not that useful and possibly imbalanced, but still a feature HoN had over LoL).
No way to quit the game early in LoL without penalty if you have a DC (assuming your team isn't choosing to surrender, definitely an edge HoN had over LoL and even over HotS to this day lol).
No function for automatically balancing teams in a lobby based off of their ELO in LoL (not that useful these days as lobbies aren't considered competitive any more, but was deemed useful at the time and STILL is another feature HoN had over the game).
The heroes and their abilities were really creative and fun in HoN - it is such a shame it died.
I was a Dota 1 player and very excited for HoN. When it released I tried it but they had not captured the essence of Dota and I quickly went back to Dota 1, then left for Dota 2 once it became available and never looked back.
it baffles me how y'all say dota 2 "captured" the essence of the OG DotA. I mean, the heroes aren't even actually the same, not a single hero has the name from DotA because they're trademarked by Blizzard. y'all just a bunch of sheeps, hating on HoN because it was "a clone", hyping dota 2 just because it has the "dota" name and is released by Valve. what a bunch of sheep
This is the best game ! They should remake this game with new engines etc...
Best? Lmao
already have dota 2
@@itsallinthepast2944 I play also dota 2 (i have 10k matches in hon and around 1k in dota) and in my opinion is above dota 2 at all levels.
@@eternalsplitter7594 Bullshit, i played both at higher lvl, Hon only had better graphics, everything else is by far on dota side. Hon was just lucky that dota 2 was late.
Gonna miss HoN. Toxic community and all. There's something refreshingly honest and satisfying about being able to type a few toxic lines to a teammate who stole your lane and not get banned for it. HoN is the most fast paced, polished and gritty MobA out there. It's a shame it's going by the wayside. RIP HoN you will be missed.
they issue permanent bans on people who tell you to fuck off and such.
tbh those report a player admins are one of the main reasons the game died out. imagine banning someone permanently for telling other people to "fuck off".
it's literally the only game that issues permanent bans on those type of situations. lol
gg heroes of newerth.
@@Aimpunchh You're literally wrong, but okay. Think whatever you want you pastrami sandwich
There's also an option to disable spells that could troll you like a Tiny tossing you? Turn off that help button and you can't get trolled with spells like that as well as items.
I think aside from the pay to play blunder of s2, what really doomed HoN was DoTA 2's historic pot money... The disparity in prizes between DoTA and HoN became so big that every pro player in HoN went to DoTA taking a chunk of the fanbase with them. I really felt the competitive scene was the nail in the coffin as more and more regions left HoN. Eventually most european and NA regions stopped playing and Thailand was really the only country dedicated to the game.
RIP to my favorite MOBA of all time. My friends left HoN when DOTA 2 emerged but I honeslty couldn't get myself to leave. Was still enjoying the game until a few years ago when queing took forever and I would play almost the exact same players every other game.
no its not about money, its about icefrog
I had the same read. I had started going to lans and doing little HON tourneys where s2 gave out prizes, and i had been seriously considering pushing to make hon a tournament game within my network...and then TI happened and was like...9M prize pool...what in the world...and the people running HON either weren't that interested in pushing a professional scene or whatever it was, so whereas people would make a joke out of icefrog leaving before, TI made dota2 look like they were going to make it the biggest and maybe only real professional moba scene.
Trying to play both hon and dota2 at a high level was kinda hard due the pretty significant pace/playstyle differences.
not only that, you can gamble/trade dota 2 items online on whatever device. This created somewhat some sort of currency in the game. This makes people invest in the game even if they are not playing in the moment because of work or school.
I will never forgive the moba community for this.
+1
I played Hon since beta when i was still a student until 2 years ago as every game take forever to queue and same faces everyday. Hon was the first game ever i willing to spend my money, the graphics, CG, animation smoothness, taunt, announcer, avatar, everything is so good much more better than dota 2 and LOL. I play dota, LOL and HON for at least 5 years each. HON is still the best among all three. I just hope they manage to sell some of the heroes to DoTa 2 like grinex, Gunblade, Apex, Adrenaline, scout, chutuluhuphant, monarch, draconis, electrician, midas and alot more. Really miss those times where playing with friends online. Even now it's still good just need a richer and better marketing skill management team for it to reborn
HoN deserves it imo. They could have been a top tier game till now but nah they decide to greed. They thought LoL and Dota 2 would never catch up. LoL didnt get much attention at first but they did what the players wanted. Dota 2 already had its player base so... yeh. HoTS isnt well known either but his company is Blizzard, they got tones of money to maintain the server
I appreciate the length of the video and how information-dense it is. Lately a lot of folks have been having like 30-minute long video essays that contain more filler than actual information, so it's greatly appreciated and enjoyed to have a video that gets to the point.
