Where Heroes of the Storm stands in Oceania – The Roar

Heroes of the Storm has enjoyed much success in America, Europe and Korea, dominating the playing field. Australia is now starting to emerge as a region to watch.

Until recently, there was not much available for those who wanted to go pro in Australia. Community-run events were scarce and dependent on those often juggling other commitments.

Australian New Zealand Heroes was a great initiative to kick start a community presence in the region.

Founded by dynamic duo Micheal Disconcur Roberts and Nicole Neri Roberts, they focused on bringing Heroes of the Storm to life down under.

Another organisation committed to the cause and stepping in was Gamestah, an Australian esports event organiser and broadcaster. Between ANZ Heroes and Gamestah, the community suddenly had competitions brought to life and a way for teams to stay connected. Also, as of last year, Blizzard ANZ shifted its attention towards seeing how they could best support this emerging esports community.

The Ember Series format for semi-pros, launched by Gamestah in June 2016, featured weekly matches with cash prizes up for grabs. ANZ Heroes in partnership with Blizzard ANZ also featured a cash prize competition in the form of King of the Hill a weekly best-of-one-match series.

ANZ Royal Rumble was a solo sign-up tournament organised by ANZ Heroes in conjunction with Morton, a long-term community member and player who previously used to organise these free agent tournaments for fun in the early days of ANZ Heroes of the Storm. This tournament had an emphasis on fun over prizes, as your team would be generated randomly, with the aim to have all rankings of players distributed equally.

One huge announcement by Blizzard ANZ last year, on the back of all these community initiatives, was to give our region a proper competitive environment. Blizzard finals were announced, with the road to finals in the form of qualifiers being organised and streamed online by ANZ Heroes and Gamestah.

The finals would be played out at the Electronic Sports League Sydney studio and all the action would be broadcasted live online.

These competitions saw some great teams forged and others crumble. Negative Synergy was one such team that looked to be destined for greatness after winning finals, and then disbanded after their first international showing. Four ex-members of the team created the fittingly named team Reborn and, more recently, Nomia, who have proven they are the team to beat now in ANZ with an almost flawless match history.

On an International level were doing well too. The Grand Master leaderboards for the Americas region features our talent in JimJam, Arcaner, robahdobah, AgainstTime, and AeternaNyx at the time of writing.

Some local Grand Master players have even taken on the challenge of playing on other regions servers to achieve the same rank. This is done to challenge themselves further and develop as better players, with each region favouring a slightly different take on the meta and playstyles. It shows that we have some amazing talent right here in our ranks that are eager to become the next Nomia.

Nomia are currently the team to beat. They are the go-to favourites in ANZ, with an impressive track record, only dropping one game in qualifiers last season. Its good to see in the Gamestah Season 2 qualifiers they have also dropped one game to date to Mortons List.

This is a good thing because teams taking games off them proves they are being challenged. This means that all teams involved can push themselves to go even further and improve their quality of gameplay.

Since I started getting involved in Heroes of the Storm locally, the experience and quality of teams has rapidly improved. Blizzard ANZ supplying community prizes in the forms of skins is a nice gesture to ensure participation does not go unrewarded, as it is a daunting task to begin from the bottom. They have also shown that they are ready to shake things up with their recent announcement of Heroes of the Storm 2.0, acknowledging how far the game has come since its launch.

Heroes of the Storm in Australia and New Zealand has had a turbulent ride. This season has shown that Blizzard ANZ and ANZ esports organisations are willing to put in the time for any players that are serious about representing our region.

Nomia, Mortons List, Lleyton Hewitt FC and TrumpSports are all in the leaderboards for the Gamestah Season 2 qualifiers, time will tell how they fare.

Tune in on Tuesdays 8pm to catch the running season 2 qualifier series.

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Where Heroes of the Storm stands in Oceania - The Roar