Heroes of Newerth Goes From Free-To-Play to Even More Free

Just when you thought a game that was already free to play couldn’t get any more free, the MOBA Heroes of Newerth is now offering every single one of their currently 107 heroes up for free. Previously, though the game was still free to play, players were given a random set of unlocked, rotating heroes with the majority of the heroes locked. To permanently unlock a character, players had to earn and spend in-game coins, or make a purchase with real money through the cash shop. Now, all the heroes are completely free.

With a patch hitting sometime today, the HoN cash shop will be restructured, and every player will have access to the full pool of heroes. If you’re a legacy player or have purchased a character from the cash shop in the past (since July 5), don’t worry, S2 Games has you covered and are offering a variety of consolation items and coins, with the long list of details available over on this forum post.

As someone who was very into HoN a couple years ago, then tried getting back into it 40-something new heroes later, not having all of my old favorites available to me put an immediate end to my comeback. Now that every single character is available without spending a ton of money to unlock the hero pool or playing a massive amount of hours to earn them in-game, it seems likely I’m going to reinstall the client sometime this weekend and give it another go.

This is actually a very unique move for a free-to-play game, in that normally free-to-play games don’t give away the main bulk of their content. Dungeon & Dragons Online makes players buy adventure packs, Runes of Magic makes crafting and traveling around the world an extremely tedious affair without spending money in the cash shop, and MapleStory’s 200 level cap is extremely obnoxious when you have to spend weeks grinding for in-game money to slightly upgrade your character’s gear. Normally, the main attraction of any free-to-play game that’s still going strong is locked away behind the cash shop. Now, with this new patch, the main draw for Heroes of Newerth is totally free and available to all. Bravo, S2 Games.

(via Heroes of Newerth)

Relevant to your interests

• HoN’s newest competition, Valve’s DOTA 2, will also be free to play
• EverQuest finally went free-to-play
• There’s a lot of money to be had in free-to-play games