Heroes of Newerth on free play
To celebrate its first birthday, DotA clone Heroes of Newerth is welcoming new players and letting them play free until May 22.
DotA clone Heroes of Newerth reached the ripe old age of one yesterday and developer S2 Games is surround its child with new friends. A new update aimed at making the game more welcoming to new players launched last night, and all and sundry are now allowed to play HoN for the next very long "week" without paying the $30 asking price.
Until midnight EST on May 22, curious parties can take part in the HoNiversary and play Heroes of Newerth for free. Simply create an account and download the latest client from S2. HoN comes in Windows, Mac and Linux flavours.
To help ease new players into HoN, an update launched last night with new features and changes aimed at making it all a little less terrifying. The item shop has been "entirely redesigned," which S2 says "not only reduces the amount of time new players need to learn the intricacies of item purchases, but also adds a layer of clarification for existing players." S2 also added new "fully interactive hero guides," giving advice on how to play particular characters. Plus, new and rewritten tooltips.
S2 is doling out presents to existing HoN players too. Upon finishing your first game during the HoNiversary, you'll receive a bonus 100 Gold Goblin Coins and 100 Silver Goblin Coins. These are used to buy new skins, voice packs and other in-game cosmetic gubbins from an in-game store.
If you fancy buying some Goblin Coins with real cash money, for the HoNiversary you can get a free Heroes of Newerth account--which usually costs $30 by itself--if you buy the $40 pack of 2,415 Gold Coins. If you already own HoN, you'll get a gift code, while those playing for free will have their account upgraded.
"In just the last month, our players enjoyed over 650 million minutes of HoN! We have an average of 30,000 people playing at any given time and daily concurrent peaks of over 50,000 players," said S2 CEO Marc DeForest in the announcement. "We're looking forward to increasing these numbers by continuing to add game updates and reward systems like the HoNiversary F2P session that keep existing players engaged, and encourage new players to join."
-
Shacknews
replyAlice O'Connor posted a new article, Heroes of Newerth on free play for a week.
To celebrate its first birthday, DotA clone Heroes of Newerth is welcoming new players and letting them play free until May 22.-
Come play for free and see why the community sucks so much!
-
You can be insulted, maligned, and taunted for free!!
-
Best multiplayer "raped by a transvestite" simulation game.
-
-
Yer but LOL is a craptastic game when you compair it to HON but i has a much better nicer player base.
HON is like EVE player base wise some great people but quite alot ready to screw you over or just be a jerk the second to log in.-
[deleted]
-
-
[deleted]
-
-
[deleted]
-
-
[deleted]
-
-
-
-
-
-
have you played HoN? I just don't get this!!
I have hundreds of games played in both games and LoL just feels like garbage compared to HoN. The movement and last hitting and just about everything else feel infinitely better than LoL. I do like the hero design of LoL a bit more but for actual gameplay? there's no comparison.-
-
-
^^^ You are why I don't play HoN.
-
-
Yeah, I'm sure you're a total barrel of sunshine in-game all right.
-
-
"I'm a really nice guy, but here's another personal attack!" : kainen1
-
-
Just made an educated guess based off your posts right here pal. So far, I'm feeling like I made the right call.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
[deleted]
-
-
-
LOL, craptastic?
Does not compute. -
[deleted]
-
-
Mi¢ro$oft $hitbox three-$hitty
-
-
-
[deleted]
-
This man speaks the truth.
-
[deleted]
-
I find LoL much more complex to understand than HoN or DotA. In LoL, you have modifiers like AP/AD that affect ability and hero damage. It's a lot of numbers to understand. Also, different mastery builds, summoner spells, and runes make the game a ton more complex imo.
LoL also just doesn't have the production value that came inherently with DotA (war3 models, skins, sounds, etc.) and built into HoN. HoN is like L4D with every character (boomer, lurker, etc.) being defined by actions, visuals, and sounds.
LoL lacks in production value, especially sound. Characters like Teemo that blow darts can use their ultimate and do hundreds of damage and it looks/sounds like a puny wind coming out of a straw. Design-wise, it just makes the game a lot harder to understand and a lot more complex.
