Though Heroes of the Storm officially releases today, the current game isn’t quite the final form. As part of yesterday’s launch event, Blizzard announced some significant changes to the ranked play coming very soon.
The company added two ranked play modes to Heroes early this year: Hero League, for individuals and pick up groups, and Team League for teams of five organized players. This allowed players to progress in a ladder with each rank representing roughly 2 percent of players. For the very best players, however, getting to and staying at rank one seemed like a pretty vague achievement given there was no real sense of where you ranked among your fellow elite players. To that end, a grandmaster level will be added above rank one with exact individual rankings—much like the legend rank in Hearthstone.
The game will add grandmaster rankings for both Hero League and Team League, and publish the rankings for these elite players publicly. Other changes coming include reducing the cost of registering for Team League from 1,000 to 500 gold, and stopping five-man groups from competing in Hero League.
Additionally, the ranked play seasons will last for three months and that each season players and teams will have to complete an undetermined number of placement matches to decide their initial Hero League and Team League rankings.
One thing still up in the air is when the first season will actually start. Clearly with these changes coming down the line, it won’t be too close to today’s launch.
