In 2009, League of Legends was released and created a MOBA hype. A few more games followed, including Heroes of Newerth in 2010, but that’s exactly what will be discontinued next year, as the developers have now announced.
When will HoN be discontinued? Heroes of Newerth is supposed to continue running until June 20, 2022. But then it will be over and the servers will be shut down.
The discontinuation does not come as a complete surprise, as the developers have already announced in 2019 that the 4.7.3 update will be the last major content patch. After that, only balance changes and bug fixes should follow.
The developers thanked the players who supported them for 12 years via Facebook.
Heroes of Newerth took its cue from DOTA and appeared as a full-price title
What kind of game is this anyway? Heroes of Newerth was officially released in May 2010, a few months after League of Legends. The gameplay of both games is very similar:
- In both games, two teams of five players fight against each other.
- You take on the role of a champion and the goal is to destroy the opponent’s base.
- For this purpose, there are three lanes in both games, on which Minions run and towers stand.
However, Heroes of Newerth is more oriented towards the mod DOTA. The game is grittier and not as beginner-friendly as LoL. Besides, it relies on the “deny” technique. This means that you can deliberately kill your own minions and towers so that the opponent doesn’t get the gold and experience points.
Another big difference was the pay model. While LoL was released as a Free2Play title, Heroes of Newerth initially required players to buy a full-price title. In return, however, they had all the champions unlocked directly.
You can also see this in the initial player numbers. LoL exploded right from the start, while HoN remained stable for many years, but never reached the really big spheres:
The monthly active users of MOBAS from 2011 to 2015 via SuperData.
Balance problems and the release of DOTA hurt HoN
Why did HoN fail? At release, Heroes of Newerth was well received. It had fewer players due to the price hurdle, but was well received especially by DOTA fans and players who would have liked more depth in LoL. This is why some called HoN the best DOTA clone on the market.
In 2011, the game switched to a Free2Play model and experienced a “small boom”, as you can also see in the graphic above.
However, around that time, champions were also said to have been released that were far too strong. However, these champions then had to be purchased separately, even for those players who had previously already paid full price for Heroes of Newerth. This did not go down well.
Interest in the MOBA started to decline around 2014. This had two reasons at once:
- On the one hand, Valve’s DOTA 2 became more and more popular. Especially the DOTA fans who had previously played Heroes of Newerth switched from the “clone” to the “original”.
- Then in 2015 there was a change at the developer studio and a new publisher took over. After that, the regular updates are said to have been significantly less.
2022 should then finally be an end to HoN.
Does HoN still have players today? Yes, matches still start relatively quickly. There is also still a YouTube channel that summarizes the “Top Plays of the Week” and gets over 20,000 views with the videos every week. Apart from this channel, you can also find a few videos on YouTube about the MOBA.
If you want to watch some gameplay of HoN, you can do so in the video of YouTuber Gorgc. He tried out Heroes of Newerth for the first time in June 2021:
What do you guys have to say about the discontinuation of Heroes of Newerth? Have you tried the MOBA in the past and will you miss it? Or are you perfectly happy with the alternatives like LoL, DOTA and Smite? Feel free to write it in the comments.
MyMMO editor Benedict Grothaus recently played LoL again after a longer break and was even positively surprised:
I played LoL again after 2 years and was surprisingly little mobbed
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