How To Watch Heroes of the Storm eSports

Gone are the days of the quarterback yelling plays the team in front of thousands of cheering fans. Now the field is a stage in an area, and the players are all facing computer screens and wearing headsets. With the advent of the internet, how we play and even participate in games is changing almost daily and the popularity of eSports is on the rise. MOBA giant League of Legends reports that the World Championship finals in 2013 attracted 32 million viewers on their twitch.tv stream of the event, compared to the NBA finals of the same year, which only drew in 26.3 million viewers.

Despite the low ratings they received when broadcasting the Heroes of The Dorm 2015 tournament, ESPN has plans to continue coverage of the collegiate level Heroes of the Storm competition in 2016.

Heroes of the Storm is a unique MOBA where teams share experience thus making matchups a fast paced 20 minutes fight to the finish. Though there is a lot to follow once you understand what's happening in the game, the chaos all starts to look like beautiful poetry in motion. To help figure out what you are watching, I have created this guide to help follow along a professional match.

I don’t play games so why should I watch?

Even if the idea of playing Heroes of the Storm, or any other game for that matter competitively sounds daunting, it’s still possible to appreciate the spectacle of professionals playing without ever touching a mouse. Featuring over 40 unique Heroes, no matchup is ever the same and each game is filled with exciting moments for viewers to enjoy from start to finish.

What are the basics of the game?

The gameplay of Heroes of the Storm is simple enough to understand the basics, but the devil is in the details -- from early game objective steals, to late game picks the diverse strategies and coordination required as the match develops is what’s exciting to watch. Heroes of the Storm, like other games in the MOBA genre consists of two teams of 5 players attempting to break into each other’s bases and destroy their corresponding cores.

Before the match starts, each player chooses from one of the 40+ selectable heroes that all have different skills at their disposal to add to the complexity of the team’s composition. Players are assisted by waves of A.I. minions that march down lanes to attack each team’s defensive towers and forts. Defeating minions and forts grants experience points for the entire team allowing the heroes to gain new abilities and grow in strength. Players must remain in the vicinity of the minions, or the lanes, to be granted experience from the minions or towers.

Each player on the team specializes in a specific role in a match, much like a running back or goalie has a specific role on their team. Support role characters bring defensive skills like damage reduction and shields, while other roles like ranged assassins are able to dish out massive amounts of damage in short bursts of time. These types of characters stay in the lanes for the majority of the game in order to gain an advantage in experience points over the other team. Other roles on the team include the warrior, who is a hero with a high health pool and able to take a lot of damage without dying, and the specialist, a combination character who is adept at securing objectives and dealing damage to structures.

As players spend their time mowing down enemy minions and dodging each other’s abilities, they level up as well as compete for map based objectives. These objectives typically spawn a boss like minion to push down the enemy team’s lane for them. Once a team has destroyed all the enemies towers and forts in a lane they are free to attack the core of the opposing team. If a team’s core is destroyed, they lose.

What should I pay attention to during the match?

There are four important things to pay attention to in a match:The draft, minor objectives, map objectives, and late game kills.

Watching teams draft their ultimate dream composition for the map they are playing on can be more exciting than the match itself. Seeing players sweat when their precious team combo has one of its foundational characters banned out the door, or seeing a perfectly executed team fight, you know it’s going to be exciting.

Minor objectives are things like mercenary camps or a boss that will attack enemy towers and forts once they have been defeated and captured. When captured at the right time these minions can turn the tide of a game in favor of a losing team. In the animation below, you can see Falstad barrel roll in and uses Mighty Gust to push the Red team away from the capture point and steal the boss objective for the Blue team.

Another exciting aspect of Heroes of the Storm is map objectives. Every three or four minutes in the match, the map objective will spawn and be available to be captured. Map objectives force teams to make a decision to either leave their lanes to go capture the objective, or stay in lane to collect precious experience points and gain a level advantage over the other team.

Most importantly, as heroes gain levels, the time it takes to respawn after a death increases. Which means when a hero dies on minute 17 in the game, they are out of the game for a much longer time than if they were to die in the first two minutes. So when you see a team setting up for a kill later in the game, it will be an important play.

Where can I watch these games?

Professional Heroes of the Storm matches take place every week leading up to regional championships, as well as a world championship at Blizzcon in November. A more complete schedule can be found here.

The most popular format to watch eSports is on the streaming websites such as twitch.tv and YouTube. Currently there is no single channel that you can tune into to watch, but there are online content creators that cast and record the games.

Spectators can tune in to the live streams of games as they are happening on twitch, or they can view the Video On Demand after the matches have ended and they are made available.

Heroes of the Storm is a fun and exciting game that requires a lot of strategy and team coordination. When taken seriously, watching it played professionally is just as exciting any full contact sport.