A Message From Alan Dabiri - Heroes Game Director Moving On

[Nerraw]

A Message From Alan Dabiri
Alan Dabiri has announced that he's moving on to another project within Blizzard. We wish him all the best in his future endeavours.

In my 20-plus years at Blizzard, I’ve had the privilege of working on many awesome Blizzard games in roles ranging from software engineer to technical director to game director. Across my many roles and games, my experience working on Heroes of the Storm ranks among the best of my development career. I’ve witnessed Heroes’ evolution from a StarCraft II mod to the amazing game you see today. Heroes’ development has been fueled by the shared excitement of our team and all of you in the community, and the game we’ve built together is the game I play almost every night.

One of the best things about developing Heroes is the fact that this team is not afraid to try new things while always striving to learn and grow. It’s been part of our DNA from the very beginning, and it’s through years of experimentation that we’ve hit our stride both as a development team, and as a game. This is possible because Heroes has an exceptional development team of both Blizzard veterans and fresh faces who are all highly engaged with the game we’re making, and the players we’re making it for.

It’s in this spirit of trying new things that I want to let everyone know that a few months ago, I accepted an opportunity to transition off my role as Heroes’ game director to heed Blizzard’s call and begin a new adventure elsewhere within the company. The game director has always been one part of the overall leadership team that drives Heroes forward and it’s been a privilege to work among some of the best game developers at every level on the team all the way up to our production director, Kaéo Milker. Leaving a team and game that I love is incredibly difficult, but seeing the steady strength, creativity, and commitment that Kaéo and the design, engineering, and art leadership teams consistently bring to Heroes has given me more than enough confidence to make this decision. I trust that the game is in the very best hands and their work these past few months has only reinforced my belief.

They’ve released awesome new heroes like Yrel, Whitemane, Mephisto, and now Mal’Ganis, while building on the themed content drops that let the team do fun things that only Heroes can do. They brought the smackdown (plus my favorite mount, the Luchihuahua!) with Nexomania, finally brought an epic slice of Azeroth into the Nexus with the Alterac Pass Battleground, and joined the Raven Lord’s forces with the Fall of King’s Crest. On top of that, the team has also released awesome reworks like Raynor and Brightwing while adding exciting updates like third ban and Team League improvements. With so many awesome content and feature updates, you can see why I believe that the team has brought us the best year of Heroes of the Storm so far.

And they’re not done yet. Heroes has one of the most passionate and dedicated development teams I’ve had the pleasure of working with, and they have a ton of exciting new content in development. I can’t wait for you all to see what they have in store for the rest of this year and beyond. You can bet that I’ll be right there enjoying it with you as it’s released, too. I’m sure you’ll agree when I say that Heroes is in a great place and I promise that it’s in the hands of the best possible people to continue driving it forward. Kaéo and the Heroes team are people who play almost every night who also happen to get to work on making the game what it is today. With our continued input and support, they’ll keep doing what they do best by making Heroes of the Storm the most awesome game it can possibly be.

I just want to sign off by saying thank you to all of you. I’ve had an incredible time working on this game and seeing you bring the battlegrounds to life every day. I’m so grateful for the enthusiasm you’ve brought to Heroes and all the changes you’ve encouraged us to make. I know the team deeply appreciates the feedback you share, so please keep it coming—and as always, I’ll see you in the Nexus!

-Alan

[DesoPL]

I don't like it personally.

[Hollycakes]

He's a really nice person. He answered 3 of my tweets @ gamescom that year and seemed to have a really good attitude in the videos he replied with. I wish him well. Hopefully we can soon hear about these inside games they are making. Guessing Kaéo is taking over as he mentions him so much.

[Remus88Romulus]

2 game directors left in a few years. Initial thought it's not a good sign. I hope the replacement is awesome.

[Deleted]

Looking at the support and laning changes late last year I don't think the game moved in the right direction under him, but it's difficult to assess where individual decisions were made. Also the 'Tracer and Genji everywhere and way OP' phase - happy Grubby mentioned them in his goodbye - lasted way too long.

Still, as long as the arts team and the Hero designers continue to do a great job, I'll check the game out now and then. Hopefully, after mobility and burst emphasis, the pendulum swings back and HotS will become more strategic again.

[ro9ue]

Hopefully its to WoW because they need people for class design lol. (And Heroes has been doing some really interesting shit)

[Theoris]

Sad to see him leave the Heroes team. He will be missed.

[Trumpcat]

2 game directors left in a few years. Initial thought it's not a good sign. I hope the replacement is awesome.

It's different when Blizzard asks him to take a new role within the company. He's not saying anything about it, which may mean it is to work on one of their unannounced projects. Maybe his talents will work better on a larger game than a MOBA, it's not a bad sign.

[ManiaCCC]

2 game directors left in a few years. Initial thought it's not a good sign. I hope the replacement is awesome.

