Death of a Game: Heroes of Newerth

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Head to thld.co/geologie_nerdslayer_0822 and take their free skincare quiz to save up to 70% off on your 30 days trial. Even better, join their new Geologie Galaxie community for more daily tips, giveaways and more at discord.gg/geologie. Thanks to Geologie for sponsoring today’s video!

[@Akuretaki_Nikolay]

BigBrother BigBrother BigBrother BigBrother BigBrother BigBrother BigBrother BigBrother BigBrother BigBrother BigBrother BigBrother BigBrother

[@ZennExile]

You couldn't be more wrong about the HoN community being toxic. And you missed the main feature that elevated LoL and DOTA2 into mainstream social media and left HoN on the fanforums. Match making tomFukery. They made it easier for everyone to get a bite of chicken dinner. Children prefer random odds and that sharp twang of dopamine they get for winning when they know they should lose. HoN didn't play no mess. Case closed. Kids pay the light bill. Story as old as consumerism. But toxicity again, you could not be more wrong. I smurfed that whole community. Talking bout TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA BUBBLES. Waxin new mids by the slice. There was no pair of cheeks in that entire community that didn't fear a noname rolling TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA BUBBLES. I gave a small country worth a people PTSD. I conjured up some of the most based internet cancer the world has ever mfkin seen. Is what I am tellin you right now. I riled these kids up like it was my job, FOR YEARS. Never got old, still isn't. But no matter how insanely abusive and belligerent HoN players got in the heat of the moment, it was gone by the next game. DOTA2 and LoL incorporated the idea of corporately sterilizing the community of offensive communication into their business model. HoN was viewed internally as "unmarketable" because the players would rip on each other saying words and phrases their "ideal" investor and marketing partners would find objectionable. They ran into trouble trying to keep filters ahead of kids coming up with new ways of suggesting you go carbon neutral by cuddling up with a dirt blankie. So instead they monetized the idea that they were "making the community less toxic". It's all a lie of course. All they did was with LoL force the players into the moderation roll and left them to their own delusions and monetized participation while secretly seeding pools of repeat offenders together. And DOTA2 just used the opportunity to lower perceived matchmaking times and corporate palatability by openly declaring low priority pools of players flagged for "misconduct". As awful as people pretend HoN was, nothing compares to low priority lifers in DOTA2 or hordes of LoL sockpuppet superstars trying to avoid their naughty timeouts and game the season pass for skins. These larger publishers applied LCD elementary school logic to their marketability metrics and take advantage of kids who saw the MOBA scene, wanted in, but couldn't, or had no interest in, skill development. Like the ITT tech version of a formal education. ANYBODY CAN DO IT, if we rig the matchmaking and design the game to heavily favor comeback mechanics and item builds while removing any and all skill checks from the leveling and resource harvesting process... but I digress. HoN couldn't have killed more than a house cat with it's pitiful levels of degenerate toxicity is what I am trying to say. Kids in Low Priority DOTA2 especially... they are like Australian fauna. Just out there with deadly weapons pointed at each other from all directions. Mass appeal and competition are incompatible. Trash talk is part of adult competition. Kids can't handle emotional turmoil or challenges to ego. It's all fake boobs. Gonna be pulling calcified implants out of this industry for decades...

[@Captinstark3999]

League

[@thesquaremonger]

Implying people who play mobas care about skincare.

[@LegendaryMochi]

I was a VFX Artist at Frostburn. The feeling in the studio was a mixed bag. Lots of talented, but scarred S2 devs working on a sinking ship that once brought them joy. We did what we could, but the writing was on the wall. Its a weird badge of honor to see a game you worked on in a "death of a game" series! Good video!!

[@gendengraven5049]

as a Devoted HoN player since 2011, to its final day, I would like to thank you for the amazing effects that not every MOBA can replicate. Your work colored my life. Thank you very much.

[@acedeucetray7972]

My FAVOURITE Computer Game In Existence

[@StabbyMcStabStab]

Changed mine, and many friends lives (we'll assume for the better why not). Thank you! (These are my favourites, extra thank you if you worked on them! Jereziah, Circe, Lord Salforis, Moraxus, Parasite, Sand Wraith, Scout, Chipper, Dark Lady)

[@magnem1043]

Still the peak moba at its best

[@yamoonallemoon1080]

You guys can come back to HON ! It's running again by players'support! And it works fine!! Public matchmaking and everything! Search KZbin and watch (HoN OMG) channel videos about how to get the new client (:

[@gaarakabuto1]

The fact that after all those years and still ice frog is hidden behind that blue frog jpeg after pretty much him creating a whole genre that came to be the most succesful genre in e-sports, is beyond me.

[@sudonim7367]

Icefrog's name is known, his face isn't. Current speculation is that he's wyk lmaooo

[@catboomer3332]

He hides from angry dota 2 fans lmao

[@dieptrieu6564]

@@sudonim7367 WHat does wyk stand for?

[@ygodbz]

@@dieptrieu6564 wykrhym reddy who is an employee at valve, he's usually the one who posts about upcoming patches

[@sudonim7367]

@@dieptrieu6564 Wykrhm Reddy, dota2's unofficial community manager

[@deepindialogue5577]

Man. What a hell of a game. One of the first games I played was DOTA on Warcraft 3, so when HoN came out in 2010 I was naturally drawn to it. Over 12 years, I played 7,000+ hours, and let me tell you; there isn't a game alive today that will EVER have the sheer toxicity that this game did, but in the most funniest and competitive way POSSIBLE. I'm from Australia, so our community was rather small (50-100 players), everyone knew everyone and each game was so HEATED and competitive. There wasn't a better feeling than ganking somebody who had been shit-talking all game and dropping a crying baby taunt on them. The most fun ive ever had. I wish it never ended.

[@gendengraven5049]

There's no other MOBA than can taunt the player and drop a trash bin from the sky while blasting everyone on the match with announcer saying "KISS MY ASS" in Jon St. John voice. very iconic

[@Angstadillio]

It was the best.

[@dandihardiansyah8533]

Failed taunt "LAUGHABLE"😂

[@gendengraven5049]

@@dandihardiansyah8533 no, Laughable was tower deny, failed taunt was NOT TODAY DIRTBAGGGGGGGGGGG hahahahah

[@dandihardiansyah8533]

@@gendengraven5049 well its been a year tho i forgot but thanks

[@bjni]

man, I remember having macros to drop after killing people in chat too SIT DOWN SON etc lol. it was so toxic but it was great

[@raphaelforkel7759]

Ahhh HoN. The only multiplayer-only game I've ever played. I bought it when I was drunk during the winter holidays. Forgot which year, but before 3.0. Loss after loss, followed by reading entire essays for an evening to learn just one of the optimal item builds for one character. You don't play HoN, you study it. And once you powered through the incredibly hostile community and started to get those sweet kill streaks, you'd never looked at any other MOBA. Not only do you need to last-hit mobs to get ANY exp, you also had to friendly-fire on your own mobs to deny the enemy experience. This meant your first enemies in the game were always your own team mates, with whom you competed for resources especially early game. The winner was usually the team that didn't sabotage each other. Your "stole" a kill? Reported for racism. You have slightly misused your skills during a team fight? Reported for racism. You went on a racist tirade in chat? That's normal, carry on.

[@firstnamesurname2482]

That's basically what Dota 1 does. Minus the wc3 engine and the noodle connection.

[@Zukure]

@@firstnamesurname2482 the best thing about HoN was that you could reconnect and there were essentially no hacks that i'm aware of atleast, in the dota wc3 literally everyone used maphack lol. Ranked aswell obviously.

[@KoeSeer]

i uninstall HoN 5 days after I bought it back then. I can't stand the playerbase. I understand creep last hit and creep deny. it's also core mechanic of DotA. But man, stop yelling at mic because I missed a creep. HoN players are basically the 2nd rate DotA players that were bullied in DotA

[@Campaigner82]

@@KoeSeer Man….if you’re not already good, then you will NEVER start playing when people are SO incredibly hostile

[@Christopherseander92]

@@Zukure I remember a hack that made your view more zoomed out

[@cattysplat]

This game had the exact same aesthetics and feel of the original Dota in Warcraft 3, right down to the menus. The game embraced it's toxicity, even it's characters, skin voices and announcers all ripped the piss out of anyone who died. It was very much a product of 2000s internet, where online gaming was the wild west and if you wanted to survive you had to out bully the bullies. When Dota and League started moderating their game it went a long way to fostering a community instead of a hostile competition.

[@NinjapowerMS]

The game also had awesome skins that I wish Dota 2 had. Ultimate Avatars was sick AF where your hero would drastically change as he levels up.

[@bergmansvea8739]

I had a difficult time adapting to being friendly when I quit HoN, it was truly a crucible.