I look forward to seeing what other content you'll make. I really enjoy these sort of "what happened?" videos. Another one you might find interesting is "City of Heroes" since the official game got shut down and only recently was revived by some fans.
More on topic: I didn't really get into HoN until it was already dying, so I ended up not staying long. The game clearly had potential but they completely dropped the ball with their overall decisions. If they had done a similar model to riot and gave the recruited modders better creative control they likely would've made bank.
Played every day during the Beta with my friends, but when it actually launched, we had no way of buying it from our country. So we moved to League, and met a lot of people there. By the time HoN went free to play it was a little too late. Still, it was a great game. I remember having a lot of fun/being annoying with Fayde
I was also a beta tester and when it actually launched, I was a starving art student who couldn't swing the $30. Ended up going back to DotA in WCIII before switching over to LoL. When the game went free to play, I tried going back to HoN but the outdated UI and pricing was really off-putting. 😔😢
I Will Miss this game :')
#indonesian player
From 2010 to 2015 this game used to be such an important part of my life. It is true that the game lost its touch after all those years. I wish I could play now the 2013-2014 version.
why are you using ancient footage of HoN? the game's graphics had changed so much over 12 years, it's graphics right now is better than any other moba.
I think it's a contextual choice. New hon does look good.
Agreed..HoN has changed since frostburn manage
Hon had just hilarious announcers and the taunt mechanic was super fun.
getting crushed by a dumpster.... I mean... it truly was a taunt to see :D
HON was 20 dollars on release. I was there.
This is the only game I have thousands of hours of playtime, played league and dota2 but it never captured the excitement that I get from hon. It's been good 9 years for me and I'll remember this game for my whole life. Ggwp
I played HoN 14-15 years ago while it was free to play, I think it was in a beta. I was a young kid that just wanted to play something else other than Dota and HoN was a next logical step.
I was super sad when they announced that the game needs to be bought now, because I didn't really have money to buy it. Buying anything over internet was a much different experience 14-15 years ago than it is now.
A friend of mine recommended me LoL back then. It was a much worser game than HoN at a time, but everyone of us jumped ship to it because it was free to play. 14 years later and I still come back to and play some LoL with a buddy of mine.
Really makes you wonder where HoN could've been had they just released a game as a free to play. I can't stress it enough on how much of a better game it was than all of its competitors at time. Also the savage vibe it had was amazing.
Good thing about Dota one is that even if servers got down you could play the game with friends on lan
I think another factor was the feel and speed of the games.
At the time of DoTA2 V1. Dota2 was slow, sluggish whilst HoN was fast paced, and snappy. It kept a lot of the playerbase.
It wasn't until DoTA2 V2 was released, the updated engine, which really hit that final blow.
yeah reborn really put nail in the coffin..once i start playing dota 2 reborn..goodbye HoN
So maybe this was just a petty internet argument, but I remember something else contributing to HoN's death early on. When the early pro scene was forming for HoN, one of the pro players had made a constructive criticism thread regarding certain things in the game. A developer took issue with that, and went on a rampage flaming the player and suggesting that they had no idea how to play HoN. Shortly after, there was a mass exodus to League.
Not sure how much of an impact it had in the long run, but I had honestly thought HoN dead since then.
It cant help tho, regarldess of the dmg. Like non of us are perfect, and to think your game is byond reprotche is dumb as fuck. Mobas chnage all the time too. You make a good point
Oh please tell me that developer was S2.Maliken , man that guy and his management of the game was the WORST ! Im glad he is now selling bootleg soaps online. Frostburn was great for HoN.
@@Tchado1000 s2games had a lot of drama back then on the forums,do you remember that guy named Hunter_?
