With the Cho’Gall patch and Towers of Doom on the horizon, Blizzard have decided to institute a permanent “battleground rotation” – changing the list of maps available in both quick match and ranked play. What does this mean for Haunted Mines and the future of battlegrounds?
One of the many things that makes Heroes unique in the MOBA genre is the large pool of playable maps. While games like League of Legends and DOTA 2 have one real, competitive map, Heroes of the Storm has a total of 9 to learn and master. This has both its pros and cons. The possibilities and strategic potential across 9 maps are much more intricate than just having 1, but it is also daunting for new players to learn the ins and outs of so many battlegrounds. With the 10th map coming out soon, Blizzard is looking to keep the amount of maps playable at 9, and are introducing a battleground rotation for the time being.
"?Developer Comments: We’ll be adding Towers of Doom to the map pool in an upcoming patch. This will expand the size of our map pool to 10 total Battlegrounds. To prevent the number of maps we have available to players in Quick Match and Hero League from being overbearing, we’ve decided to temporarily rotate out Haunted Mines. We feel the number of maps we have available are reaching a threshold that we may not be comfortable with." Source
Battleground Rotations – Past and Present
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a battleground rotation in Heroes. The launch patch for the Eternal Conflict included the Battlefield of Eternity, as well as a temporary rotation. It was a four map rotation that lasted from June 23rd to July 7th – a total of two weeks. Later on in the Eternal Conflict, Infernal Shrines came with a battleground rotation. This time, the rotation included six maps, and lasted only one week. The goal with these rotations seemed to make the new maps available more often in queues – which worked very well.
This time, the battleground rotation seems very different. Blizzard wants the map pool to be large, keeping each map different and exciting, while not making the map pool too large for players to handle. During Blizzcon, I interviewed senior game designer Matthew Cooper, and talked to him about this very issue. He said, “Obviously, we want to keep adding new battlegrounds, but we’re hitting the point where we have to start talking about stuff like, “do we want to add a battleground rotation? Do we need to do something with battlegrounds for seasons?” I don’t think we want to be in a spot where we have 20 battlegrounds in Quick Match at a time, that’s probably too many.” (You can read the full interview here.)
So what does this mean?
At this point in time, we know very little about what this rotation entails for the future of Heroes. The only thing we know right now is that Haunted Mines is no longer available in Versus AI, Quick Match, Hero League, and Team League. It is still available in custom games and thus will be available in any competitive setting.
Other questions about it are shrouded in mystery. Is the rotation permanent? How often is it going to be updated? Are we going to be capped at 9 maps from now on? Maybe this is just an experiment, like the previous battleground rotations, to hear the community’s feedback. All these things and more will be learned with time. What do you think of the battleground rotation? Do you like how it was implemented?
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