[@lordastaroth4586]

That's right. 😂

[@eldars6450]

I think you described it perfectly, the game has a special charm of that era of time that can never be replicated. Something about the brutality and the rawness of the game is more magical than DotA 2 and LoL could ever be but maybe we've just grown older and become nostalgic

[@magnem1043]

raw interactions that is not possible anymore, pure enjoyment and suffering put a smile on my face

[@crosbydunn5952]

I gave up first blood as Chronos. I hear someone speaking in an Australian accent, "Looks like Chronos is on ward duty." For the rest of the game, if I ever did anything, whether it be killing a hero or dying, they called me 'Little Kronos' and talked to me in a baby voice. Either that or they would accuse me of being bad at the game because I was lying in my bed playing one-handed because the other hand had to keep eating donuts. I've got roughly the same amount of hours in both HoN and Dota 2, but I've got more memories from HoN. Most people will say the HoN community is toxic, but no one says the HoN community is boring.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

It's fucked up but I laughed too.

[@alextalionis4845]

This comment made me laugh and then want to cry. There was so much rage and trash talk, but looking back now it was exactly that. Entertaining nights. So many of my games ended with "All right, you hate me and I hate you, but let's group up at mid and see what we can actually accomplish together".

[@TheSuperappelflap]

ah the good old days on the internet when you could have some fun without getting reported and temp banned by little crybabies

[@JewTube001]

and it went all the way to the top because CEO himself was toxic and trolled people on the forums. i remember a time when devs made a meme with the S2 gorilla smiling and saying something about collecting player's tears for the bottle.

[@jasonli2965]

@@JewTube001 that is so funny i love it

[@theshane7413]

I still miss that game. The artstyle, the music, the voices of the heroes. The whole package was made with love and an eye for detail.

[@ELEKTROZARYA]

damn me too. Also I was so young back in days :D

[@zdenekkrcal9066]

you can still play it, community developers still update the game try to find HoN 2 on youtube.

[@tripios]

you can still play type project kongor on google

[@hamza0610]

It's called project kongor

[@soldier22881]

and dont forget the beautiful hot female heroes and skins 😍😍 league used to have hot champs but rito made sure to ruin them along with adding vanguard to make me uninstall

[@ES21007]

HoN was my MoBA growing up in the Philippines. Back in grade school, we all started out with DoTA, but when the new players came in, if people didn't switch to LoL, it was HoN. I can kind of understand why people were toxic. Most people who played HoN used internet cafes where we were, meaning while we were fighting for free or at very little cost to us comparatively, these were people who were spending a fair amount of money for their game. Some of them weren't the richest either, as even people who lived in poorer barrios and barangays would crowd the cafes for their online gaming fix. I won't judge them for using their money for gaming, but man did it explain why they were venomous to basically everyone. Though I will admit, my friends weren't exactly the paragon of purity either. But hey, that was life online. I witnessed and experienced the toxicity first hand, because god it was awful. But they were also great memories for me. Going to an internet cafe together with my friends to have a few rounds, having entire sleepovers dedicated to HoN time... I was the worst of us. But those times were some of the best. ... I miss those times. Seeing this here, it feels like a part of myself is dead and gone. But it was a good reminisence. Thanks man.

[@Apudurangdinya]

Yep, lived in a poor country too and most of US didn't have PC so internet cafe is number 1 choice for gamers, it was 10x more fun than now when i play alone on my PC, the atmosphere is just different, we are poor kid but it's kinda sweet little toxic circle we had, i still remembered laughing, thrashing and joking around with my friends, even back then the Kids who can afford PC at their house still go to netcafe bc it's so much more fun

[@Krynillix]

Now that makes sense. Since most of the toxicity I have seen are SEA and Eastern Europe where internet cafe culture is very common

[@MJ-ze3vw]

@@Krynillix How is internet cafe culture common in Eastern Europe, lmfao.

[@bluerendar2194]

@@MJ-ze3vw It actually is/was though?

[@chikin6146]

@@Krynillix From experience in Internet cafes in Dota 1, most people there knows each other and are regulars and often fuck around screaming, trashtalking each others for fun. I think that carried over to online multiplayer games where instead of screaming over the stall trashtalking a friend for fun, you all chat a complete stranger from across the globe trashtalking them for fun

[@chinoborrego4828]

i think you overlooked an importat thing that killed it: near the last 4 years of life, they regionalized their already small player base. Making the pools smaller, made it so that Queue times went higher, especially for those with high mmr. This made lots of players turn over and go into DotA2. We have to take into account that most HoN players, got there from starting MOBAs with the OG DotA from warcraft 3, and HoN was the most one to one game of it, and many loved the competitivenes and complexity HoN doubled down on, but when Queue times got stupid long, well, the best alternative was Dota2

[@dj_arielvarienlabitadjr.9081]

Indeed

[@axeman89757]

agreed, i always felt it was weird to split up the playerbase, and since most of the playerbase arent in my region, i had to stop playing due to ridiculous queue times

[@JojieCerteza]

@@axeman89757 i feel the same about dota2,. stopped playing it 3-4 years ago, because when i'm ready to play. no one was there.

[@MangaGamified]

The price tag was the deciding factor in the PH, it maybe cheap in USA but it's not in PH, especially when your average moba players are teens or young adults. I was really hoping forward to the open/beta or launch, but ironically it literally killed it in PH and everyone just stick to League. It did went free to play but it was far too late, no shop had it installed and no one plays it. I think League will still come ahead even if HoN went F2P from the beginning cause of League's progression system(even if a little), people would just smurf in HoN, the brass at S2 being trolls themselves wouldn't help.

[@sai269]

This is actually very wrong, they never split the servers. When HoN was in beta all players Latin and North america all played together. At one point they split the servers up so latin players were not with the rest of North America again but remerged us some few months before Moria was added and they never split the server again. At least the last 6-7 years were with a complete merged server, which is one of the main reasons this game failed. I know this as fact as I played the last day the servers closed and out of the last 4 hon games of my life only 1 of my last 16 teammates spoke English. All of my friends quit because of the daily jaja trolls we had to deal with. The reason the ques were so long during the end is no one was playing, it had nothing to do with servers being split.

[@alexandriaacord9895]

I never played HoN, but hearing about the devs “offloading” it to another company that essentially just sat on it really reminds me of what’s happening to Neopets now. It seems to be playing the game of “let’s try to be the oldest and last-standing virtual pet community while barely doing anything with our site and leaving it vulnerable to major hacking.” Even as a lifelong fan, I can’t help but think that it’s going to end up on this series very soon, especially after the huge data breach of July 2022.

[@35PHaaton]

Holy shit neopets is still alive? Well damn.....

[@LucasCunhaRocha]

It was even worse in the case of HoN, S2 sold the asian market to Garena and the latin american market to some random small colombian company, it was awful as a brazillian have to be stuck playing on incredibly high pings (because connecting to any latin american country was slower than the original S2 server in Miami) and being forced to interact with the community in spanish which I didn't knew any of it. S2 fractured their small community in 3 pieces, there is no way that was going to work. The worst part was that HoN was a brilliant game, I loved every aspect of it, even the "toxicity" of the players and the balance issues. it was a game for real competitive people something that no other game out there nowadays caters to.

[@gamersrevenge6528]

Yo I'm going home after work today and checking out neopets, I totally forgot about that lol

[@kiara6237]

agreed.

[@danhibiki2]

I remember Deadwood and his 1k physical damage lvl 1 ult. Seeing the screen shake after you punch a chump was always a nice feeling.

[@konstantinkrastev4478]

i wish dota and laeague heroes were half as creative and felt good to play

[@mykhailomiroshnikov]

I remember that, too! Though it's been like 12 years since

[@magnem1043]

still the heaviest feeling single target ult made

[@BachtiarLazuardi]

Don't forget using codex for instant killing

[@AZestyM]

@@magnem1043 Undoubtedly.

[@cyborg-renegade]

Man, I was such a huge Savage fan as a kid (I have no idea how I even found it, given it’s obscurity) and I remember a huge portion of the playerbase having dropped off to try HoN, and I tried it too… that day I learned I hate MOBAs and never went back to either game again lol

[@Kenshiken]

First Savage game was so great and fun to play.

[@Dragonfang1909]

Not sure if it was the same for you but I first picked it up from a pcgamer demo disk. Savage Resurrection was so unfortunate, would love to see it on this series.

[@anarchopupgirl]

I got savage 2 off of a pcgamer demodisk! Wicked memories

[@onisekai547]

@@Kenshiken its still playable as SavageXR, this community even to try bring it to steam

[@Kenshiken]

@@onisekai547 I know man. Tried it several times. Just a ghost town or only sweats left out :(

[@brokenbutterfly5589]

Man, I miss the HoN community. The toxicity got to such an unreal point that no one took it seriously anymore. Every game was a stand up comedy show where you slung the most creative and idiotic insults you had at literally every other person and laughed about it in voice chat. Nowadays we're having community meltdowns over a few random people typing "ggez". It's wild.

