It’s been almost a year since the creator of Heroes of Newerth, S2 Games decided to make the game free-to-play with some restrictions, and linux gamers got the chance to play this wonderful dota clone without spending a penny.
One of the most annoying restrictions was the “free hero pool” which limited the hero selection for the free accounts at 15 different every week heroes. This caused unbalance and cut the gaming experience for the newcomers. Thankfully, S2 Games decided to throw this limitation away on version 2.6.11 that came out a few days ago…
[youtube]http://youtu.be/nXdJS-Y-RMI[/youtube]
So from now on everyone will be able to play whatever hero they like, whenever they feel like it. You will be able to choose one of the 100 unique heroes expanding greatly the gaming experience for the newcomers. This will decrease the matchmaking waiting time for less popular game modes that required the possession of many heroes, so this change will be beneficial for the legacy accounts too.
Is this connected to the upcoming Dota 2 release by Valve that will also be available for the Linux platform? Of course it is! Heroes of Newerth counts less players than League of Legends and the release of Dota 2 will only make things worse so this is just another attempt to expand the HoN community and increase the player base. This will hopefully increase the income from other extra stuff like alternative hero skins, funny announcers etc.
Whatever the case, Heroes of Newerth is reaching out to the Linux gamers once again, and this time the deal is truly honest. If you haven’t played this game before, you should try it out immediately!
