In light of Valve's announcement of DotA 2, the HoN community was definitely buzzing with mixed reactions, with the more passionate ones showing concern for the existing HoN scene, while others who don't mind playing both are equally excited as DotA fans. Regardless, S2 released an official statement plus a couple of forum posts to reassure their commitment to their game.

[S2] Maliken
I wanted to address some concerns that I see in the forums:

Perception is everything and I can see how some may perceive the most recent couple of months and very "unproductive" for the continued development of HoN. From that view it may be seen that we're not working on HoN inside the S2 organization. I apologize that the 1000s of hours we have been working on quite a few things can't be seen more immediately.

There seems to be a certain segment of our community who feels we are happy with the money we have earned from HoN and we simply don't care about the product. This couldn't be further from the truth. Since HoN's retail we have been hiring, enlarged our staff, and HoN continues to be S2's main priority. Unfortunately many of the things we have been working on are not visible to you all just yet.

Valve and IceFrog have announced their upcoming game DotA 2. As can be seen on these forums, many people feel HoN will be severely impacted. While there is some truth to that, it is up to S2 to make sure HoN is a great game and able to compete. We already have an excellent product that has achieved tremendous success and continues to generate significant sales and revenue for S2. We plan to make that product better and create new ways to draw more attention to the game and increase our playerbase even more than its current growth rate.

The challenge is welcomed and you can bet we plan to "bring it!"

Game HoN!!!!!!!!

[S2] Nigma
Hey guys.

Like all of you, all of us here are also really excited to see just what DotA 2 has in store.

I think a lot of you guys think that this announcement is coming to us as some sort of dramatic surprise, and that we're all currently jumping out the nearest window. I'd like to say at this point that this isn't true. We've all been keeping up with this very diligently.

In a market with many similar games (DotA/LoL/HoN and eventually DotA2), the consumer will (hopefully) end up buying the best game, or the game that suits their style of gameplay the best.

It's our job to make sure that Heroes of Newerth will be the best it can possibly be.

As Maliken once said, competition is a good thing. It encourages us to work harder and produce the best game possible. That's what we're here for.

If you think we're sitting here cowering in fear... well... too bad

[S2] Nome
Rest assured Maliken will only whip us harder now that DotA 2 is announced.

Fanboyism aside, as a player it will only get better for us as competition kicks into the genre we have all come to know and love. Already with more than 20 unique heroes including semi reworks of original DotA heroes such as Hellbringer from Warlock, all who have from one time or another seen competitive play and collectively hold nearly 35% of heroes used among the entire hero pool, who knows what HoN will look like by the time DotA 2 comes out. Especially with tweaks coming into original DotA ports and even the map structure to balance the HoN metagame, we might see a whole new direction for HoN itself.