[@phiri2091]

Bro you can still play on new Masterserver.. With MM Queue and stuff

[@aFoolsMartyr]

That just sounds horribly exhausting.

[@1EpicMusic]

@@phiri2091 is this true ?

[@RazielGamer4fun1]

@@1EpicMusic it is, we are playing a lot

[@1EpicMusic]

@@RazielGamer4fun1 niceeee I will join 100%

[@Fullychargedevil]

I love how the in-game announcements look like those bowling alley animations

[@guilhermesbm]

HoN was such a big part of my teenage years, i used to play with my friend for hours on end(despite of us being really bad at the game). My mother used to get mad with me for not going out on Friday, just to play Hon with the boys. Well, the end of my high-schools years war kinda close to the last decline of the game, after that, university made us go to different universities in different cities, and we didn't have the time to play anymore. Thats the first time for me that the end of the game had so much impact, so many good memories. (its funny how my group of friends still have some jokes about the game or some matchs that we have played in the past). Despite the toxicity of the community HoN brought us closer.

[@Moofahsuh]

Man HoN was the best. Played since 2011 and probably put at least 5000 hours into the game. It was magical but you were 100% accurate why the game died. From toxicity to the pro scene being a complete crap show and the best players leaving for Dota 2, it was a shame it died. I tried to get into Dota 2 recently but that spark was missing for me. RIP.

[@firstnamesurname2482]

The only thing HoN and to some extent, Dota players can hope is that Valve would buy Frostborn or at least acquire some of it assets and port it to Dota 2. HoN got some neat heroes that would be great if it in Dota.

[@tnecniw]

@@firstnamesurname2482 Also loved the darker design.

[@crazedaf]

@@firstnamesurname2482 Some heroes like Puppet Master were pretty well made.

[@gendengraven5049]

@@firstnamesurname2482 people are hinting Void Spirit voicelines are talking about HoN. look it up, its some interesting theory. other that that we can only hope. atleast port the heroes to DotA.

[@julio4494]

I’m a mid player and totally miss the counter play Nomad provided, the huge ult dmg jump from deadwood, or slowing someone down to oblivion with Arachna

[@Harold046]

Heroes of Newerth has been part of my life for around 10 years.I am now MOBA-less. I tried so hard to get into DOTA2 or League of Legends... but I'm pretty sure many of you guys will get what I mean when I say that it's a bit like getting into cigarettes after having been an heroin addict. It just doesn't do it for me.

[@Harold046]

To expand on that : there are no MOBA around which can pick up the role that HoN played. No MOBA is as competitive as HoN was. And some might say the competitiveness was a problem. Some might criticize the toxicity. Well... if there's one thing Heroes of Newerth taught me, it's that other people's toxicity rarely ever is a problem: but the way you respond to it might be. Heroes of Newerth wasn't just the best competitive playground. It was also the best playground to confront your own stoïcism. I think reading Epictetus and playing Heroes of Newerth is like cheese and red wine : they're both good on their own, but they make the greatest of pairings.

[@nonikita]

I played Dota 1 for 5 years, HoN for about 2 and DotA 2 for about 10 on and off and HotS for a few months. I couldn't get into LoL or Smite or anything else that I tried. DotA 2 is by far the best Moba that ever existed.

[@Harold046]

​@@nonikita I dunno... I tried to get into it again. To me, it seems like everything just goes slower : movement, spells... don't you find that Dota 2's gameplay isn't as quick paced as HoN's ? Because my point isn't really about what Moba is "the best" : that's up to our individual tastes. It was about which Moba was the most dangerously addictive... as fast-paced gameplay is an element of gameplay that more readily makes players enter "the zone". For instance, we both may agree that coffee is the best drug... the fact of the matter is that if you start doing coke, caffeine won't do the trick for you anymore. Similarly... I can agree that Dota 2 is better than HoN, for a lot of reasons. But it just doesn't work for me. It doesn't trigger the flux effect that I can get with games like HoN or Geometry Dash.

[@gendengraven5049]

@@Harold046 Indeed it's very noticable. Blink Dagger vs Portal Key. I need more prepare myself to blink and Axe Berserker Call because theres a chance your enemy will just run on a slight delay. meanwhile in HoN, Legi Taunt and blink is almost an instant.

[@linkw]

@@Harold046 exactly why i cant play lol

[@edwinooi9166]

Was with HoN at the beginning from close beta to around update 3.0. The toxicity was pretty much the norm in SEA region since we all started with Battle LAN of WC3 TFT, there is no proper report function. There was a private server in Malaysia called Blue Server that was created to combat leaver, toxicity and map hacks, where the account registration can only be done with an ISP issued email address (which means one account per household or maybe a few for LAN centers that have multiple connections) BlueServer started its descent right around the introduction of Battle LAN where the lan centers are linked nation wide with other lan centers that employs the same system, the maphack issue became more severe and needed a better solution. That's when Garena came in with its anti cheat system and tunneling feature to improve the P2P connection. But the battle between maphacks and Garena's anticheat basically leapfrogged each other with Garena's anti cheat being broken within 2 days of new map releases. That's when (around year 2007) rumours of the successor of DotA began floating around (LoL created by the first developer of DotA - Guinsoo and HoN is the spiritual successor of DotA backed by the support and blessings of IceFrog). I managed to purchased a close beta keys from the lan center operators to join my friends that had been playing for a couple a months. Around the end of open beta, S2 announced partnership with Garena and the SEA region will be split from the official servers. Garena server players received the perks of F2P, basically serving as the testbed for S2's F2P implementation. Now you gotta understand how bad the Internet connectivity in SEA region, ISP with copper line connection have frequent outages, sometimes a few times every month due to copper line theft and most of the player base are lan centers dwellers. A certain feature that HoN player has been asking is to able to play in offline LAN mode (that was present in WC3 TFT and DotA 2), which S2 dev Mars or maybe Maliken (I might got their name mixed up) promised it is coming but ultimately canceled due to the concern of piracy and cheating. Try and guess what HoN players in the lan centers are playing when there is an Internet outage? DotA 2. Even though DotA 2 graphics and features at that time are way behind HoN at that time, the exposure to DotA 2 during these Internet outages caught HoN players' interest because they see the promising future of DotA 2 from the rapid development and it quickly garners its player base. More and more people are switching because their friends are fully transitioned to DotA 2, initiating the cascading effect. To me the moment that marks the ending of HoN era is when the reigning champion of HoN - team Fnatic.MSI which OG.Notail used to be part of announced around 2012 that they are transitioning to DotA 2. Imagine your reigning champion that won almost all HoN tournaments (shoutout to breakycpk from HoNcast.com, love you) leaving HoN for DotA 2. It is definitely not a good sign as it is showing that the player that loves HoN the most no longer thinks that HoN has a bright future.

[@Treehouse22009]

>"The killstreak rewards contributed to the toxicity" "That seems a bit off? Surely it couldn't be that bad." >SMACKDOWN "Ha, that's pretty funny..." >ROYAL THRASHING "That's...a bit much, but good animati-- >KISS MY ASS "...ah. i see now..."

[@UberKrang]

It even had a taunt that would say "get dumpstered, kid", it was a wild time

[@bigthecat542]

you could taunt someone before you killed them and forcefully change their death animation so that their character turned into a screaming crying baby that exploded after a few seconds. and yes, that death animation change was seen and heard by everyone in the match.

[@MrTrollMedic]

There even used to be one that said "r*pe and pillage" which, understandably, got removed. HoN was a insane thing to witness.

[@ashuri6476]

If theres enough information for a full video or even half of one I would love to see Dawngate covered. I was a tester for the game and immediately got hooked, but unfortunately it was taken away so soon.

[@stryke-jn3kv]

Seconding this. I loved Dawngate so much in the beta to the point were I decided to take a break as surely the full launch would be even better... Yeah. So many innovative ideas that never got the chance to shine like they should have done. The different roles where for some last hitting mattered and others it didn't was especially brilliant in encouraging different skill level of players.

[@darkmindaustin]

I hated MOBAs, before trying out Dawngate. The Devs were friendly, the champs were fun, and it just felt different from the rest of the market. By the time it had come out, I had tried everything out there at least once. and Dawngate actually had me playing on my free time.

[@Tortferngatr]

As someone who also played, agreed. It definitely had potential, though it was also a bit squandered. Might also be interesting to cover the fan projects that came after it and their status, such as Aetherforged and Dreambound, or for that matter Shardbound (CCG made by many of the same devs, with several Dawngate references.) If you need a clue on DG itself, look into the Progression Patch. I’m vaguely convinced that putting off major and needed systems updates for one big super-patch, including the meta-progression systems, created some major quit moments. Useless crafting currency that couldn’t be used to buy anything didn’t help.