The reason why I prefer DotA/HoN is because everything is simple to understand and I enjoy learning by death. LoL doesn't remove gold upon dying but this is minor. The main reason is trying to understand all the mechanics. Instead of just HP and Mana, different characters have completely unique resource mechanics (Mordekaiser, Vamp, Garen, etc.) that forces ppl to learn so many different things. I'm not a fan of that design-choice so I try to stay away from LoL.
-
-
if you have played both games extensively, like I have, you can absolutely not say that LoL plays better than HoN in any way. I understand you can have your opinion, but LoL feels like it's in molasses and it plays like complete shit compared to HoN. I don't think this is a matter for discussion.
-
[deleted]
-
[deleted]
-
-
-
-
-
Several DotA clone developers use the term MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena). This confuses most people, who know them MOBAs as "DotA clones." No 'proper' name seems to stick.
It is quite fun though, harkening back to the merrye olde days of "Doom clones."-
I propose: Single Unit RTS
-
[deleted]
-
Well, *you* are controlling a single unit. Multiplayer SURTS? :P
-
DotA clones are more tactical action-RPG than RTS. It is difficult to mentally separate the genre from its roots, though.
-
[deleted]
-
This is only true for DOTA and HON.
-
-
-
-
-
-
When I played HoN, it was pretty much a DoTA ripoff with new models and names for everything. Maybe that's changed but they are still pretty much clones of DoTA with some variations.
-
[deleted]
-
-
It's code for shitty community/avoid.
-
-
[deleted]
-
Seems like kind of a weird point. That's like saying people who play a FPS game would never ever move on to another FPS game because they're similar. Or that people wouldn't play WoW because they already have Everquest. If the game is fun and/or if it improves on the genre and/or if it's advertised well, people will play it. Variety is the spice of life.
-
[deleted]
-
I'd completely disagree with you if it weren't for the fact that it's always the same three-pronged map with 3 towers in each lane thing.
Not taking the map into consideration, I'd say the differences between FPSs and MOBAs are pretty much the same. Of course HoN is a bit of an exception, as it started out having the a lot of the same heroes and items as DotA.
-
-
-
[deleted]
-
-
And you do realize that Icefrog helped make HoN as well, right? Or are you just a lemming like most fanboys who go with the hype? That said, HoN is fun, I've been playing it for over a year now (beta), and I tried LoL and couldn't enjoy it for the life of me after giving it multiple chances. Lack of features, lack of graphics, gameplay pace, item purchasing menu, etc. were all off in my opinion. Many people enjoy LoL...that's their choice, good for them. I enjoy HoN, and if DotA 2 offers something that HoN doesn't have, or is even better than it, then I might try it out if there's a free weekend or something. But to state that a game will be good just because of one team member is shallow. I put a lot of faith in Chris Taylor, for example and though Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance was the best thing since chocolate chip cookies, Supreme Commander 2 was horrendous and dumbed down, Similar games, completely different quality though. So just wait it out, try it when it comes out, and if you enjoy it, great. If you don't, then at least you didn't get your expectations so high nothing would satisfy you.
-
-
-
I'll check it out, but I like the changes in LoL a lot more than DotA, and the last news about Dota 2 is that it aims to be literally an exact clone of DotA
-
[deleted]
-
[deleted]
-
[deleted]
-
I got really excited about the DotA 2 article in GI a while back. Having never played the first one, I looked into the sub-genre and got addicted to LoL for about 8 months. I currently have no plans to ever play another MOBA game in my life, but maybe I'll change my tune by the time DotA 2 comes out...
-
-
-
WHY? IS THERE GENITALIA IN IT OR SOMETHING????
-
Yeah, I'm not a fan of the new shop, but I'm getting used to it. That, and all the new popup's when you place a cursor over an ability...I need to look into disabling them, or minimizing them. I already know every hero's abilities off the top of my head at this point. That said, the info. provided is quite good, just wish it didn't take up so much screen space, that's all.
-
-
