Heroes of Newerth (HoN), once the top competitor for League of Legends in the burgeoning MOBA space, may be slowly winding down. After more than a decade of gameplay, HoN may have just received its last patch, signalling the beginning of the end.
HoN entered Beta in 2009 right alongside League of Legends. Where Riot's game would make it out of beta just a few months ahead of HoN, it was arguably the decision to make LoL free to play which gave it a serious edge. HoN would follow that path a year later, but it spent its first 12 months behind a $30 paywall, which kept its player numbers far behind that of LoL.
Player numbers for HoN have been declining for years and though we don't have hard numbers, it's likely in the thousands, where LoL still enjoys millions of gamers all over the world battling it out on the Summoner's Rift. That doens't mean HoN is dead just yet, but it may well be coming to a close soon.
"At this moment in time, patch 4.7.3 is planned to be the final patch that contains major content and major changes," the latest HoN patch notes read, as spotted by Chaobreaker on the Resetera forum. "Future HoN patches will generally consist of a small amount of balance changes and/or bugfixes, if they are deemed necessary."
It goes on to say that "Tributes to certain staff members have been put into some item flavour tooltips to thank them for all their hard work throughout the game!"
Will you keep playing HoN even if the patches start to dry up? This last major one is set to release on February 26.