[@kdexxdraws6107]

Aw man Dawngate was nice I'd love to see a vid of that

[@sciencethygod]

I second this as well, this is probably my favourite moba to exist, and was very sad when it got shut down so early.

[@Angstadillio]

At the end of the day, regardless of the mismanagement of the company, HoN was the best Moba out there.

[@sudonim7367]

Bruh speaking of toxicity, I remember the HoN forums. The devs and community figurs would literally start drama with the fans (and each other lool) right there on the official forums

[@Kowzorz]

You should have heard Mark yell angrily from his office during games or flame users inside the game. kzbin.info/www/bejne/fXrIg6ahhJKgj80

[@evilleader1991]

what about the head of S2Games being a racist ingame lmao, calling another player the N word lol

[@willichtenstein7071]

HoN: Barely moderates toxicity. Strife: We're going to solve the toxicity problem.

[@CheckTechNow]

they were totally clowsn there.. they paid it tho

[@YourHyness]

I loved how everyone was op. I really enjoyed their bizarre characters they were all very interesting and unique. Will definitely be missed. Was apart of my life while growing up I enjoyed it

[@milansvancara]

exactly, I transitioned to Dota long long ago, but always missed those HoN heroes.. those heroes were much more unique and had better theme. Their spells were much more tailored to fit together. Dota feels like everyone has almost the same spells. Emerald Warden, RA, puppet master, myrmidon, midas... so unique mechanics and spell for each hero

[@cimmerian5194]

@@milansvancara What the hell are you talking about, HoN is literally a copy of dota1 with better graphics and well, they had to modify some stuff not to be a blatant ripoff. I mean, they literally COPIED over 50 heroes with almost same skills and gave them different names. You people are serious mentaloids xD.

[@BloodAzzy]

@nerdSlayer Studios. You can still play hon if you wish. A group of dedicated player reverse enginered the game and builded a new client with online serves and matchmaking.

[@bigthecat542]

if you're going to say this you should probably post the info for how to get into that server, right?

[@sneed622]

@@bigthecat542 look up project Kongor.

[@mariamolly3637]

Man, what a trip. This is the first game you covered that actually had an impact on me. I played a ton in the beta days. I remember getting in when they released Andromeda (Vengeful Spirit) and yeah, it was a toxic pit but it was a great game visually, pretty responsive and smooth to play. I loved the announcers! They even got Duke Nukem's voice actor to make a set. Funny story: I didn't have a credit card at the time and asked a friend to buy me 2 games and I would pay him when the bill arrived. I don't remember how I heard about HoN, but the other game I remember watching someone play here on KZbin and thought it was very cool, even though it was still in Alpha. This other game is a little hidden gem called Minecraft, maybe you guys never heard of it.

[@Abekrampe]

Playing HoN has definitely been a unique experience. I remember falling out with a random guy who happened to live in the same town as me, so after threatening me with an asswooping he deleted his account when he realized he had doxxed himself in his hubris. The meta and the competitiveness the game fostered through the toxicity and will to truly destroy the other players, friend or foe was a wild ride. It was by far the best Dota imitation and the fact that HoN didn’t paywall it’s heroes behind predatory business practices deserves a mention. League, from an entry level, has always been pay to win since new players didn’t have and many still don’t have access to all the heroes. To me HoN was victim to predatory multi billion dollar companies out marketing and not out developing their game and that truly sucks.

[@TheHodeman]

This one was a tough watch, it was my favorite game for so long. I like playing casters and, aside from HoN, most mobas get REALLY scared to have powerful casters. As soon as one even looks like it's emerging in DotA 2 and LoL, they nerf it and make way for all the typical carries. You did a great job. People at least deserved to know why the game didn't take off despite having so many fun heroes.

[@Seroxm13]

Caster is mage, right? If so, I've been a LoL caster main since 2011. Love mages! But they are usually so underpowered compared to fighters/bruisers and assassins... But they are the most fun to me!

[@kingofnamek]

"and nearly forgotten" Me, who just heard of its existence from this video: True, true

[@bt636]

There was a massive amount of "toxicity" in lol/dota as well. I played all three for years and the major difference was in hon you could actually talk back to people trashing you without getting punished yourself. This more often meant people played the game and traded banter instead of sitting in fountain or doing other passive means of griefing like you see all the time in league. Dota had the same thing and even worse since it had a huge russia audience. I never got trash talked in hon half as much as I did playing dota by russians. Also hon being an actual american company instead of selling out to china is huge respect. No one is ever going to look back on the current days with fond memories of silent games and chat filters so restrictive you can't even have a normal conversation. People never complained about "toxicity" when things were actually free, it was only later on when censorship became rampant that suddenly people were made aware of just how bad it all supposedly was. The only thing you need to do to to combat "toxicity" is give people a mute button. Let them police themselves.

[@ortiznikko]

That's a nice sentiment but you are looking at the problem in such a simple manner. Example, one of the kill streak announcement was "Kicked Ass". Now, if we use basic psychology, we know that if ppl see a cookie they might want to eat it (ppl see cuss words and will be more inclined to use them). Alot of little details, like the amount of time it takes to revive or the death animation, can greatly influence the type of community around a game. And, if a company allows people to say trash shit in their restaurant, then I wouldn't want to eat there. Same thing with a game. Edit: had to separate it into paragraphs bc psychology. Think about it...

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

@@stefan1360 No, no it isn't. Please point out an example. If you want to use Overwatch, just remember when I talk about toxicity I won a DreamHack LAN tournament and was a top 500 ranked player...which means you can't handwave toxicity and say it's just sour grapes or not having an understanding of the game.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

This unfortunately is an incredibly idealistic, and frankly speaking naïve perspective. First off, saying your personal anecdote for the game versus the THOUSANDS of comments to the contrary, is just bad optics and a bad argument. That's not how statistics work. I appreciate you giving me your personal opinion, but you can't handwave all toxicity because you are one anecdote...? Second, as a player who talks trash (you read that right), that's not the same as being toxic to your own team (something players weirdly like to conflate and idk why). Psychology states that toxicity past a point has no utility anyway. Are there are bunch of oversensitive players who have never had struggle getting too easily offended? Yes, this is a broad population issue. But games not organizing communities, enforcing rules and a healthy environment, and supporting "good communication" are hamstringing themselves by basically supporting toxicity. Saying your teammate is shit is not helpful, it's just teenage angst or weird nerd rage that needs another outlet. Telling them to help you is part of the game. People routinely try to act stupid in the differences and it's frustrating when you see both sides (aka I actually talk to my teammates and shit talk my enemies). Riot and Dota spend tons of time and resources dedicated to combatting toxicity, whether you experienced it still or not doesn't change this fact lol. HoN didn't, and the difference was staggering. Giving people a mute button as a sole solution is very silly in a modern age where people are playing games you HAVE to communicate it. It's one of those sounds smarter or more logical than it is statements, that easily gets holes poked in it.

[@bt636]

@@nerdSlayerstudioss Sorry but no, your personal ancedote is no better than mine. I lived through the growth of riot and dota and hon and I saw just as many complaints about people griefing in every game. There was no difference. The only difference is one allowed the players to police themselves and the other (league) stifled and choked the players. You don't NEED to communicate anything in mobas. The first thing every gameplay coach says is ignore chat, pings are more than enough. Almost every beloved classic multiplayer game that will actually be remembered 20=50 years from now was hands off and left the players to self police. Riot bought their fame with chinese money and they have done more harm than good to the world of gaming. Their own company was and still is a cesspool of corruption. I know just how bad that place was I was a mod for their forums for a while. The fact of the matter is mobas are the most stressful and competitive genre of video games ever designed with more depth than chess and this causes huge amounts of stress and friction. There will always be conflict but censorship and choking out players freedom is never the solution. I'm not even saying hon did everything right, I'm just saying you trying to make it seem like banter was one of the core reasons the game died is just plain childish and shows that your analysis comes from a place of bias. Still a good video I don't mean to come off as antagonistic I think you do mostly great work. But censorship and controlling of peoples minds is a subject that hits very close to home for me and I can't ignore it.

[@ortiznikko]

@@bt636 he said there is a difference from banter and toxicity. You seem to be combining the two. Also, if I go to a restaurant where someone is shouting the N word, and management doesn't do something about it, I'm leaving. Same thing with a game. A company's community and what they allow to be said within the confines of their game is a big part of a company's reputation. It's not a freedom of speech argument. It's the COMPANY'S game, it's their virtual space. They have the ownership of that space and get to choose how they want to serve their customers. I hope that explanation helps to understand that self policing, isn't the way towards success. If self policing worked then we wouldn't need police in the real world, or laws. Starbucks doesn't have customers self police rude customers. Nike doesn't allow for their fans to run the Public Relations team. I don't understand how players can say self policing works, when it has never worked in real life. What makes people think it would work in a virtual space, where I have more anonymity?

