First Look : Artesia

Here is your first look at the first hero of 2012, Artesia!

We wish everyone a Happy New Year and look forward to bringing you Artesia and much, much more in 2012!  

[S2]Konran

S2 Staff Member

Honcast Top 10 Plays of the Week 26/12/11

No New Hero this Friday

So according to S2XanderK in this thread, we wont get a new hero this Friday. But the clue is the next upcoming hero should be a female hero.

I retweeted this tweet last night from S2SoundWizard about the Batman Thing hero, but then the sad news is that the new hero isnt a batman related thing, its just a joke nothing more or less, as you can see in his tweets below :

Happy HoNidays !

It's a very special time of year and that calls for some very special stuff from us here at S2 Games. The list below contains some special thank you's from the team to our players PLUS a few special offers that simply can't be missed!

• To start, everything in the store will be 25% off Gold and Silver coins until December 27th at midnight! Huzzah! (Excludes sub-accounts, stat resets, and nickname changes)
  
• Legacy players get another exclusive benefit! There's a FREE symbol in the store waiting for players with Legacy accounts but only until December 27th at midnight. Thanks again for your support!
  
• Jollywood and Christmas Keeper are available once more until December 27th at midnight and they are FREE! Go pick them up and show your Christmas spirit before they're gone!
  
• Ho ho ho! Santa Midas is now available for purchase in the store. Go pick him up and enjoy throwing presents and reindeer at your foes! Yes, we're serious. Thank community member Veldt for this amazing alt avatar! Only available until December 30th!
  
• There's a new symbol called Silver Lord. You can only buy it with silver coins so it's great way to show your friends how awesome you are at HoN! It'll be available from now on in the store!
  
• Need some more coins for all the awesome stuff? It's time for a double silver coin week! From now until December 31st at midnight, players will earn double coins from Matchmaking games. Let's get it on!
  
• We also have a very special offer for all of our free-to-play players. From right now until December 27th at midnight EST, we're offering a package deal with EVERY hero in the game for only $10. Don't miss this amazing offer! (Excludes EA heroes)
  CLICK HERE FOR THIS AMAZING DEAL!
  

Don't forget! Player Santa is still up and running until January 2nd! Whenever you buy an item with gold coins, you're able to gift a copy of that item to a friend for free! Get in that giving mood! (Excludes sub-accounts, stat resets, and nickname changes)

Subscribe LightningCold @ Youtube for more !

Shark Hunter - BloodHunter Alt.Avt


Dumpster Taunt : 

Fist of Sol Taunt :

Dominatrix Torturer :

Mother Nature Keeper :

2.5.3 Patch Notes - Happy HONidays !

Version 2.5.3
-------------
- Create a Guide
* You can now create your own hero guides in the game client in the Herodex

- Added content for the store for Christmas. This content will become available over the coming days. Stay tuned to the MotD for more information as these become available!

- Dominatrix Torturer is now available.
- Sol's Fist Taunt size increased from 1.1 to 1.85

- Monarch
* Noxious Cloud increased manacost from 100 to 100/115/130/145
* Noxious Cloud no longer gives vision

HON Newsletter vol17 - Happy HONidays

Read the Newsletter here

Player Santa Gifting

Dominatrix Torturer
Credits to "Judge", Winner of Forum Community Event: Alt. Avatar Contest
Sorry for the late update, since the internet connection still sucks in past few days

If you haven't noticed already, there's a new purchasing option available at the in-game store. We call this new feature Player Santa and it allows players to gift away a free copy of items purchased at the in-game shop to one of their friends. Think of it as a buy one, gift one free program. The entire process can be done up to five times and the feature is available to both free-to-play and legacy players. To take advantage of the new gifting feature all you have to do is scrounge around some gold coins, enter your friend's nickname and wait for the system to confirm that your friend hasn't already purchased the item. Once verification is complete both of you will have access to the item.

The promotion does not include subaccounts, stat resets, or nickname change purchases, but think of all those heroes, taunts, announcers, and more that you've been waiting to grab for yourself and enjoy gifting it to your friends who matter most. Opportunities like this only come once a year and it all ends on January 2nd.

