Honestly, I’m okay with this. It’s a necessary concession to get around the issue of a hive mentality at the controls; they managed to flail their way through the Pokemon games specifically because it was a turn-based affair and they could waste time sorting out a consensus without completely screwing themselves over.

We’re getting a fair number of new cheap, defensive cards that are exactly what we’ve needed to turn back the flood of face aggro in the meta. Only time will tell just how effective it ends up being, though.

This cross-promotional stuff in general has been pretty awesome, especially if you were already a fan of Blizzard games. Free Valla for pre-purchasing Reaper of Souls and Artanis for Legacy of the Void, free mounts for playing Hearthstone and Diablo 3, and that’s only the Heroes-related goodies.

Paladin with Equality is going to be really clutch with all the big-minion-supporting legendaries coming out...

That’s Jaina/Kael for you.

Quadraxis alone made that game.

In answer to some of your questions:

As mentioned, more important than the length of matches is their pacing; because less time is spent on the early game and laning and more time is spent in the late game and teamfights and fighting over objectives, HotS matches don’t feel long because you’re more active for much more of it.

Abathur’s one of my favorite characters, and there are two primary builds I use for him; one focused on Symbiote and the other on Locusts. I’ll cover the latter first, since it has more nuance.

Did you honestly believe I would trust the team’s DPS to some blind, half-night elf mongrel?

Well, my understanding is that the Zerg trade-off for being able to spawn large armies very quickly is that said armies are weaker than Terran and Protoss equivalents at the same amount of supply. Mind you, I don’t have personal expertise in this, it’s just what I’ve read, but in the late game when both players are…

It’s not a question of difficulty in this instance, it’s a question of balance. Neither Protoss or Terran have to sacrifice unit production for worker production, but because all Zerg units come from the same source, they need the ability to keep pace with the other races without having to cover their base with…

Option 1 is definitely the best: Mule has some utility beyond simply free workers through emergency repairs and repairs far from base, and Chrono Boost helps a Protoss player tech switch or rush out an upgrade or utility unit like an Observor.

“… Maybe The Order is not a gamer’s game, but it’s a developer’s game.”

As for other Heroes of the Storm content, Blizzard said that it expects that the upcoming Diablo III monk character named Kharazim and the new map they just announced to come out as early as next Monday.

Am I imagining things, or do some of those kids look remarkably like characters from Awakenings? Gurei and Matoi look quite similar to Gaius and Cordelia (right down to the ever-present lollipops for the former and the wing hair clip for the latter) and Syalla is very Tharja-like.

Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Not only do we already have a pretty awesome Class Hall, but we’ll now have more of a reason to spend time there.

They do, but then they also mention that it will be something you share with other players. I can see how it would work if they make it so every player is a high-ranking, veteran member of their class’ order, but not the leader. Maybe something like the Jedi Order in Star Wars, where they’ll have an NPC as the leader…

I’m glad other classes are getting “clubhouses”; Ebon Hold was always one of the coolest perks of being a Death Knight, having a place to hang out and show solidarity with other DKs, regardless of our faction affiliation.