[@Lyubimov89]

Hey, you dredged up my old memory of being made fun of for my accent in HoN voice chat! Yeah that game was a time.

[@Monkebanana408]

Played HoN way back, the only MOBA I played and had alot of good memories attached to HoN , thanks for making a video HoN, it brings joy and tears, much love..

[@HookahOtaku]

The Toxic Community of HoN... man was great, hilarious, and every match was a fun time. from taunts and flamboyant announcers to samuel l jackson shouting explesitives maaan i miss this game a lot. it was one of the few games where you could always get laughs

[@sinnoth3975]

I remember when people just shrugged "toxicity" off as banter and had fun with it, good times. Now games are designed to keep you from ever communicating, good job.

[@Quatttrofx]

So true, can't have nice things anymore

[@Starz0rz]

As one of the former professional players of HoN, the biggest downfall was always poor communication to the community, slow balancing and a very mismanaged competitive scene. Every MOBA thrives one its competitive scene, unless it's a casual targetted MOBA. To me, that was its biggest fall (aside of not being f2p from the start). Also the lack of proper marketing was an issue. Can't remember ever seeing HoN advertised anywhere.

[@rendyajadech1957]

It was marketed as American Dota in my country 🙃

[@jellevanderlinden6120]

What was your ign?

[@steffz0r]

@@jellevanderlinden6120 dutch pls

[@Starz0rz]

@@jellevanderlinden6120 Starz0rz, on the later end was my prime

[@almasywinter1248]

A fun piece of HoN trivia is that after they got sold to Frostburn/Garena, Garena went ahead and made Arena of Valor, taking some of their heroes and updating them for said game.

[@bt636]

This one was heartbreaking, I have so many memories I will never forget. I met lifelong friends playing that game. It had the most interesting unique characters. Playing scout and building that weapon that changed your damage to magic damage and destroying people who built phys armor was so much fun. Hon was better than any other moba that has ever been, it's only failure was not being made by a megacorp. In a just world not dominated by 10-20 corporations hon would have been THE moba.

[@vladdx]

No it failed because it was more hardcore than even DoTA 1, I played a few games but it was too complex for my taste. LoL won because it achieved the perfect balance between competitive and casual.

[@SteamRiC]

You can't talk about scout and not bring up the codex build :) So much fun was had with that. I once even challenged myself to climb to 1700 MMR with that build, which I did managed to do.

[@LucasCunhaRocha]

It failed because S2 was completely stupid and kept fracturing their playerbase by selling the game regionally to shitty third party companies. I completely lost my account because the colombian company who got the rights to distribute the game in latin america completely fucked up their database, not only that I was cut off from my friends from all over the world, that was so stupid.

[@ezunino1711]

@@vladdx lol won because of the anime design "waifus" that attracted all kinds of otakus, simps and kpop girls, that was the "plus factor" of the game, meanwhile HON Although better had horrible characters full of monsters and shit

[@vladdx]

When LoL released there were barely any waifu,you can see footage from then here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/aZDJYWNrqJx4lbc That not the reason it won, games with "waifus" do not get tens of millions of players without other stuff like great gameplay mechanics

[@oxnerd]

I bought HoN when I was a wee 8th grader. Played on and off all the way until it’s demise. It’s crazy that I can recognize exactly what’s going on in the gameplay footage being shown. My recent funny memory of playing was during Mid Wars, which was the only mode worth playing, when my team had the advantage to push yet we were all focused on getting kills. I typed in my team chat asking, “can someone with high IQ push?” While spam pinging the map and not electing to push myself. My team laughed pretty hard on the voice chat. We eventually got too far in late game where we were ultimately outpicked. A funny loss.

[@Rosamune]

I loved Heroes of Newerth so much, it felt so much better to me then LoL.

[@lonelywolf9294]

Been waiting for this one for a while. Haven't watched it yet but thank you. Always liked HoN and its still my favorite experience w the genre out of all the ones tried(I remember trying other games and being shocked that replays weren't a standard feature). The devs approach to incorporating community memes as well as their initial buy once play free strategy was really great at the time. It would have been really interesting to see how things would have played out if HoN took off instead of LoL. Thanks for the work putting this together! Goingvto enjoy it now

[@pierreciholas9215]

I have played Savage: Battle for Newerth for YEARS. Pretty much until there was nobody left. Great game, great players, and oh my god I miss 2castles.

[@onisekai547]

Maybe Check out SavageXR :)

[@Holtzhunter]

Hon is currently trying to be revived under new leadership under the name "Project Kongor". The game is in open beta right now and has a couple of thousand players

[@GuiMeloBass]

I used to love this game, the dark tone, the unique characters and mechanics, I didn't even care about the toxicity. It will always be remembered as the best moba I could not play (they banned Brazil from servers back in the day lol).

[@billymartinisbacklol]

This game deserves better. Thank you for years of memories

[@Cynndora]

I loved this game, then they started to do that early access to hero's BS and the monkey king was ao clearly overtuned to get sales that i knew they had gone down a dark path.

[@Red_Lanterns_Rage]

once you start down the dark path.....forever will you be a edgelord HA!

[@vvolfbelorven7084]

Monkey King was a lot of fun. Wish LOL or DOTA2 had a similar hero

[@oliveyleve]

I remember Monkey King. I always died to that thing when i was caught in its combos

[@MrPrajitura]

@@oliveylevehe was very broken

[@Bubajumba]

@@MrPrajitura Honestly I cant remember him being that broken, he was a carry class and was suppose to be on the level of other carries, which he was. There was no hysteria at its release and I cant remember him being over played or that popular either. Remember him being one of less popular carries. Personally I'd pick soul stealer, Puppet master over him anyday. Also other carries like Chronos would completely piss on Monkey king with his ulti, port and time rewind

[@Verinius]

HoN was popular in the Philippines when it came out in beta before DOTA2. We played LAN games instead of online matching so it was fun. BUT when it became pay-to-play, a lot of college students either couldn't afford it or didn't have credit cards / online payment systems available. It's not like we could go to a local videogame store and buy it. Most people played in internet cafes and played LAN games with people in the same establishment. For you to play HoN, you needed to pay for an account or something so that instantly cut off a lot of the playerbase.

[@UberKrang]

I remember HoN very fondly. It was technically the far superior game when it launched. I remember how many players that went on to become stars in DOTA 2 started in HoN, such as N0tail. I remember Moonmeander dancing on the tables after beating someone in 1v1 (I remember Tralf winning against Moon with Behemoth against Chipper, those times were epic). To me the toxicity was always a two edged blade. I feel like in games like LoL, the toxicity still exists, people just go about it in roundabout ways. And I have to admit it were some of the best gaming highs when you did a big play and your team filled the chat with GG spam.

[@cattysplat]

LoL toxcitiy is all about spamming pings and quickchats to get around bans. Dota spamming paid voice lines. HoN had 0 moderation and you got everything a raging 13 year old could throw at you in every game.

[@hehexd5317]

Yeah "fostering a community" is a meme, everyone hates eachother, but since you get punished for flaming, people are just passive aggressive or soft int, it's just a cope, there is no community and even if there is one, no1 cares about it, there's iust a playerbase and a shitty company (riot)

[@NinjapowerMS]

HoN was ahead in the MOBA genre when it first started, The stuff you could do there with creativity was amazing and people were playing with how uphill fog jukes works there even before Dota 2 found out about it in Roshan pit. Dota 2 is champion now though and going back to HoN and see how outdated it is just blegh.

[@danf7411]

@@cattysplat nah toxicity is giving up not saying anything offensive and running it down. At this point most players understand chat will get you banned and most people leave it censored. I'd much rather be able to mute the "ist" and let him rage into the void. Now they control the outcome of the game with little chance of getting banned

[@Seroxm13]

I love LoL and still play it since 2011, but miss the old days of freedom and super toxicity, like from 2009-2012-2013. When LoL had a global chat that appeared in the post-game/scorecard. Me and my real life friends would always flame our random teammates if we lost or flame our enemies. We would stay in the post-game chat insulting each other for minutes! It was so much fun! You don't see that kind of freedom of speech anymore on any game. Games want to protect their players from toxicity nowadays. It's thanks to kids getting offended saying that they will quit the game due to toxicity, that we lost the awesome post-game & global chats in games :/ Even Clash of Clans, a mobile game, had its own global chat, which sadly got removed too.

