Battlegrounds and the Return of The Lost VIkings

        Possibly the most important aspect of Heroes of the Storm is their battleground system. By moving away from the traditional three lane setup of DotA-like games they're allowing themselves to make every map seem like it's own game. Even more important is that they're committed to bringing in new battlegrounds and retiring old battlegrounds on a regular basis which allows for them to experiment without having to make sure something will have enough mass appeal to be played for the lifespan of the game.



        While most people will probably be thinking about seeing their favorite places from Blizzard's big three IPs, what about their older settings? We already have confirmation that we'll be seeing heroes based on characters from The Lost Vikings, Rock n' Roll Racing, and Blackthorne. It seems almost a certainty that a dev will get the itch to make a battleground out of them as well.

        With an incredibly flexible engine at their disposal these battlegrounds could draw more from their games than just familiar art and sounds. If we take The Lost Vikings as an example then we could see them really get outside the box with a side-scrolling battleground. Mappers from Starcraft 2 managed to realize the concept as soon as the game launched so it certainly shouldn't give Blizzard any problems.
 

 
        But what else would be important to a Lost Vikings battleground? One of the game's more unique aspects was coordinating the three characters with different abilities to solve puzzles. That draws a very obvious parallel to MOBAs in general with their huge rosters of characters with unique abilities that must rely on their teammates to overcome their enemies. A maze-like battleground that requires teamwork to navigate traps and pitfalls while also having to worry about a team of enemies lurking about would certainly shake things up.
 
        I'm sure after the presentations during Blizzcon everyone's imagination is stirring with the possibilities of what can be done. What's certain is that we're definitely going to see some game-changing ideas from Blizzard now that they're free to break from the mold set by DotA and every other DotAlike.