One year ago today, the team at development studio S2 Games finally and officially launched Heroes of Newerth. The multiplayer oriented fantasy action-RTS game, which pretty blatenty patterned itself from the Warcraft III mod Defense of the Ancients, had been in closed and open beta testing for nearly a year before its official launch.
Today S2 Games announced that Heroes of Newerth currently has over 420,000 active players with over 30,000 players on average playing the game at one time and with peaks of over 50,000 online players. The game has also been constantly updated with new heroes on a regular basis and with a massive 2.0 update last December that added things like a level editor and other new features.
To celebrate the game"s first anniversary, S2 Games is allowing anyone to play Heroes of Newerth for free for the next 11 days. The free play period will start at 9 pm Eastern time tonight and end on May 22 at 12 midnight Eastern time. People can download the game and register for their free account at the official Heroes of Nereth web site. In addition during the same time frame you can receive a free copy of the game (a $30 value) if you purchase a $40 Goblin Gold Coin package that gives the player access to 2,415 in-game Gold Goblin coins.
S2 Games has also announced some new features for Heroes of Newerth players, including an redesigned in-game item shop that should make things easier for new players. A new hero guide along with a new set of tooltips for the game"s abilities are also in place.