Blizzard All-Stars MOBA will likely be stand-alone, free-to-play

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With League of Legends dominating the MOBA scene (in terms of total players), Dota 2 trying to close the gap, and Heroes of Newerth... still existing, it's been a while since we heard anything about Blizzard's competitor. Renamed Blizzard All-Stars after Valve won the commercial rights to "Dota," things have been quieter on the subject than team chat in solo cue. Last week, however, Eurogamer put down some wards and was able to get some interesting info from StarCraft II production director Chris Sigaty. It seems Blizzard may be planning to release All-Stars stand-alone, with a free-to-play model.

Previously, what was then called Blizzard Dota was announced to release as an in-house mod using the StarCraft II Arcade. Early builds showed a disappointingly small number of heroes compared to the genre leaders. And then it just seemed to vanish. It is, according to Sigaty, being "actively worked on," however.

"We'll go into more details about that in the future but I suspect you will not have to have StarCraft 2 to play [Blizzard All-Stars]," he said. "We're definitely emphasizing it as its own product in the future."

We'll be watching warily for more Blizzard All-Stars info to spring out of the jungle for a genre gank, so sit tight in your lanes and wait for our signal.

Len Hafer
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Len Hafer is a freelancer and lifelong PC gamer with a specialty in strategy, RPGs, horror, and survival games. A chance encounter with Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness changed her life forever. Today, her favorites include the grand strategy games from Paradox Interactive like Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis, and thought-provoking, story-rich RPGs like Persona 5 and Disco Elysium. She also loves history, hiking in the mountains of Colorado, and heavy metal music.