Not to mention the prize pool of Dota2 comps, a lot of pro HoN players would go to Dota2 for a chance at the multi-million dollar prize money.
@@Mightypi Yeah there are none, but boy oh boy, when you make a big irreversible mistake, and it's not something in need of a rush to reply to either, he could make slow calm judgement and think of the consequences of his actions, it's his job, how could he not foresee the consequences of his actions?
I liked HoN but since we're in a 3rd world, I never heard anyone bought HoN, that was the last time me hearing of HoN
its weird as hell, i used to not be into MOBA games but i still always thought HoN look the best! the artwork and effects and animations are on point and the game didnt have such a cartoony feeling to it! i love the gore and grittyness and just how the game to this day makes you feel like you are back in 2010-2014! its super sad to see that they will shutdown the game after all this time, all it really needs is a better advertisement and marketing in general! LoL looks so dull and robotic while DOTA 2 looks cool but it still also feels rather ''imprisoning''... its hard to put to words how different HoN feels compared to the other 2
exactly!! - the 'cartoon' feeling is the thing that makes me unable to play lol and dota2 :/
yeah, HoN is another world.
Besides not being free on launch, you forgot to mention company greed, which played a large role, and the 1 million tournament (the international) that valve announced upon releasing dota 2.
The best of HoN was the creative spells and mechanics what valve implement later in d2. For me, HoN and LoL was in a battle until d2 was release and then HoN died and the duel started with d2
I spend too many years playing HoN, from 2011 to 2014 and later from 2017 until now, i loved their heroes like salforis, gunblade, shadowblade,etc. are going to be part of my memories now.
Hon died because s2 sell it to forstburn
@@THEpro1ST Maybe, but d2 and the big grow of LoL are also responsable
Extremely well done. Thanks.
Well, HoN have still more to offer then most of MOBA games.
Maybe there is a chance to resurrect or recreate title back(?)
Hope - soundtrack begun ;)
You have to remember that "free games" were not a thing back in the day. They did exist but were most of the time garbage. LoL made a huge bet. Back in the day I couldn't thinck people would pay real money for digital stuff like skins... Boy was I wrong.
u can pretty much break down preferences for the 3 games
u like hon if u like fast-paced action with a bit of strategy
u like dota if u like a bit slower game with more strategic nuances
u like league of legends if u have no pubes
This game, my friends was so bloody popular before Dota 2, it was as famous as world of tanks beta release back in my schooling days, rip, will be remembered.
Valve, Gaben, Icefrog and Eul, time to get Icefrog's 2nd child, HoN, and unite it with the 1st child, DoTA.
I played this 2009 to 2018. I made good friends here! I will surely miss this game.
the unique heroes of HoN could find a new home in Dota2
I agree . Hon should sell all its characters to valve .
HoN died, because they spent more money and time on making skins than ads :(
It's full of marketing bullshit. Good thing it never did, let those Devs and their bosses learn from their mistake of almost selling everything, from keys to heroes.
Is there a way to save HoN?
If they made HON F2P on that time I guess it is still hit today.
the narrator sounds like steve from gamers nexus
by the way its not wow's mode , it was warcraft III tft mode.
Ps. What you said is excacly what happened.
I just wanna add that i believe that if they kept hon pay to play they would have made it. People would not grief as much.
but with a little playerbase.. still a lose game..
I spent years playing this game. Such a good game I miss the heros a lot and the speed was so fast. So good
The fact that LoL became the dominant game over HoN is a crime against everything I hold dear 😢
Games like this specially online games are temporary and will go away eventually. It feels like taking away my time sitting instead of doing something productive in real life. This mindset makes me prevent taking games too seriously nowadays. Though I was too addicted on games during my teens and 20s. Today is just different. 2 decades but I forgot Im only playing just for a hobby and past time not to dedicate my life onto it.
$30 WAS A STEAL!!!!! I CHOOSE $30 OVER MULTITRANSACTIONS AND PAY 2 WIN
HoN used to be free to play until they got hacked. The Servers broke down. After a 1 Year break they released the game again but this time the game was 30$
I not really sure, but Hon open beta was before LoL.
So release date was a bit later, but game/beta works before LoL.
