Only weeks after announcing the introduction of artefacts for Hero storm sale, Blizzard have done precisely what any good developer should do in an alpha when something doesn’t work – bin it.
“Artefacts were designed to provide you with a meaningful way to spend gold, while also providing additional options to customize your heroes,” Blizzard announced in a battle.net update. “We wanted to test artifacts in the Alpha to find out if the system fulfilled those goals. As testing began, many of you voiced concerns around fairness issues, “correct build” issues, balance, new player tension, and other issues that made it clear that artifacts weren’t working as intended.”
After going through the natural processes of development, Blizzard has sided with the players and removed the system entirely. “We will explore different ways to give you fun and compelling options for spending gold, while avoiding the problems that the initial artefact system created.” They don’t have any ideas they can announce publicly about what a replacement mechanic might look like – after all, things turned sour very quickly, so they probably haven’t got a fully fleshed out idea yet – but the team has pledged to “keep you informed” going forward.
Unlocks for hero talents have also been sped up, with players able to reach level 4 much faster. “Unlocking all talents on a hero can be done in as few as three games with friends in versus mode. We hope this will achieve our goals for maintaining gradual talent exposure while lowering the barrier to entry substantially enough to be acceptable to the average player.”
“Additional feedback revealed that initial talents did not feel as powerful or optimal as later choices. We want all of a hero’s starting talent choices to be useful and viable,” the Heroes team added.

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