[@Kitty-we6il]

This is strange but nerdslayer's voice is soft and calming, and makes watching his videos much more enjoyable.

[@locke03]

I tried HON and my memories of it were that my initial player experience with it pertaining to community toxicity were on par with the very worst experiences I had in LoL. I played a few games, uninstalled it, and never thought of it again until I heard it was shutting down, to which I thought "wait, HON is still around?"

[@nihilvox]

I have fond memories of sitting in the lobby waiting with a team of friends, waiting for enemies to join the game, listening to Christmas music in game because it was December. We still sometimes joke that "Lobby Simulator" was the best game we ever played.

[@karatequin1750]

I think one thing you are missing is that the started making so you had to buy new heroes when they were released and then "free to play mode" was enabled after some weeks and the new hero would be nerfed

[@ffarkasm]

The feature I liked the most in HoN is that it felt that it had some sort of "mature" look. Unlike anyother MOBAs, it did not have that flamboyant and cartoonish artstyle. At least not in the first 3-4 years. Eventually all those incomprehensible alt avatars and skins took over...

[@Gatesh_0]

The marketing surely was one of the causes of death. This is the first time i am hearing about this game. I am not a moba die hard fan, but i played lol for 4 years(2013-2017) and dota 2, hots, smite a few times with friends and i never heard by then or in the internet about this game.

[@ghagzor]

Me either

[@JakeDaines]

Going into HoN blind was the best. I had no concept of mobas and just went bottle first Accursed on the sidelanes to heal/shield allies. It was the only useful thing I could do. I got flamed relentlessly for being clueless and eventually learned how to play through negative reinforcement. Then I got really good with a bunch of heroes and the game got even more enjoyable once i could pubstomp. Good times.

[@MoDuZzz]

Yeah, was there from the very beginning. Also remember we had some of the most toxic streamers, like Moonmeander, who made tyler1 look like a gentleman. We even had macros we would spam after a kill to rub it in. And as for balance I vividly remember there was always a problem with a mid hero of the month (deadwood, nomad, mk just to name a few), and there was also this strange early access system where you can buy a new character to play him before the official free release. After the free release the character would often get nerfed...The whole exprerience throughout my teenage years feels like a fever dream right now, but to this day it was one the best game experiences I had (even participated in the tornament (not very far)).

[@fredrikengstrom2107]

Two reasons are the most major ones: 1. The overwhelming majority of players were Dota fans (including myself), and predicted HoN would die quickly when Dota was launched and the emigration began. 2. No marketing. No grand tournaments. No sponsored competetive scene. Players felt that the company did not invest enough, hence it felt like a waste to be dedicated to a game that got more and more treated as a side project for easy income until it would eventually be abandoned/outsourced. The learning curve, community toxicity, underwhelming updates etc were all an annoyance, but DOTA 2 has them as well, and never really became critical failures. I love Dota. But I will always miss Puppet Master, Zephyr, Chipper etc. Maybe I am just nostalgic, but I'm willing to say that HoN sometimes had better heroes than Dota.

[@rhaythe]

Played quite a bit of Savage, but wasn't overly impressed with Savage 2 and never touched HoN. Mostly I just enjoyed Savage because of the unique blend of RTS and FPS and the interesting setting, but even back then it felt like the niche game I knew none of my gaming buddies had ever heard of nor would try out. Thankfully, we had a LAN party now and again in those days where we could get some games going.

[@gauntletgaming115]

I played HoN fairly competitively from 2010-2011. You hit it spot on. My friend group all thought of it as the mechanically intensive moba which at the time we thought made it 'superior' to league since it was more complex. Which then also probably correlates with the toxicity lol. Also keep in mind back then league was so much more basic than it is now, slow paced, graphics were really bad, etc. So it made sense why some gravitated towards HoN. There was cool stuff in HoN 2.0, but I think by 2012 it was obvious by how many people in the community were quitting for league that HoN was not going to last. League competitive scene took off big time and left HoN in the dust. And once the people who liked to play competitively left HoN didn't have a big casual group because that's not who they were marketing towards. I went onto league myself and played in the challenger league from 2013-2014. Still play casually to this day. This video brought back a lot of great memories. HoN had some really cool heros that I miss tremendously. Thank you for making this.

[@Marinealver]

Would Dawngate qualify as Death of a Game since it died before launch and only the open beta made it?

[@a13ph0]

Dawngate closes :')

[@Dareianrc36]

Loved that game. Hate that EA did it dirty like that

[@300IQPrower]

"The most toxic moba ever was not free to play" is somehow a statement that makes perfect sense yet is completely bewildering. Looking forward to the next one, one of the very rare instances of a DOAG being a game I actually played. Unlike Battleborn though, I don't really miss the mess that was Spellbreak.

[@Shrimpins]

This game was handing out leaver penalties for leaving AI bot matches lol

[@raphaelforkel7759]

TO be fair, when you were quitting out of bot matches you had no business actually playing the game.

[@BurlapRat]

Lol gives you leaver penalty in bot games as well.

[@tnecniw]

I rememeber playing on a really shit PC that constantly crashing. Meaning that I got A LOT of leaver penalties by accident D:

[@mnoplbnaikj]

This game launched my esports career, it will always have a place in my heart

[@thomads3890]

this was so great - during the open Beta people were playing it like CRAZY - but when they decided to go buy to play, nobody stuck around for the launch - SAD

[@vincentizghra6144]

I played a ridiculous amount of HoN back in it's hayday because of it's extremely responsive gameplay. It had basically no turn-speed for heroes, as they would react nearly instantly to player input. My specialty was the support hero Ophelia which dominated creeps in a similar manner to Chen in dota(which I also ended up nearly mastering gaining the top 23rd world spot on dotabuff in the late 2010s). Microing with Ophelia was a joy where you could have skeletons microstumming and run in with two minotaurs to chainstun a hero for 6 seconds(if you were skilled enough), but similarly to dota 2 the hero didn't scale on it's own, but could greatly increase the chance of winning your safelane for your carry. Other support heroes in HoN had similarly skillbased mechanics with a real emphasis on being tight but tricky to requiring immense precision. This was in such stark contrast to going to Dota 2 where, at first, the heroes felt like they were sat in molasses. While I have multiple fond memories of bodyblocking enemies trying to flee with one of my dominated creeps while catching up with another one to hold it in place for one of my team-mates; I also experienced how S2(or $2 games as we called it...) would gradually abandon the already poorly supported game and eventually leave it, with it's vitality sucked dry quickly after the switch of studios. It's a shame that a game with such a high skillcap and focus on tight and satisfying gameplay didn't have more funds to stay relevant.

[@TypeiZ]

i loved HoN so much. best announcers ever

[@oliveyleve]

I agree, i enjoyed the games and memories i had just as much as the announcers were in that game. Every game made it feel unique bc of the different announcers which i wish LoL or other MOBAs did. I'd pay money to hear that gay-sounding announcer saying "FABULOUUUUUUUUUUUS!" again.

[@justsomeotherguy5743]

"Cherry popper!"

[@dracotoy]

Holy shit this production quality. You did not have to go this hard

[@Soul-Hook]

When HoN came out I was already a young (and very crappy) but enthusiastic DotA player. I was instantly hooked on HoN and made several characters my favorites. Even on the lowest of low games I still felt excited to play the next game and work on my kd or just relax and play my favorite character again. The visuals, snappy sound effects (witch hunter gun ult), quirky character designs, and the fact that it felt like DotA made it my favorite game at the time. The cosmetics where the best of any moba game, since they effectively changed the entire flavor and visual design of a character. You want Scout to be female complete with voice lines and brand new animations? There's a reasonably priced skin for that. You want this hideous amalgamation of flesh and axes to become a chainsaw-tossing murder clown instead? Done deal! The community-created characters, like Gauntlet, where also among my absolute favorites to play. And don't get me started about the announcer mods. I still smile like a moron when I think of "RAINBOW WARRIOR" being yelled out in the most flamboyantly gay voice ever. loved it. BUT... It's true, the community was HORRIBLY toxic (the examples in the video where tame) and I don't blame those who quit because of it. The taunt mechanic later added to the game didn't help either. The balance was total garbage from day one and any tactically planned strategy could be shut down by simply stun-locking the enemy team until next week. On-release Deadwood still sends shivers down my spine... Also all my friends whom I managed to make play HoN slowly shifted over to LoL, forcing me to either play alone with a toxic crowd or join my friends in a game I didn't actually want to play. Eventually I turned off HoN for the last time and rarely looked back. It was so heartbreaking to hear it was shutting down, but I kinda saw it coming. The game was never mentioned at conventions, I never saw merch, and people seemingly forgot about everything except the toxic community. It was truly inevitable. Heroes of Newerth will always have a special place in my heart, and it will take memory loss from a mix of old age and blunt force trauma to the head for me to forget it. Thanks for the memories, HoN... you were the best to me.