Correct me if am wrong?
Also there is another few reasons - why hon wasn't that popular.
In the past they suffered beacouse, other competition titles, abused "situation" in market especially, with WCG.
And other big events - literally they just corrupt, to keep Hon away from big events, even tho, Hon won internet competition with them, to be prime MOBA in WCG.
Hon beta was released in 2010 while league of legends beta release was in 2009 and the major thing that made HoN suffer is a pay wall to play the game while other MOBA games like league and dota 2 are free, having a pay wall and microtransactions in the game in form of a store is the worst idea ever, i used to love HoN until they put a pay wall which made me go back to dota 2 because my friends did not buy HoN so i did not either.
@@moebino2685 If i remember correctly.
Hon beta was fully playable, and you got access fully through whole game over the year.
So i think was earlier (anyways)
without restrictions. Full access to all heroes, fully opposite then LoL.
Paying for services is fair and appreciates the work of creators tbh. Hon was super well made, graphically, musically and with attention to new great additions to the game.(even lol, stole a lo-ot of ideas from hon)
$10 wasn't an extraordinary price. On the other hand, in LoL, you had to be allowed to farm an account and buy more, heroes with runes. In fact, it contributed to the promotion of micro transactions (truly). In hon you didn't have to do it.
Even with silver coins was easy to buy most of skins for characters
@@pawepioro2998 paying for services is fair but it doesnt mean its smart. Most people who religiously play the game cant afford it because they are either kids, college students or in the 3rd world. Thats why they stick to a game even if the graphics is crappy until it becomes a scene and gets big. 30 dollars, which was the price at that time was super expensive when you live in SEA (which was the bulk of the playerbase). S2 wanted to cash out quick without thinking long term
It all goes back to one guy.
If you knew S2Maliken, the guy who basically owned S2Games, you wouldn't be surprised. He built a good game, but he is greedy as fuck. He couldn't go beyond the hype the game initially got, and started asking for money. He couldn't take a chance especially after his previous two games that failed for similar reasons. Squeeze the game get the last $$ then sell it when it was at its best.
I still remember in Beta, him responding to demands to market the game (which costs money of course) by saying "the best marketing is 'WoM'. Go tell your friend to buy the game to get an exclusive taunt unlocked", which later changed to be available to everyone else by saying "We didn't say it was exclusive, we said it is free for beta players"
He is selling soaps now
This 1000%
He made his developers wear uniforms lol
I remember when i first play monkey king in this game, he was so fun to play i ended up picking only him for months
Can someone not just buy the IP and keep this game alive ffs?!
This is a really good game, played this before playing LoL. Always found myself playing HON more than LoL, the only reason why I stopped playing this game is because my friends didn't like it. That's why I never looked back but hey this game is really really good.
It is but a sad fact, HoN was and is overshadowed by LoL and Dota 2.
A rough start and bat marketing was HoN's downfall.
My first hon game was on a beta key I had some dude be so toxic during my first game I just gave the key back to my mate and never touched it again. Played dota 2 years later and it was just better outright especially the free to play part
Terribly sad :( My favorite game. Thanks for this video
The SFX design for this game was amazing.
To all heroes of newerth remnants, please relocate to dota 2! We’d have fun there!
na dota2 suckss so many changes in the map iteam and heroes
dude fuck this HoN shouldnt have closed shop I MISS THIS GAME!!!!!!!!!
I remember many years ago trying to get into this game but it had the most unwelcoming and vile playerbase of any game I ever played in my life, and this comes from someone who plays League still. Felt like only elitists and vets from Dota 1 played it even in 'noob only' lobbies and they'd tell you to kill yourself and all sorts of stuff if you were learning the game. Not surprised the game never grew as a result, the core playerbase only wanted to play with each other and let no one else in.
"kill yourself" comments exist in every online game, even in LOL. There's toxicity in every game.
