With League of Legends dominating the MOBA scene (in terms of total players), Dota 2 trying to close the gap, and Heroes of Newerth... still existing, it's been a while since we heard anything about Blizzard's competitor. Renamed Blizzard All-Stars after Valve won the commercial rights to "Dota," things have been quieter on the subject than team chat in solo cue. Last week, however, Eurogamer put down some wards and was able to get some interesting info from StarCraft II production director Chris Sigaty. It seems Blizzard may be planning to release All-Stars stand-alone, with a free-to-play model.
"StarCraft 2 is a box. We intend to do something different with the business model in Blizzard All-Stars," Sigaty told Eurogamer. "Something more closely resembling the other types of games in that genre, the MOBA-style games that are out there today, and being able to sell smaller amounts of things to players, the things they want."
Previously, what was then called Blizzard Dota was announced to release as an in-house mod using the StarCraft II Arcade. Early builds showed a disappointingly small number of heroes compared to the genre leaders. And then it just seemed to vanish. It is, according to Sigaty, being "actively worked on," however.
"We'll go into more details about that in the future but I suspect you will not have to have StarCraft 2 to play [Blizzard All-Stars]," he said. "We're definitely emphasizing it as its own product in the future."
We'll be watching warily for more Blizzard All-Stars info to spring out of the jungle for a genre gank, so sit tight in your lanes and wait for our signal.
