Beta tester since release, played it fairly casually however.

I don’t want to get into a big discussion on various game play aspects, all ill say is that many aspects of DotA/HoN that seem tedious are in fact fairly core parts of the game play that add depth. I think there is room for a few games that are not streamlined/simplified to appeal to the widest audience possible.

As for the community, elitistism is definitely rampant, but I don’t believe DotA was any different. These games are not casual friendly, my advice is don’t bother playing alone, play with 1-2 friends at all times, that is what I do and I find it far more enjoyable.

I am not a developer, but as a long time competitive multiplayer gamer I feel some of the most interesting aspects of HoN are the overall frame work of features it has:

Full match statistic recording of every game played. (Can be viewed in game or via the web).
Full demos that are automatically recorded that anyone can simply 'fetch' within the game and watch with full camera functions - complete media player type control over the demos.
You can join the chat channels and stay in the channel while moving seamlessly into a game lobby and now even while the game loads in the background you can remain talking in the channel. (I have been wanting a feature like this for so many years, why must every multiplayer game force you to sit through a loading screen with no ability to communicate).
I feel the user interface overall is fairly well designed and you can modify it to suit your taste.
If you drop from the game you have a 5 minute window that allows you to reconnect and retain everything you had without penalty. After 5 mins you are considered kicked and your gold/items are distributed amongst your team.
People can easily see your stats on how many games you simply disconnect from so they can make informed decisions about allowing you to play in their game. No system is perfect but this sort of thing is a nice deterrent to stop people simply bailing on every game they are not winning within the 1st 10mins.

There are many more features, overall it just feels really well polished, game play balance will of course always be an issue that requires constant tweaking, but as far as I am concerned this is the case with most games.
I think some game developers could learn from what the S2 team have done with HoN. Multiplayer game features seem to be going backwards, I don’t understand why a lot of what is in HoN is not simply standard for any decent multiplayer game.

For me personally I find it a breath of fresh air that the developers actually seem to care what the community is looking for and don’t just tack everything on as an afterthought or simply ignore features altogether.

Based on comments I have read it seems that Conroy is getting the idea of filtering P2P from Brilliant Digital who are actively promoting "Copy Router" in the US for filtering P2P, the presentation makes mention of Australian ISP trials. http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/Sections/NEWS/PDFs/081016_copyrouter.pdf I would love to hear from anyone who can explain exactly how this Copy Router system works, the PDF mentions it comes into action based on search strings and relies on an MD5 Hash database. It goes on to mention that it can get around Encryption, exactly how is it achieving this, through man in the middle attacks? Is it implying that ISP's are effectively going be hacking through Encrypted packets?

Well, I would have to wonder where CliffyB would be today if it wasn't for all the dedicated *PC* Epic fans like myself playing his maps for hundreds (okay more likely thousands) of hours in the original Unreal Tournament. If it wasn't for all of the PC gamers playing UT, including the vast number of players who pirated the game thus making it as popular as it was (including myself, I was young and poor when it was released, I purchased a copy later.. and UT2k3 and UT2k4), would CliffyB be working for Epic now?

Would Epic themselves be as well off as they are now if not for the popularity of UT (pirate copied players and all)?

Original CliffyB maps from when he was just a mapper and had no direct affiliation with Epic, I haven't played UT in years but I know these maps like the back of my hand:
DM-Barricade, DM-Codex, DM-Curse][, DM-Mojo][, DM-Shrapnel][, DM-Tempest and DM-Turbine.

As a core Epic fan for a very long time, I guess I find it a little offensive that I am no longer even considered a potential customer because I *might* pirate their games, not that anything Epic have released to PC in recent times has interested me.
I can understand console games are more profitable and that's where their focus is now, but perhaps as an Epic employee CliffyB should be more careful with his words rather then alienating all the gamers who likely played a role in helping CliffyB/Epic get where they are today.

Also I don't understand the logic behind simply not releasing a game to a platform due to pirates, Epic spent many years making PC games, is it really so expensive for them to create and sell PC ports that they lose money due to the number of pirates? How many sales would it take to cover costs and turn a profit? Instead they chose to snub their original fan base?