[@zazomy8629]

HoN was my first MOBA game actually, I was like 12 years old when I started the game, I climbed up to 1900 MMR when I was around 15 years old and I still remember the days where I was very much enjoying the game and getting angry at the same time. Now, Im just a guy in my 20's studying and working at the same time, play games here and there.

[@Thylacinus]

HoN was actually the choice to go for many of my friends, so I played it quite a bit as well. On one hand I really liked the diversity and range of different heroes the game provided. On the other hand one big issue for me was - as mentioned in the video - the accessibility that came with it. When I started there was no tutorial or anything alike, which made learning the game with all those heroes and items available quite hard. Even though I eventually enjoyed playing a few matches, I quit the game because of several reasons you also mentioned. 1. Community Most parts of the community was indeed rather unapproachable with a pretty hardcore/competetive mindset, many were even staight up toxic. In many matches a flame war would break out at some point, with players just bashing and insuling each other in both chat and voice. Plus having an all-chat ingame made this worse unfortunately. Even though there were also some people with positive spirits, like that one player thanking me for playing support (which was rather unpopular) and doing a nice job with it after a match, those kind of experiences were very rare. 2. Complexity without having good tutorial options The game was incredible complex with having dozens of heroes which were all available from the start unlike other MOBAs where you have to unlock/buy more characters. Besides that the game has a really brought range of different items that can be combined in many different ways to create even more items. And last but not least, the game also even had more ingame mechanics to use, like e.g. last-hitting your own minions to deny gold, stacking creep camps by luring them at the right moment. All those things can be really overwhelming for newer players. When you don't have proper tutorials and also a community that rather starts to insult you for not knowing instead of helping/explaining, it is understandably not quite appealing to play. 3. Stress instead of fun I personally play games to have fun and having a good time after a stressful day at work. Due to things mentioned prior, for me the game turned more and more into a unpleasant, unenjoyable situation instead of a fun time. Even though I liked to play support, it oftern turned into quite of a chore sometimes: Harass the enemy by poking, secure kills BUT DON'T YOU DARE TO MAKE THE LAST HIT, deny gold for the enemy by last-hitting your own minions, placing wards on the right situations, using counter-wards to deny the enemy vision, stacking creep camps for the jungler, ganking other lanes (but rememer NO KILLS FOR YOURSELF), upgrade the item curier (only in ye olde days luckily), but also somehow making enough gold to get proper items for yourself and staying alive, all while your teammates flame around and call you out on the tiniest mistake. At some point our clan name just reflected my feeling perfecty - "WAIPT" - short for "Why am I playing this?" To be fair, not everything was bad with HoN, but unfortunately those negative aspects just outweighted the positve moments I had.

[@bananabaskets]

This used to be my favorite game that I frequently played with my friends. I've also followed professional players like MoonMeander, Swindlemelonzz, Zfreek, Haxxaren, etc. I got up to 1900 MMR at the highest, and loved the game. Too bad it flopped...

[@Makoto03]

Happy to finally catch a 'Death of a Game' as soon as its posted. Never heard of Heroes of Newerth though.

[@Nathan_Coley]

I'd also never heard of it.

[@NiNTEND0CORE]

Damn this was my fav game for so long, played it so much before they got greedy with the early access heroes. Never was super good at it. but it was the best game ever for me for a long time. Met alot of friends i still keep in contact with today. Remebering watching Honcast late into the night just to see all the cool matches. Damn i miss this game alot.

[@davemcduringo4377]

I was on HoN in the free beta. The day they wanted $30 I said fuck it, I quit. I liked the game, but was noob trash, so it was painful loss and flaming every game. Day or three later, a friend I'd played HoN with, the one who told me about it in the first place, told me about LoL. I put a decade and hundreds of dollars a year into LoL. That $30 vs free was everything. That one choice made before release guaranteed LoL would dominate. What I enjoyed the most about HoN was the MOBA genre itself. And I spent my most-noob matches losing in that game, only to switch to the easier-to-learn LoL and do considerably better. Because I learned so much "hey don't do that" in HoN. HoN WAS my LoL tutorial. And I never gave them the $30, but never would have even DL'd LoL if not for that $30 wall.

[@daedalus6796]

I'd be interested in videos that covered whole game genres like mobas because I want to know how we get from dota being a mod for Warcraft 3 to LoL being one of the biggest games of all time, and the legal battle between Blizzard and Valve in more detail. Stuff like that gets mentioned in these videos and I'd love for more detail to be better the context of these games' history.

[@Marinealver]

When I first saw League of Legends I said "It looks like Warcraft 3."

[@Biouke]

I saw a pair of very well documented videos on the subject, don't remember on which channel tought. Maybe DennisTheTall. Search "the history of DotA" or similar on youtube. And remember, Pendragon is a damn traitor :p

[@sunscreen7205]

@@Biouke TZJinzo/Jinzo had those kinda vids. Also, fuck pendragon.

[@firstnamesurname2482]

@@Biouke Don't forget, Pendragon tried to kill Dota...twice.

[@anguskininmonth2941]

Hons been a huge part of my gaming life since 2010. I remember buying it during beta. Was the best Dota experience you could get for a long time for us old school players. In the end I just played mid wars but god it was fun

[@EsperHubb]

Three of my favorite heroes in HoN was Bubbles, Thunderbringer and Zephyr. I'll miss playing those heroes but not the game as a whole.

[@Karanthaneos]

When I was your age, Earth was Newearth

[@tituskacperski2014]

When your mid fed top line lost. There was a glimmer of hope in a voice chat with my friend Rusher. -HARCORE PUSHING B....S!!!!!!!!! yep, a morale boost and strong leadership brought us wins. It was beautiful, grimdark of characters just precious. I loved this game.

[@wizz0056]

I was there when HoN had 50k, 80k, 100k, 120k concurrent players (there was an in-game player count). The gameplay was insanely enjoyable, ALL heroes were quirky and UNIQUE, the items builds were INSANE in comparison to any popular moba to date. But the one thing it lacked was meaningful progression outside of pure gameplay. While graphically not as impressive, HoN had arguably the best artstyle or art direction in the genre. The skins were all wacky and crazy in their own right. But progression is where the game was heavily lacking. Without spending any money on the game, you had to grind 150-250 games just to gain enough silver (currency) to get the better looking skins, which is an insane amount of time. In my 3-4 years of active playing and thousands of hours, I've only gotten a handful of skins and some icons and announcer packs. Aside from that, ranked games gave you almost no sense of progression, other than seeing your MMR score go up or down. The mmr algorithm was so bad, I remember having to create new accounts just to get early winstreaks in order to reach higher mmr scores quicker because if you get 40-60% winrate in your first ~20 games and stay around 50% after, it will take you months to reach higher mmr scores. Aside from that, ranked rewards were almost non-existent which really made the progress feel lacking. I have to disagree with the toxicity argument though. ALL competitive games are "toxic", and this is a byproduct of being competitive in the first place. This was by no means unique to HoN. ALL COMPETITIVE GAMES, including ALL MOBAS were and still are by definition toxic. This was definitely not the reason why the game failed, nor was it a barrier to entry. The only barrier to entry (aside from 1 year of box-price) was EFFORT to learn the game mechanics and get better. After that, it becomes the most in-depth and, in my opinion, the best gameplay-wise moba to date. Even though I haven't played in around 5 years, I'm still emotionally invested in the game. This was THE game that I think of when reminiscing of my childhood, and for better or worse, it set certain standards for what I enjoy in games. I'm just sad to see it dying.

[@oliveyleve]

I agree to all ur points. I remember back then that i was consistently buying "toilet paper" first not the actual components (with stats) to build items. Took me a while before a friend of mine points out that "toilet paper" (blueprints[?]) didn't do anything, and u buy those last.

[@Alex10777]

This game was very impactful, it was my introduction to Dota-like gameplay with STR INT and AGI heroes. And HoN's original heroes were SO EPIC, my god. I already miss the Dark Lady, Midas, Ellonia and MORE AND MORE. I hope Dota 2 takes inspiration from them!