All RTS veterans are moving to another project. I doubt they are moved into Diablo project, so it's very possible blizzard is working on another RTS game. That would be a good sign.

[The Stormbringer]

HotS has been a pretty solid game. I wonder what he's moving to?

[Ealyssa]

Initial thought it's not a good sign.

Extremely strange thought process I would say.

That the HotS Game Director is doing so well that I was put in charge of a "secret" project is actually a good signs.

-The sign that he did well and Blizzard trust him in the future
-The sign that they aren't afraid to transition the lead to someone else. Meaning that the team is indeed strong.
-The sign that HotS is doing fine as you don't make that kind of announcement in the middle of a storm. (pun intended)

Software leadership come and goes, that's how it is, that's how it always will be. How it happens is the important part, not that it happened.

[Nienor]

Is this a HotS page or do we speak for another game?
Everyone talking about how solid and good HotS is when those of us who actually play the game know how bad it really is.
Where should I start....
Should I mention the abysmal match making
the horrible hero balance
the stale meta
the inexistent ladder
the painful procedure of replay watching
the atrocious report system
the slightly improved but still intolerable way of rejoining a game after a disconnect
the undesired map rework
the uninspired, boring and truly slow latest hero additions
the unorganized pro-scene where top teams cant even find sponsors
and many other problems....
To me this move seems like blizzard is pulling the plug off. They are businessmen after all. They see the fail and they pull resources out of it.
Although I have to admit I don't understand what use they have for a game director who totally failed in directing his game...

[DesoPL]

Tbh Kaeo Milker is working in blizzard since 2001, first quality assurance tester for WC3 and then game producer for SC2 Wings Of Liberty and senior game producer for SC2 Heart Of The Swarm.

Is it a good sign? Maybe, but for now at least we see lots of empty promises from J Allen Brack and rest of the crew... Let's wait until Blizzcon, what Kaeo have to say about HOTS. But i agree, the future is not bright as blizz try to show. As mentioned @Nienor most issues are match making, replay watching and reconnect.

[RH92]

I honestly think the game is dead, at least for me it is. Anytime I log in to play few games I get disgusted even when winning.

Meta is stale for over a year and people still have no clue about strategy in this game. That means you end up with match quality equal to a coin toss and same Heroes in every game boring you to death.

I think they fucked up greatly around the Heroes 2.0 with new overpowered additions and unloading the 'cool' stuff without substance. I mean, this year they are releasing a lot of requested Heroes, but it is way too late for anybody to care at this stage.

[Hell-Nicø]

Is it me.. or all these departures at blizzard are starting to be a bit worrisome..

[Ghazan Julio]

All the games feel so repetitive and share so many features it's basically the same thing to me from WoW down to Hearthstone they just want your damn money. They do not care about their fans. They probably don't even like their fans. They certainly don't listen.

[Nerraw]

Is it me.. or all these departures at blizzard are starting to be a bit worrisome..

As far as I know, the only publizised departures to actually leave the company have been from the WoW team and the couple of guys from Hearthstone who started their own company. All the people with RTS roots have merely moved to new and undisclosed roles within the company.

*fingers crossed*

[caervek]

Good riddance, hopefully his replacement will be better, he was a nice guy but woefully ill-equipped to replace Dustin Browder.

Hopefully his year in charge of HotS will be remembered as a bump in the road and not the start of the decline

[Remus88Romulus]

Good riddance, hopefully his replacement will be better, he was a nice guy but woefully ill-equipped to replace Dustin Browder.

Hopefully his year in charge of HotS will be remembered as a bump in the road and not the start of the decline

I agree and hope you are right. I feel like this Blizzcon for Hots is gonna be the "win or lose" path. Reveal the top 2 most wanted heroes that is Imperius and Deathwing and some new features like better matchmaking. And release heroes to a normal schedule than the horrible 6-8 week schedule. 5 weeks is okey I guess.

Reveal the two most wanted heroes in a spine chilling cinematic, make the masses there roar in excitement, feel the ultimate hype and we are good to go.

[Dravec]

Is this a HotS page or do we speak for another game?
Everyone talking about how solid and good HotS is when those of us who actually play the game know how bad it really is.
Where should I start....
Should I mention the abysmal match making
the horrible hero balance
the stale meta
the inexistent ladder
the painful procedure of replay watching
the atrocious report system
the slightly improved but still intolerable way of rejoining a game after a disconnect
the undesired map rework
the uninspired, boring and truly slow latest hero additions
the unorganized pro-scene where top teams cant even find sponsors
and many other problems....
To me this move seems like blizzard is pulling the plug off. They are businessmen after all. They see the fail and they pull resources out of it.
Although I have to admit I don't understand what use they have for a game director who totally failed in directing his game...

They will hate you, for you speak the truth. All the top streamers and even some pros are quitting because of how bad the game is now.