Heroes of Newerth

» see heroesofnewerth.com as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the goodbye ~

by 2010 the moba that took the turkish pc scene was league of legends, not heroes of newerth. anyway, hon launched on may 12 of that year at thirty dollars a box. that was an unusual price tag for a moba in '10, especially in turkey where most of the gaming-pc kids paid in trial-month cd-keys and internet cafe hours. for whatever reason, the s2 games team out of madison wisconsin had been the lead crew on the savage and savage 2 titles before this. they decided the dota allstars formula would carry a paid retail price (close enough).

this part is mostly told from the english-speaking gaming press, by then. the early hon beta started in 2009 with eul, icefrog and pendragon involved in some shape, two of the original dota-allstars architects. for some reason, the pitch was a clean standalone engine with proper matchmaking and replays. either way, none of the warcraft 3 baggage and none of the dota-on-bnet clunkiness. the launch reviews were warm, ign gave it 8.5, pc gamer gave it 84.

i was not paying attention to the company itself, but anyway. league of legends had launched in october '09 free-to-play with a softer art style and a more forgiving learning curve. anyway, by mid '11 it was clear the box-price pitch was dead. s2 flipped hon to free-to-play on july 29 2011 with a legacy account perk for the people who had already paid. for whatever reason, the concurrent base climbed for another two years and peaked around a hundred and fifty thousand in may '13.

on may 5 2015 s2 sold hon to frostburn studios, a singapore outfit named after the patch one of the items shipped in. by then, the s2 team kept savage 2 and a couple other side projects. either way, frostburn ran hon as a steady patch operation for the loyal base, mostly in southeast asia and the netherlands. honestly, the rest of the western moba audience had already settled into dota 2 or stayed on league.

the official shutdown announcement landed on december 15 2021. anyway, the final patch shipped late may '22, the last day of public service was june 20 2022 (or roughly). the fan-run continuation, project kongor, used leaked server code and quietly grew through '22 and '23 to a small but real community with tournament support.

~ the chronicle ~

~ the breakout ~

hon's pitch at launch was the clean engine with in-client voice chat and a harsh penalty system for leavers and griefers. for some reason, the early reputation was that hon was the moba for dota-allstars veterans who wanted the depth without the warcraft 3 frame. anyway, the team behavior was famously strict. people called it "tryhard" as a compliment and an insult depending on which side of the loading screen they were on.

this part you had to be in the eu or sea servers for, and i kind of was not. either way, the regional pull was strongest in scandinavia, the netherlands, philippines, vietnam. for whatever reason, hon never found the same purchase in english-speaking north america that lol picked up almost overnight. the box-price model in 2010 was a real obstacle to first-time mobas in markets where steam was still mostly half-life and team fortress 2 (close enough).

~ the decline ~

the f2p transition in '11 helped, anyway, the audience peaked in '13 and never grew back. for whatever reason, dota 2 launched into open beta on september 26 '11 with the icefrog patch lineage that hon could not claim as cleanly. by then, valve put dota 2 on steam, free, with the matchmaking that worked on the same account people already used for everything else.

the hon team kept patching through '14 with new heroes and items on a steady cadence. honestly, the audience drain was steady. by the frostburn sale in mid '15 the concurrent base was somewhere between thirty and fifty thousand on a good evening. anyway, the southeast asian server kept hon alive for years past the point the western numbers would have justified.

~ the long tail ~

honestly, the june 20 '22 shutdown notice landed on the official forum with the founder posting a goodbye letter to the community. for whatever reason, project kongor went live the same week with leaked or reverse-engineered server code, a working matchmaker. either way, no official blessing. the kongor community in '26 sits around seven thousand concurrent at peak times, which is bigger than the final official hon numbers in late '21.

the hon brand never returned. anyway, s2 games as a company effectively wound down through the late '10s. frostburn moved on to other projects after the kill. the cultural footprint of hon was always narrow, the people who played it loved it harder than almost anyone outside the niche could explain. the clean dota-clone slot in moba history sits with hon. not dota 2, not lol, just the paid box that landed in the gap.

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