Blizzard is still updating Heroes of the Storm on an almost monthly basis, and I just think that's nice

Pour one out for Heroes of the Storm, Blizzard's belated entry into the genre that spawned from an old Warcraft mod, and the only MOBA I've ever loved. HotS is a brilliant game but arrived on the scene a little too late to make any kind of serious impact, with the field dominated then as now by League of Legends and Dota 2, and despite Blizzard's best efforts and a 2017 reboot as HotS 2.0, development began winding down: in 2022, the developer finally announced it wouldn't be creating any new content for the game.

You can say a lot about the journey of HotS since its 2015 release, but I think it's inarguable that Blizzard really did support this game, and did so beyond the point where it was no longer really viable. This thing launched with around 30 characters and now boasts 90, as well as a boatload of maps, modes, and other additional content: all free, of course. One of the more bizarre aspects of HotS now is that players generally feel 2.0 didn't monetise enough.

All of which is prelude to noting that, while HotS may now be in maintenance mode, Blizzard continues to plug away at the game and release regular updates. There's no new content, sure, but the developer continues with seasonal events, mode rotations, and considerably in-depth balance patches.

The latest was released two days ago and it's enormous: simply reading through the list of fixes and tweaks has taken me around 10 minutes. I won't bore you by going in-depth on the buffs and nerfs to Abathur et al, beyond noting that there are still people at Blizzard (whom some members of the community humorously refer to as "the janitor") who really care about this game and are issuing near-monthly fixes and adjustments across a huge part of the roster.

Also: this particular patch fixes loads of issues relating to shrub visibility, among which is an apparent bug where players could invisibly farm while in a shrub. Maybe it's just the echo of the Knights Who Say «Ni!», but I find it very amusing that somewhere