Heroes of the Storm was created to be a streamlined, modern take on a MOBA, something that many others have aimed for but HotS succeeds in. Shared XP keeps teams leveling together; No Last Hits means that everyone gets XP from minions and puts less importance on who gets the kill, since there is no Carry-player. Choosing talents instead of having to buy items gives the game complexity without forcing players to wade through menus and travel back to base. The game still offers a challenge to master at higher levels, but is more accessible to new players.

The fact an entire team shares a level had players worried, but with personal Hero Quests, you can now take greater gameplay risks that yield immense power and reward skilled players for good plays sooner rather than later.

Blizzard has gone above and beyond to introduce Heroes that break the standard molds for Tanks/Support/Damage characters. The talent system allows for diversity in how a character plays, even if they are considered Support, they can go for damage or utility. Each Hero has 2 Heroic Abilities(Ultimates) providing even more diversity in how each character can be played. Also, Blizzard has introduced several unique heroes, like Lost Vikings: which are 3 heroes in one, and can be controlled separately; Also, newly added Cho'Gall, which required 2 people to control 1 hero.

Except for some objectives in specific maps, RNG doesn't exist in this game. No luck, pure skills.

You can test and play any characters for free in an in-game test environment with customizable values (levels, enemies, towers, skills).

The AI is responsive, challenging and fun.

Even if you are in trouble because you lost almost all the game, you can still win by killing the enemy team on a stupid move they made at the end of the game. And it's never unfair: it's always because the losing team was overconfident and the winning one was focus.

The game had only 12 hero when the beta opened, now it s 77. Blizzard have hundreds and hundreds characters across all their other games, so Blizzard adds one hero per month, so even if you learn every hero, there will be just another one in weeks.

If you play Nova and Kill Vala, Nova will say "HUNTER!?!? more like Hunted!!"
Or if you play support and heal Raynor he will say "This medic is my new best friend".
These emotes make it very clear what happened, and add a dimension of fun that you don't see in other MOBAs.
Also you can hear some emotes after other events, like your own hero death/respawn or during starting second of the match.

In other MOBAs you have to learn which items are good for which situations as well as learn the actual classes themselves. Since HOTS does not have items, you don't have to learn what they do.

The game does away with the shop mechanic entirely. No last hitting means players don't have to focus on a minigame for the first 20 minutes so they can jump into the action much faster. No shop means that supports aren't starved for cash and can remain strong and relevant throughout the game. No items allows for the hero-specific talent system to shine, which provides a much more unique and easily balanced way to enhance your character.

The game removes a lot of pointless features of other games like last hitting and out-of-game rune/card buffs. It's also much clearer, with natural percentage based increases for characters rather than "armor/intelligence" stat increases. It also has a large map pool with greatly differing objectives in each one forcing you to consider how your playstyle will adapt to the opponent and the map itself. It may appear to be simple, but there is a lot of hidden depth.

And many more cosmetics with the 2.0 version.

If you play Nova and Kill Vala, Nova will say "HUNTER!?!? more like Hunted!!"
Or if you play support and heal Raynor he will say "This medic is my new best friend".
These emotes make it very clear what happened, and add a dimension of fun that you don't see in other MOBAs.

Heroes of the storm has a mish-mash of characters from many of Blizzards popular titles.

The game balance in HoTS is amazing. Even heroes that are ranked by pros as the worst heroes in the game can win MVP. Even the supposedly "broken" heroes are not far above average

Each hero has a marked difficulty rating to make it easier for users to pick the player that best suits them.

Blizzard has a history of fostering great community. Blizzard allows players to flag themselves as looking for group, and will suggest to other players. Heroes also has WoW-like chat channels that make it easy to find people to play with.

Decreasing the importance of "laning" and increasing team fights and map objectives. Also, many map objectives keep the games to time limits between 15 - 30 minutes. Much more manageable for people not able to commit an hour to one match. AI games are even shorter.

While other esports have aired on ESPN 3, Heroes of the Storm was the first video game broadcast live on Network TV on ESPN 2. Blizzard hosted the Heroes of the Dorm tournament, also one of the first college esports events, in which college teams played for the prize of full college tuition.