Heroes of the Storm Replays Need Backward Compatibility!

I am writing this post in regard to being unable to watch replays of old versions in Heroes of the Storm and how I couldn't record videos of some of my most epic moments playing the game, especially as Abathur. This post will include detailed descriptions of these moments as I will want to remember them in the future and reflect on those moments with a broad smile on my face. This post will also include a response from Blizzard support about the current situation.

I hadn't known before that we are unable to watch replays of older versions after the game client is updated to the latest version when a patch or a hotfix is implemented. Yesterday Heroes of the Storm received a very minor hotfix that didn't even add anything to the gameplay, heroes, skills, or talents. However, this updated the client version which in turn rendered every single one of my replays totally useless and unwatchable. 

The hotfix was applied to Heroes of the Storm at approximately 8 am. The two Slapathur games I will be talking about in this post were played at around 3-4 am. If I had a heads up about a hotfix coming, I would have found a way to record these moments in the 4 hour time frame I had instead of sleeping but there was no news of an upcoming hotfix so I was totally caught unguard.

This doesn't count as a real Slapathur!! Even though I got the Core kill by the time my Allies reached the core :P

We all know how almost impossible these legit Slapathur moments are to come by. I have some other moments of slapping but they were on enemy Core, so the two replays I can't watch anymore had significant value and importance for me because I never thought I would actually get to have these moments that I could only witness on Youtube.

The last Abathur post I made was back when I was just starting to play him for the first time and I only played him against AI, but now I'm sticking to QM or even HL with my Abathur and I raised my skill pretty high. I'm also possibly one of the most aggressive Abathurs you can ever witness in the game. Sometimes I am being punished for it as I push into the enemy base quite often to summon my locusts and then HS back to base immediately which makes is easy to get caught if I am not careful enough with the whereabouts of my enemies (I usually am but sometimes mistakes are made :P)

I know I know, I'm way too naughty! :P

My very first legit Slapathur moment happened when I was caught like I mentioned above by the enemy player JAINA out of all heroes too and it was such a legendary moment for me. I was playing my cutey Pajamathur in Garden of Terror. That game was possibly my longest game in a QM so far with a 35.53-minute runtime. We had a lot of feeders in our group and our enemy also played a lot better and had much more control of the battleground overall. My team would just feed or lane during night phase when we needed to collect seeds. It was me who basically split push the entire time and paid the price with a whopping 4 deaths as an Abathur. (I will posts scores so you can see for yourself) 

Close to 33 minute mark I wanted to spawn a group of locusts in bottom lane. Their keeps and forts were destroyed so their core was unprotected. My group also got a Siege camp so my initial strategy was to slither my way over there and spawn the locusts to help the minion wave, siege giants and the catapults so we would force them to defend the bottom lane so we could go for seeds meanwhile. The strategy was successful as both their Nova and Jaina came to defend but their Jaina found me trying to HS in the bushes. Jaina was already at around 40% health when she found me and I had already laid 3 mines around me before I started HSing. She used Frostbolt and Cone of Cold on me which weren't enough to kill me but left me with a very very low health pool, she had her Blizzard on cooldown as she used it on the minion wave before coming for me. When Jaina stepped on my mines she lost more health and I started slapping her. When her health got even lower she panicked and used Ice Block!!! I used the renewed charges on my Toxic Nests immediately as their cooldowns were ready. The mines were armed by the time her Ice Block expired and they exploded leaving her at even a lower health than me and two more slaps finished the job. Of course I was later sniped by the silly Nova who couldn't let me have that victory I deserved so much for myself.

Anyway; this one had the potential to be one of the best Slapathur moments in the history of Heroes of the Storm and it was definitely worthy of being put on Youtube. A Jaina using Ice Block to protect herself from an Abathur and not being able to kill him? That has to be epic!

Here are the stats of that particular game: I would like to note that I've never taken a single Terror and all those XP and Siege contributions are solely done by me and me alone. I'm sure you can understand from Siege Damage on Nova that it was her who used the Garden Terror but we got like 2 Garden Terror only in the entire game anyway...

My second Slapathur moment wasn't as legendary as the one I explained above but it was just as epic. We were in Dragon Shire and Dragon Shire is among my favourite maps (not my very favourite one though) to play as Abathur as I can be an annoying little bastard by taking their Shrines when they have a 5 player rotation on the other shrine, or by burrowing to the Dragon Knight almost immediately to steal it away when we have control on both shrines. 

Around the 21 minute mark I noticed the enemy Abathur hiding in the bottom lane near the Bruiser Camp or in the bushes around the Shrine by keeping tabs on his incoming locusts. Well, you know me; as an aggressive Abathur I was not gonna let him go! So I started laying out mines around that area to do some scouting to find his exact hiding spot. I had extra charges and more damage on my Toxic Nests as I picked those talents so I could easily scout and find him hiding in the bushes to the left side of the Bruiser Camp. I immediately burrowed there but he made the mistake of staying there a little longer, possibly not expecting someone to come as all my team mates were in the top lane trying to capture the shrine in a 4v4 teamfight. Once he saw me suddenly emerging in front of him he started running. He already took damage from at least 2 mines with the extra 75% damage for 3 seconds thanks to my level 1 talent, so he was already down to about 20% health if I am not mistaken. I just started slapping him. He stopped running and started slapping me too but I obviously had the upper hand as he was already low on health thanks to my Toxic Nests. He tried to escape again but one last slap was enough to take him down; during which our Valla and Kharazim, played by my close friends, even stopped fighting in the top lane to watch what happened and then subsequently died. Some pretty funny exchanges happened on Skype as well as our Allied chat as a result :) 

Here are the stats for that match, the only death of their Abathur was at the hands of me and me alone and that feels bloody brilliant!!! I am also angry at their Azmodan for surpassing me! :@

The fact that we can't watch the replays of games with older versions upset me so much that I decided to make a ticket to Blizzard to ask about the possibility of a backward compatilibilty for these replays in the future. This is the response I received:

"Hi there Merve! 

Thank you for contacting us about the replays for older versions of heroes of the storm.

We're looking into ways to make this possible but at the moment all we can do is keep a hold of those for now. And have faith. We're working on it. :) 

Thank you for your time Merve, have an epic time in Azeroth!"

I am still pessimistic and of the opinion that those replays are forever gone. Even if such a feature is implemented, it will most likely affect the replays that are saved after that feature is released. I just don't think such a feature would also cover the replays of much earlier versions.

Well, while this response from Blizzard support gave me a very small flicker of hope, I already said goodbye to these fantastic moments forever. I really hope I will be proven wrong in the coming months, though. No  matter what, I described these fantastic moments on my blog and thus documented them! I sadly don't have anything to show for it but I will always read this entry and remember those moments with a loud chuckle!