Blizzard released a set of patch notes yesterday for the Heroes of the Storm Public Test Realm as a pre­view of what’s to come in the next patch:

Heroes of the Storm PTR Patch Notes – August 10, 2015 (via Battle.net)

There’s a lot of content in those patch notes, but I decided to go over the items that I liked or particularly caught my attention.

Items may now be purchased from the PTR Shop using real money.

I’m glad that Blizzard is including store purchases in their test realm, and compensating testers for their purchases by providing the same items for free on the live servers. This hints at the fact that this test realm is actually there for testing as many things about the game as possible.

This, of course, contradicts what I discussed yesterday about the League of Legends Public Beta En­vi­ron­ment – how bugs are often reported but rarely fixed, and make it to the live servers anyway, which sug­gests that the PBE exists as a showcase environment rather than a bug testing environment.

Add Diablo to Your Hero Collection

Something I heard about in a previous patch notes release is that bundles will become dynamic bundles, and you will be refunded for any heroes that you purchased twice as a result of purchasing a bundle.

Small things like this that are essentially insignificant to Blizzard (it’s probably irrelevant to them if they reward you with 10,000 gold so you can purchase another hero) can mean a lot to players.

I qualify for a few heroes in the dynamic bundle refund system, and I’m hoping that they do something similar to this Diablo update, where if you own Diablo III and Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, you earn Diablo for free. I’m looking forward to getting several thousand gold back so I can get closer to completing my entire collection.

Malthael’s Phantom

If you’ve read some of my previous blog posts regarding Blizzard games, you probably know that one thing I absolutely love about Blizzard games is how they’re all intertwined. For example, I played World of War­craft recently because I was able to get a free mount in Heroes of the Storm once I reached Level 100 on a character in WoW (again, not really a mount I would use, but as I said, it’s all about completing the col­lec­tion).

Malthael’s Phantom is another mount you can get by reaching Level 70 with a character on Diablo III dur­ing Season 4. This is probably the one update I’m most excited about, because this mount actually looks pretty amazing and I will most likely use it on a lot of heroes.

This also brings exposure to their other games and encourages players to try them out. Although I have a level-capped character on Diablo III with over 250ish Paragon levels, I still have no clue how the Season system works. Because of this in-game promotion, Blizzard has successfully given me enough motivation to try out that aspect of Diablo III when the next season rolls around.

New Portrait Rewards

These new portrait rewards are all about the goals. Sure, just playing the game is fun, but having these rewards as external motivators makes it even better.

These portraits take quite a bit of time to achieve. For example, playing 50 games will take quite some time and dedication, especially when it has to be done within the Eternal Conflict period. Getting Level 10 on two or three heroes will also take a substantial amount of time, and aren’t easy rewards.

I like that this increases the range of difficulty of rewards. Those who like short-term and easy rewards can just level heroes and get small gold rewards and skin color unlocks, while veterans and advanced players have these big goals to which they can look forward.

Versus A.I.

Finally, the last thing I’m somewhat excited about is the improvements to the Versus A.I. mode.

When I first started playing League of Legends, I played almost exclusively with Ed (who you might know better as Grainyrice), and he was particularly fond of playing bot games. Unfortunately, back then, bots were very basic in League of Legends, and it got pretty boring, pretty quickly.

I like that Blizzard is implementing A.I. improvements to HotS because it shows they recognize that some people just don’t really like PvP, and would rather work together as a team to take down a computerized opponent.

There is also a Versus A.I. section on the profile that is supposedly coming soon, so I like that they’re adding more diversity into the game with different game modes, and no matter what you choose to do in Heroes of the Storm, you can show off your achievements in your profile.