how much longer

[dahawk]

with the new heroes up on mmo-champon how much longer do we think it will be till the game is out

[Tziva]

I think the estimations from people whose opinions I trust are still mid-2015 at the earliest. They are guesses, but from people who tend to be good at guessing this sort of thing based on the evidence available.

On one hand, the game is pretty polished, looks nice, is totally playable and rarely crashed. However, there are a lot of bugs still. They are also still tweaking the UI quite a bit. A lot of the art assets and skins are incomplete and still pending updates (we saw some hero updates at PAX for example), and there are still a TON of Heroes that they haven't put into the game yet that I think they want in there by launch.

That said, it wouldn't surprise me if the game went into a wider beta very soon and an open beta before the end of the year. For me an open beta and launch are effectively the same thing in the context of a game like this; the only difference is that when bugs happen they can just shrug and say, "well, it's beta."

[Sumatran]

I think the estimations from people whose opinions I trust are still mid-2015 at the earliest. They are guesses, but from people who tend to be good at guessing this sort of thing based on the evidence available.

On one hand, the game is pretty polished, looks nice, is totally playable and rarely crashed. However, there are a lot of bugs still. They are also still tweaking the UI quite a bit. A lot of the art assets and skins are incomplete and still pending updates (we saw some hero updates at PAX for example), and there are still a TON of Heroes that they haven't put into the game yet that I think they want in there by launch.

That said, it wouldn't surprise me if the game went into a wider beta very soon and an open beta before the end of the year. For me an open beta and launch are effectively the same thing in the context of a game like this; the only difference is that when bugs happen they can just shrug and say, "well, it's beta."

With LoL (revenue in 2013 is $624mil) the 2nd most profitable game in 2013, and WoW 7th (revenue in 2013 is $213mil) you really think they would take that long to get a MOBA game out? WoW used to be first, by a large margin, but has slipped a lot. MOBAs right now are hot, it would be unwise for Blizzard to wait that long imo to put one out.

Stats are taken from http://www.superdataresearch.com/blo...-games-market/

[Tziva]

With LoL (revenue in 2013 is $624mil) the 2nd most profitable game in 2013, and WoW 7th (revenue in 2013 is $213mil) you really think they would take that long to get a MOBA game out? WoW used to be first, by a large margin, but has slipped a lot. MOBAs right now are hot, it would be unwise for Blizzard to wait that long imo to put one out.

I know how successful LoL is but I don't think that magically makes Blizzard faster at development. They are already notorious slow on top of being very committed to making sure their games have a very high level of polish and stability (although obviously the latter doesn't always end up being the case) before launch. It's not like Blizzard would be sitting around on a finished game arbitrarily waiting; they'll release it when it's ready; what is "wise" isn't really relevant. Hell, if we were going on wisdom alone, it would have been released a couple years ago.

Effectively, if the game goes into open beta this year though, it doesn't really matter when the proper release is since anyone who wants to play it will be playing it then.

[Jigga93]

early-mid 2015 would be my guess.

[Deleted]

2015 sounds about right

[Stevecow]

You guys are probably right on the 2015 official release but I think the game will be in open beta before winter 2014, Open beta is just as a good as a release in my opinion. I don't mind playing games with bugs as long as none are game breaking or give major advantages.

[ErothTV]

The game will be in 2014.

[Bonsaii]

I think the estimations from people whose opinions I trust are still mid-2015 at the earliest. They are guesses, but from people who tend to be good at guessing this sort of thing based on the evidence available.

On one hand, the game is pretty polished, looks nice, is totally playable and rarely crashed. However, there are a lot of bugs still. They are also still tweaking the UI quite a bit. A lot of the art assets and skins are incomplete and still pending updates (we saw some hero updates at PAX for example), and there are still a TON of Heroes that they haven't put into the game yet that I think they want in there by launch.

That said, it wouldn't surprise me if the game went into a wider beta very soon and an open beta before the end of the year. For me an open beta and launch are effectively the same thing in the context of a game like this; the only difference is that when bugs happen they can just shrug and say, "well, it's beta."

Even more so, there is a ton of balancing to still be done.

[Tziva]

Even more so, there is a ton of balancing to still be done.

Yeah, but I think they need more of the Heroes in the game before they can even begin to think about balance. Doesn't do much good for them to focus on balancing the ~20 Heroes in if they plan to add 20 more before launch.

But yes, that is also true.

[voxfini]

It will be out when it's out.