The popular multiplayer online battle arena title Heroes of Newerth is going free to play as of today. The action RPG has introduced three tiered accounts in a bid to attract new players into its community and keep the existing 460,000 active players happy.
New players can sign up for a Basic account which can be upgraded to a Verified account once they've surpassed a certain play time. Players who has already paid for the game will get a Legacy account that will let them play matches against other verified accounts. I suppose this makes sense for a game where you can really see the difference between a first-time player and a veteran. Legacy account holders also have the option of purchasing new heroes early before their free release.
The online gaming space is becoming increasingly crowded, so transitioning your game to being free to play seems like a smart move. "With the transition to free-to-play we're opening Heroes of Newerth up to new audiences as our players can now easily introduce the game to their friends," says Marc DeForest, co-founder of S2 games. "With the new account types and match-making standards in place, both novice and existing players will benefit from the upgraded structure.”
If Heroes of Newerth can attract a new player base whilst keeping the existing one, then I imagine it'll be around for a while to come.
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Contest:
7:00 AM on 07.29.2011 | 
I think LoL is a better alternative, because its fundamentally different in a lot of ways, and was free to play from the get-go, which means it already has a lot of it's mechanics in place, and hammered out.
I can see it getting a lot of attention and money over this, but I doubt it'll catch up to Riot.
I'm pretty sure that was already Valve's plan, and TF2 hats were a test to see how willing people were when it came to microtransactions.
Sigh...
I played LoL before i tried dota, so I did feel handicapped in trying to adjust to finding the dota items by different names on clones of Dota heroes.
No one would help me ingame chat when i asked for advice, in the new player games as well.
The color scheme is kinda terrible with the environment and heroes really dark, but spell effects all over the place, tending on the neon color scheme.
The Ingame Shop...*shudder*
I mean it's great now that people can compare them without the paywall though, so maybe it will promote S2 to not troll their community like they seem to do, along with maybe being more welcoming of new players.
havoc is wrong.
"as a dota fan you found hon too boring" hon IS dota i played both extensively, its just a little faster without the carries having to farm for 25 minutes of the match.
just because LoL was free from the beginning doesn't mean the mechanics of the game are better? Where is your logic coming from?
HoN was surviving without going free to play, however, the imminent release of dota 2 has forced HoN to adopt this strategy, going up against icefrog and valve would be idiotic. LoL didnt effect HoN's payment system at all