Here's a list of clarifications:

• Player Santa System (Gifting) is currently live
• Program is for Buy One, Gift One free
• Only works on NEW purchases
• Eligible purchases are Gold Coin only
• Can be used on up to five purchases
• Cannot be used for subaccount, stat reset, or nickname change purchases
• Cannot be used on EAP
• Gifting feature will be disabled January 2nd

[S2]Zero_MnotW

S2 Staff Member

Santa Bombardier by Veldt

They should hire this guy

Download the Mod

Patch 2.5.2.1 Changelog - Mother Nature Keeper and New Taunt

The Linux patch will not be out until later today. We are sorry for this, we are going to be fixing it as quickly as we can.

Version 2.5.2.1

------------

- The current Free Heroes were changed. The current available list is as follows:

* Valkyrie

* Monkey King

* Gemini

* Chronos

* Swiftblade

* Zephyr

* Engineer

* Fayde

* Parasite

* Thunderbringer

* Wretched Hag

* Martyr

* Puppet Master

* Plague Rider

* Pharoah

- Added a new Taunt: Fist of Sol

- Added a new Keeper of the Forest Alt Avatar: Mother Nature Keeper

- Health Bars for heroes now have Health Pips and glow when you hover over them

* Each small section is 200 Health and each large section is 1000 Health

- New options for colorblind players

* Health Pips or Colorblind options can be turned on and off in the Mod Options section

- /dnd will now ignore mentor/player spectate requests

- You can no longer player spectate or mentor in a Tournament Rules game

- Fixed player count with player spectators/mentors

- For mentors/player spectators, we no longer do:

* PSR checks

* Leaver check

* Verified check

* Private server check

Mother of Nature Keeper Alt.Avt

Coming this Friday

Patch 2.5.0 Review Video by Nigma

Patch 2.5 is finally out and features Spectator Feature, Mentoring Feature, multiple new alt avatars, Shadowblade (New Hero), 2 new items, new creeps/trees and more.

Patch 2.5.0 Changelog

Note : For Mac User, read about the patch issue here

Version 2.5.1
------------
- The shop hotkeys have been reverted to before 2.5
- Fixed Replays

Version 2.5.0
------------
*** With today's patch we want to clarify some confusion regarding why the highly anticipated version 3.0 of HoN appears to be missing in action. With the quality of the game at stake during the later stages of development for 3.0, we realized that all the features we had originally planned for 3.0 wouldn't actually be ready for release until well into next year.

Rather than compromising our standards of quality and releasing a lackluster version 3.0 or delaying the patch into oblivion, we decided that we needed to stop holding back all this great content and bring version 2.5 to life. We hold ourselves to a higher standard come hell or high water and we know that the HoN community will support our decision.

There are a plethora of great things coming out today in version 2.5 that we stand behind in bringing the best gaming experience possible and we thank you for your patience and commitment. Without further ado, we hope you enjoy 2.5. Game HoN!

*** These notes includes the notes from 2.3.5 earlier today

- The current Free Heroes were changed. The current available list is as follows:

* Blood Hunter

* Nomad

* Moon Queen

* Night Hound

* Torturer

* Pollywog Priest

* Vindicator

* Rhapsody

* Empath

* Gladiator

* Cthulhuphant

* Accursed

* Keeper of the Forest

* Deadwood

* Gauntlet

2.5 Update - Patching TODAY

Downtime within 2 - 3 hours

Update Saturday 11 AM EST:

Well we have internet back and after a few hours of sleep we are back in the office finally getting this done. There was a code change overnight so we are re-doing the build and then working on getting it all uploaded.

At some point today we will be doing the original plan and taking everything down. Most likely within 2 hours. 

Professor Repulsor in HON 2.5

HON Vol. #16 Newsletter - HON 2.5

Read it Now here !

