Heroes of the Storm Closed Beta is live - so let's talk about the release date

New heroes and villains will be joining the Nexus in the Closed Beta and beyond.

So Heroes of the Storm is officially out of Alpha and has begun its Closed Beta testing, which with most games is usually the point at which the community starts getting its first good look at them pre-release.  However, with most games the community isn't actively participating in the testing phase usually exclusive to developers.  The Technical Alpha for Heroes has been going on since March 2014, so the start of the Closed Beta is a slightly different milestone in the development timeline than in previous Blizzard projects.  However, even if we don't have a one to one comparison, from looking at other games we may be able to predict a window for the game's release date before a company rep decides to grace us with something more specific than "when it's ready."


Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty was released on July 27, 2010, but it had been in beta testing (closed, I might add) since February 17, 2010.  That's roughly six and a half months, with the release date not being confirmed until May 3.

Diablo III, released May 15, 2012, had been in closed beta testing for nine and a half months, having started on September 6, 2011, though a Friends and Family beta had started slightly earlier.  It's worth pointing out though, that this particular period between the start of testing and release was intended to be shorter, according to former Game Director Jay Wilson.  Wilson tweeted that the game would likely be released about six months after the beta, but continued delays extended testing.

Averaging these two time periods, we get about eight months from the start of Closed Beta to the game's official release.  Of course, we all know it's nowhere near that simple.  It could be longer or it could be shorter, and while I'm not usually an optimist, I suspect it may be the latter.  While the main purpose of the Technical Alpha was test the servers and other...technical aspects, the game itself was receiving community feedback for those seven months, which just what a beta test is supposed to do.  It's true that the beta version of Heroes will need to be tested with the larger server loads, new user interfaces, etc, it's not unreasonable to suspect the standard beta period may be a little shortened or moved up to an open beta like Hearthstone was.

Regardless of whether any of this theory crafting is even remotely close to the truth, I think we can all agree on one thing: today is one big step closer to all of us getting into the Nexus.