@@deadringer2349 I know. But in HoN it was way more frequent than any other game I played before. In other games those people aren't the majority, but in HoN I can't say I met even one friendly person
Not going to excuse anything, but i remember that the pressure of that split was pretty bad. People getting pulled out of the community every which way--lots and lots of LoL players coming in and taking a dump on the game just because they could while still playing it. Made for a bad playing experience especially when the matchmaking had a harder and harder time putting together skill levels. It was basically either a high level game of really experienced players or a game where you really didn't know what you were going to get, sometimes really defensive "experienced" LoL players covering inexperience with toxicity/abuse, with the team-based meta kinda getting thrown out the window for those newcomers learning mechanics. I usually had a good time either way, but it could get frustrating.
My friend got me a beta key and we we're playing the game religiously. Got to learn new heroes that I hadn't played back in the original dota. Fun times.
Worst mistake ever making the game p2p. I remember we had to play free on a private server because we love the game so much. After D2 was announced, never looked back..
The graphics were too harsh on the eyes. I remember chronosphere and omnislash skills looking amazing. But prolonged game times hurt my eyes.
I was 10 year with this game. The main reason to quit is imbalance of hero. FU hon.
Hon's graphics are too blinding for me when I played it back then but out of those 3 Hon has the best graphics
I played HON once. good game but the fee stopped from fully embracing it
The main error, was just that people didnt really know that HoN existed, i mean the reason mentioned aswell, but the biggest part was, that no one even knew it existed for the most part.
Thats atleast how it was for the people i knew. So overall id also say poor advertising. Hon was only known by hardcore dota players that played 8+ hrs a day, atleast thats how it feeled for me.
You're telling me a billboard on a Michigan highway isn't good use of advertisement money?
oh people did. it was the most popular game in my country and most of SEA. the problem was it went p2p
HON will always be my top tier moba game.
Best moba of all, i tried LOL and DOTA 2 but they felt stiff and underwhelming, started playing on 2012 when it was free to play, had a lot of fun and good memories with friends at a local computer shop, we played every day from afternoon till early morning, i miss that feeling of having fun, now we all have work and no time to play.
Iplay hon 2011 to 2014 that year was the hons prime era and a beauty
All my friends play Dota and LoL 2013 i was alone but i never stop playing HoN 7000+ matchs played... Tnx for everything
They also never came to PAX or really seemed to advertise.
the sad part was SEA region got ban in the global server. Good thing that garena step up so that the SEA region could play the game
Sounds great actually
Another point that should be highlighted is that "Heroes of Newerth" and "HON" just sound dumb to say out loud.
never really figure out whose who on HON because of stupid tool tip so i just went back to dota1 instead of trying to figure out whose who on HON
I think you dould mentioned Smite, and how S2 lost Hon money with it
I had a lot of fun with HoN back in 2011, especially with their Monkey King and Emerald Warden.
This did not feel like 6 minutes, very well made!
When I was in High school, i heard from a friend to message a guy in Sweden to get a key to Closed beta to this game that is like DotA allstars, thats when I started playing, and it became one of my favorite games ever, earlier this year I played my last game of HoN.
Very sad to see it close, its like losing an old friend, so much nostalgia and fun times with this game.
Wish they would have made it Free to play when league came to rival it. HoN had better graphics imo and better gameplay, it was good for Esports as its punishable to do mistakes.
Never played it because before Smart phone MOBA you either play it on internet cafe or buy it at home and boy oh boy those days are hectic for high schoolers ..... Boy I am Old!
I played this game since beta and back then it was best game for me by far . A lot of unique heroes and spells . Honestly i think for many players hon wasnt even a choice just because of computer requirements to play the game . Anyway i had great time trying to push over 1750 rating with randoms :D . And btw im little bit suprised there wasnt mentioned how many Pro dota 2 players came from hon. Like N0tail, Zai, Moonmeander, Micke, Insania and so on ... Well its very emotional to me that hon is shutting down even that im not playing this game for over 4 years already . But i will never forget what an amazing game it was to me ... something trully special to me . Hope you guys enjoyed hon as much as i did . Bye bye
If all heroes are free, I would play it often
Sadly the problem with HON was S2... They never fix some bugs, they were greedy, they make heroes with pre-release (with lots of unbalanced skills and stats) and more...
I remember buy hero with coin till i unlock them all, what a great memories😭😭
Honestly I'm still upset that Infinite Crisis got shut down as fast as it did and never really had a chance. Such a fun game and had an awesome concept with the DC Multiverse characters.