Blizzard has been on a spree of making content free for players to help encourage social distancing. They’ve recently made their entire Co-op roster free for StarCraft II, and are giving double experience to all players for World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth.
It doesn’t look like they’re done there, though. Blizzard announced that they’re making the entire roster for Heroes of the Storm free to play!
All Heroes will be free to play from now until April 2nd! pic.twitter.com/gUnp4114sX
— Heroes of the Storm (@BlizzHeroes) March 20, 2020
Heroes of the Storm is Blizzard’s MOBA, and features a roster of 86 characters from across the Blizzard franchises, as well as 2 that are specific to the Heroes of the Storm universe. The bulk of these are from the Warcraft universe with 42 overall. There’s a more even split of the rest of the franchises, including 18 from Diablo, 17 from StarCraft, and 8 from Overwatch. If you’re a Blizzard faithful, you’ll recognize the Lost Vikings as well from one of Blizzard’s earliest games.
As part of the game’s rotation, multiple heroes go on a free rotation every week. These are normally just enough to help fill out the weekly quests – at least one in each role and almost always one from each franchise since some quests require you specifically to play heroes from a certain franchise.
Still, you can go weeks if not months without getting the play the hero that you want to play. Say, for example, you’ve been wanting to try out Deathwing, the newest heroes. But once the free rotation comes around, you see that Deathwing is still not free to play, and as the newest, he costs a bit more to outright purchase than the rest of the heroes.
Blizzard’s decision to make every hero free for the rest of the month means that you’ll get to play any of the heroes that you’ve been wanting to try out! With every champion free, you’ll have every opportunity to pick a new main.
Best of all, the levels that you accrue through this event will still stay on those heroes, and they’ll be that level if you eventually unlock them. You’ll also have a much easier time earning rewards for leveling up, as every level you earn with a champion will contribute to your overall level.
More than anything, it’s fantastic to see Blizzard doing so much to help with social distancing. To be blunt, it’s about time that we have some positive PR for the company, given that the last few years have been filled with Hong Kong humanitarian protests and the disastrous launch of one of their most anticipated titles ever. Well done, Blizzard!