[@CaptainChelo]

Me and my brother played HoN since beta, we bought the game when it wasn't free to play and I did enjoy it's mechanics a lot. Even when I went to LoL, I did felt like that game lacked something that HoN had. What the game had was their mechanical design, it felt like once you understood the game, you had a ton of options in how to play it, it was quite bold in experimenting with mechanics too, trying ideas that even current mobas don't apply. Saddly, the toxcicity was what killed the game for me, I even realized that my brother was affected, it was like a Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde scenario, the game was so toxic that it was taking a toll on un. The moment I quitted the game, was when I had the most toxic game in my life, my team bitching at everyone for everything, someone got the first kill, someone bitched that they stole it despite being in a diferent lane, someone died, ppl accused that person of feeding while he blamed the team for not helping him. It was awful, and the worst part of all, we won, it wasn't like we had a clutch win, we were steadylie going up and we eventually won. That game killed any desire for me of playing the game, I do miss it, it had the energy of WC3 that blizz tossed away and unique desing, but god damn it the comunity was awfull. I don't blame S2 games for what happened, they were trying to figure out how to make this thing work while there were barely any other games at the time to learn. I don't miss having another MOBA as I have quitted the genre, but I do wish someone takes the style and makes something out if it. I miss it but there's not enough aspirins in the world to make me go back.

[@HoNOMG]

HON is still active and managed by it's community, and it may become more popular then before. You can check how to play HoN on my channel 🤗

[@iwishiwaschrismacavoy8116]

I loved some of the character designs in HoN, Martyr and Flux were really cool and unique.

[@sudonim7367]

How bout Cthulhuphant tho 😂😂

[@LucasCunhaRocha]

@@sudonim7367 Cthuluphant was super fun to play. Hell, all of the original heroes were really good, I really loved pandamonium, moraxus and even rhapsody even though she was quite of character. Oh man, I just remembered Oogie (I think that was the name, the melee inteligence hero who had a really great soundtrack)

[@Rievven]

Man you just like to hit me right in the nostalgia. I beta tested HoN, but never got into the DotA games. However, I was a die hard savage and savage 2 player and moder. I recall when Maliken started teasing the acronym HoN in the mIRC chat and guessing what HoN stood for before the initial release. I recall his reaction being "Who told you that?" Savage 2 is what got me into moding. I fondly recall begging the dev team over chat for bits and pieces of how the game script code worked. I less fondly recall having to build a dynamic array list out of base arrays to track player connect and disconnect and properly account for the number of players on each team.

[@FalcnPWNCH]

really tells about the non-existent presence of S2 Games - I have played all of the big/notable MOBAs (League / Smite / HotS / Dota 2 / HoN) extensively...... *_and this is literally the first time I've ever heard of Strife_*

[@bigthecat542]

I played Strife and until I watched this video I literally forgot it existed. Literally unironically just blanked from my mind, like a dream.

[@MohammadKhan-ne4zm]

I played Strife, the only thing memorable about it was vision relics, where there were relics on the map that gave your team vision around the area of the relic your team captured. I forgot about this until I looked up Strife recently, but the game also had pets that fought alongside you. As someone who played league, I gave Strife a shot because I needed a break from League and the concepts at that time were unique for a Moba. The first couple of games were fun but the concepts got old fast and at a certain point I just forgot to keep playing it. Other than those concepts nothing else really made it stand out from League and Dota 2.

[@stevenbell5224]

Toxicity made the game so much more fun. I don’t get people who complain about that when they can mute people. Mute and play don’t complain about toxic players. I think toxicity creates healthy rivalries and overall adds to a game to allow people to be themselves regardless of their manners. It also teaches you to grow and value yourself. Forcing people to behave a certain way really ruins the experience

[@Sirrincai]

The alternate history of what could've happened if this game was the one that exploded in popularity is crazy. Riot is such a massive and influential company that popped up out of nowhere and is branching in so many different directions now between their best in class card game and VALORANT which is a sidegrade or upgrade of CSGO depending on who you ask. Riot also revolutionized free to play gaming as we know it. Makes you wonder if this game could've built a whole company and started changing the industry if it had succeeded in the same way, and what they would've done differently from Riot.

[@Exel3nce]

I kinda doubt that. Riot remained very long the moba only company, and Something like a dota 1 succesor would have been, probably, only that. My guess, atleast

[@spectreapex2803]

HoN is a snappy game, very responsive and it just felt right. It put me to tears when I see the HoN countdown coming to 0.. damn I literally cried. I remembered playing until midnight on 1950 mmr several years back, yes it was toxic, but it encourages you to be good, to be better and to be the best. I had 3 consecutive games playing with the same opponents and team on a solo queue. Crazy as they all say "Same dogs again" and just I lol'd. The player roster in the 1950+ bracket was so tiny we end up playing with the same people. OMG so many fun memories, I'll never forget this game.

[@BassRacerx]

"snappy" is what I miss most about Hon. the actions starts right away, LOL takes at least 5 or 6 minutes for things to get interesting and Dota is like slowed down. Everything feels like it is happening in slow motion on dota. I loved how teamfights in Hon could be over in less than a second. But it was the least casual friendly game and when other options became viable people switched to them. I am noticing a theme with this "death of a game " series it is that games that cater to the "hardcore" to the detriment of casual players are doomed to fail.

[@Sonitus523]

Man I remember HoN :( good times.

[@santalim3181]

Thank you for covering this game. It used to be my go to with friends back in college until we transition into Dota 2 . Although the game is dead, it'll always be remembered.

[@EbonMaster]

I like how Heroes of Newerth is "HON" but League of Legends is "L.O. L."

[@Kataang101]

It was my first moba and what brought me into loving this genre. I loved that wacky kill streaks and taunt system. The custom lobbies also made for really hilarious duplicate mode to unsuspecting players. All-in-all I have a very nostalgic place in my heart for HoN. Lots of good times with good friends. (That I now play dota with today since its launch haha)

[@Vanthedark]

Do one for Dota Underlords, please.

[@sudonim7367]

Second this one, its kinda insane how Valve just literally dropped this one and never mentioned it again. Not even a goodbye post like Artifact, they just extended the battlepass to 2031 and fucked off hahaha

[@allanime01]

Hi there! I'm Tyler and I voiced Carter (as well as auditioned for Bastion) in Strife! If you ever do a DoaG in it I'd love to share a bit of insight, as I was a LoL fan that thought Strife could make it with how toxic League was at the time, but I happen to also know there is a small flaw: the good people LEFT S2 when HoN got sold. Whether it was to the new studio or not, I recall overhearing that recent staff left due to "differences on what to prioritize" and a lot of my HoN questions were downplayed. Anywho hmu if you want more of what very little info I have, love the channel thank you KZbin algorithm for dropping these videos!

[@CssHDmonster]

this one hurts, despite me leaving HoN for dota2, i still had mad respect for it and how it was both a dota clone and also different enough to still be unique , similar case to savage 2. I think this is the rare time where u wrong in terms of toxicity being a downside, considering LoL is infamously toxic despite trying to moderate

[@sudonim7367]

One of the lead devs, Maliken, was notoriously toxic in game and in forums. He would routinely berate players for not playing good and even used slurs. It was so bad the company had to do damage control and nuke forum topics lmaoo The game was that toxic, they didnt even try

[@CssHDmonster]

@@sudonim7367 again, i dont think it matters , hell id argue that moderating usually causes more toxicity, i played pretty much all ''mobas'' (i would use the ass******* genre name but it probably would get me banned) and none of them were more toxic than HotS and overwatch , both of which had extremely moderated communication

[@sudonim7367]

@@CssHDmonster Less moderation= less toxicity?? Impeccable logic, surely this is reflected by real world stats (its not)

[@CssHDmonster]

@@sudonim7367 youre correct, works great in china and britain where 3k people are jailed for tweets

[@TheGeoff]

Only played HoN casually due to my friends not wanting to plunk down 30 dollars. I always loved the games visuals. The ultimates in particular. The map had this grittyness while maintaining a high level of detail. Even after I stopped playing I loved to watch the hero spotlights and there was a small pro scene for HoN too that was fun to watch.

[@averagewhiteguy2]

I think "toxicity" is an important factor for enjoying multiplayer games. it filters out the type of people I don't like.

[@Cynidecia]

Agreed.

[@guywiththebottle]

Dude what.

[@Cynidecia]

@@guywiththebottle only people who complain about gatekeeping are the ones it's meant to keep out

[@guywiththebottle]

@@Cynidecia You were wrong since the game died.

[@Cynidecia]

@@guywiththebottle its actually still playable as the game isn't online only like an MMO is. There's LAN support and even community servers so you don't have to sketchily directly connect to people's IP's.

[@Melons987]

I don't remember much about this game except that my husband did play the original DotA and me, never having played any MOBA nor heard of DotA, was asked to play with him and we did. It wasn't a terrible experience at the start, but I remember a distinct incident with one game where I was playing Glacius(er? ... basically Frost Maiden) and my husband was playing Deadwood. We used our abilities together on 3 enemy champs, but the combined sound of AOE feedback from hitting them AND the pile of minions they were standing in blew out my headset AND my ears which started ringing for 5 minutes after before I could actually hear proper again. HoN actually caused me physical pain in my ears and head.

[@pessoinha5529]

it's kinda weird to see a game here that I didn't even heard the name before, normally I have at least some idea of what happened