Nothing like a holiday-hacking to get the season off on the right foot, eh? If you play Heroes of Newerth, listen up.

"What makes a good MMORPG?"

I've decided to devote a bit of my time and a few articles to exploring this. In my last few pieces, I wrote about character progression, followed by gameplay mechanics and combat, and in the one before I spoke of story and premise. Today I'll talk about my favorite aspect of any MMORPG: PvP!

I have a confession to make. As a self-described PvP enthusiast in all things MMORPG, I've never played what many consider to be the holy grail of world PvP: Dark Age of Camelot. Even worse, the reason I missed out on those golden days was that I was firmly entrenched in two very distinctly PvE heavy MMORPGs: Ragnarok Online (before War of Emperium) and then Final Fantasy XI. Still, in spite of my transgressions, I'd like to think that I've acquitted myself quite well by delving deep into almost every PvP-oriented game since: Defense of the Ancients, League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth, Bloodline Champions, Warhammer Online, Age of Conan, the short-lived Fury, Atlantica Online, Champions Online, Aion, Rift and World of Warcraft. In other words, I've seen most of what MMORPGs have to offer, so let's just get down to talking about what makes for a thriving PvP system.

With 15 million registered players, League of Legends can currently be considered the reigning champ of the multiplayer online battle arena genre. However, S2 Games is attempting to keep itself in the fight and reach out to new audiences with today's announcement that Heroes of Newerth is now free-to-play. There are now three acount types:

• Basic – The standard, free account new players will receive upon sign up.
• Verified – Basic accounts that have been upgraded through a show of commitment to their account, by either purchasing Goblin Coins or surpassing a certain threshold of play time.
• Legacy – Paid user accounts that existed prior to the free-to-play model. These accounts receive a lifetime of free access to all HoN heroes and are able to play in Verified Only games to ensure that experts and beginners are separated. Legacy accounts can no longer be purchased.

That last point deserves some added emphasis. Verified and Legacy users will be able to queue up in matchmaking for Verified Only games in an attempt to keep the Basic beginner players separate from the advanced players.

Basic and Verified accounts will have access to a rotating pool of 15 free heroes while Legacy accounts will have free, permanent access to all heroes after a short waiting period. Basic and Verified accounts can choose to purchase a new hero upon release, which permanently adds it to their personal pool of heroes. Legacy accounts may choose to purchase early access to the hero at that time before it is released to them for free.

If you've never played Heroes of Newerth, check out the introductory video below to see what the game is all about.