Leaked 2.5 Patch Notes via Reddit

• Player Spectating
• Can now join a friend's game in progress and watch from their point of view!
• No delay on this, your camera is locked to the view of the specific person you are watching
• Mentoring
• Same as Player Spectating (View), except you have special functions
• Holding Right Mouse Button will show your mouse to your Mentee
• CTRL+Enter will message your Mentee or Mentor
• Holding X will let you have voice chat with only your Mentor or Mentee
• You can also ping your Mentee's Minimap screen as a Mentor
• Matchmaking Rework
• The "Average Wait Time" displayed when waiting for a match should now be much more accurate based on the groups settings.

Patch 2.3.5 - 3 New Alt.Avatars

Version 2.3.5
------------
** The huge 2.5 patch is on its way! We will be patching the game with 2.5 tonight, so enjoy your time with Shadowblade as you prepare for 2.5 to go live later tonight!

- Added a new Early Access Hero: Shadowblade
- Added a new Limited Edition Alt Avatar: Corporeal Shadowblade

- Added a new Martyr Alt Avatar: Sister Martyr

Father Time Chronos Enhancement Update

Hey guys,

Just wanted to pass this along as a teaser for what's coming on Friday as far as Father Time Chronos's improvements. Contrary to cynical beliefs, we didn't have an improved version already made :P. There are still some rough edges to be worked out - for example, the gameplay clarity within the new ultimate - but I personally think it looks awesome.

Improvements:

Upcoming Matchmaking Rework this Friday!!!

Since the release of matchmaking last year we have seen more of our community choose to play games utilizing the matchmaking system than we could have ever hoped for. You have all made matchmaking a success and it is only fitting that we continually try to improve upon our system to get it to where it needs to be. Although during the past year we have made many improvements to our system, the community has raised questions and asked for changes to be made in order to create a better matchmaking experience. In light of these requests we have taken some of the most pressing issues related to matchmaking and will be addressing them in a patch this week on December 9th, 2011. Along with many other features we've been working hard on, this patch will also include a complete matchmaking re-work. This re-work includes changes across all areas of matchmaking :

ShadowBlade Hero Spotlight

Armadon is the new Kongor ?

The New S2Games Hero Spotlight Team Line Up :

Directed, scripted, organized by Mia "Viole" Violet
Intro sequence and final render courtesy of David Kim "RuthlessVoid"
Demonstrative staged scenes and other tidbits by "Smyger"
Commentary provided by Shannon "SUNSfan" Scotten


Shadowblade Mini Hero Guide : 

Shadowblade Development Blog by S2Buro

Coming to Newerth this Friday !

First off I'd like to introduce myself as many of you do not know me! I've been working as a designer here at S2 Games for over a year now. I've played World of Warcraft 3v3 arena and Team Fortress 2 competitively, as well as a countless number of other games! The heroes I've designed so far are Dampeer, Flux, and Revenant.

[S2]Buro

S2 Staff Member

Patch 2.3.2 Changelog - Father Time Chronos and RAP 2.1

NOTE: You must disable all of your mods, as there are several that break the game this patch.
NOTE 2: We are working on bringing back up Matchmaking. There was a chat server crash.

 Version 2.3.4
------------
- Fixed a minor issue with an upcoming Alt Avatar

Version 2.3.3
------------
- Fixed Flux's Magnetic Surge (Again)
- Fixed Mandromeda's Attack Projectile

Version 2.3.2
------------
- Congratulations to all of the participants in DreamHack Winter!
- Good Luck to the players and teams participating in the upcoming NASL Finals!
* Due to these competitive events, we are keeping the game in a stable state
* We will not be adding new in-game content or changing any balance until they are completed

- RAP 2.1 changes
* Raised coin deposit amount to 25 silver coins, up from 15
* New tooltips to help explain what is and isn't griefing
* In addition, we have added Cooldown Timer on submitting reports after the match has taken place

- Added a new Chronos Alt Avatar: Father Time Chronos
* Voiced by the most epic Old Man ever
* Will be available to purchase on the 2nd

- We would like to give credit to Vivi_Chester for his original concept of Steampunk Corrupted Disciple
* You can check out his original concept art at http://javivi-chester.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d4b9vzl