Blizzard to scrap Heroes of the Storm’s Team League

One of Hereos of the Storm’s major game mode will disappear entirely and a number of the game’s other key features will undergo some serious changes in the coming months, Blizzard announced over the weekend.

The “team league” game mode, where groups of five players registered as an official team and had to play in that specific group, will be removed from the game in an upcoming patch as part of major changes to matchmaking announced during Blizzard’s Gamescom broadcast.

“This was something we were really excited about,” game director Dustin Browder said. “but hasn’t really taken off with players. It’s just too hard to get the same players on the same team every night to play your match.”

Instead of the separate “team league” and “hero league” ranked play modes, there will instead be just one mode known as “ranked” going forward. Parties of five players will be placed into a separate queue with other five player groups, with a second queue for groups of one to four players.

Blizzard will also be making changes to matchmaking in response to community feedback about poor experiences in the ranked game modes. The changes weren’t all about responding to negative feedback however. Browder also revealed that the game would continue to add new heroes at a rate of one every three to four weeks. With Kharazhim, Rexxar and Artanis already revealed, an as-yet unnamed StarCraft 2 medic character will soon make its way into the game.