Bases consist of buildings, barracks, towers, a hero spawning pool, and a central structure.

The goal of the game is to either destroy the central structure, the World Tree (Legion) or Sacrificial Shrine (Hellbourne), of the opposite base or force the other team to concede.

Players achieve this by selecting heroes with unique skills to combat the other team.

Heroes can specialize in dealing damage, tanking, crowd control, healing, destroying towers, farming, defending, harassing, initiating fights, empowering nearby allies, providing vision, seeking and revealing enemies, killing kongor and so on.

Experience is gained by seeing an enemy soldier, hero, neutral creature, kongor or golem die, from a predefined range.

The entirety of assets, including maps, items, heroes, and art were made in 21 months".

The additions that differentiate Heroes of Newerth from Defense of the Ancients are features independent from gameplay; such as tracking of individual statistics, in-game voice communication, GUI-streamlined hero selection, game reconnection, match making, player banlists, penalties for leaving and chat features.

On August 22, 2009, the pre-sale of Heroes of Newerth began for members of the closed beta.

Players who purchased the game at this time received additional benefits, including name reservation, gold-colored nameplate, gold shield insignia, and an in-game taunt ability.

Open beta testing for Heroes of Newerth began on March 31, 2010, and ran until May 12, 2010, when the game was released.

[16] Features included in the update were casual mode, a new user interface, team matchmaking, an in-game store, and an offline map editor.

[18] Coins can be used to purchase cosmetic changes within the game, such as alternative hero skins, avatars, and customized announcer voices.

[3] Accounts that were purchased before this date retained access to all content and updates without additional charges.

[23] On July 19, 2012, nearly one year after announcing its free-to-play model S2 Games announced publicly that the game would be completely free to play with no restrictions to hero access, excluding Early Access to yet to be released heroes.

The features for new players include tutorial videos and AI bots for a stress-free playing environment.

On November 6, 2020, Frostburn Studios released the HoN 64-Bit Client, that should result in a much more stable experience for those on the Latest Windows (10), most notably faster FPS, and reduced loading times.

[28] In the recent years, the game has been getting patches every 8 weeks aimed at improving game balance, bug fixing, and occasionally bringing new hero avatars and items,[29] with 4.9.2. being the latest version that went live on March 30, 2021.

[30] On December 15, 2021, Frostburn Studios announced that Heroes of Newerth would be shut down on June 20, 2022;[31][32] however, the game is still playable with the community's support post-shutdown.

[36] When Heroes of Newerth became free-to-play on July 29, 2011, the game had accumulated over 526,000 paid accounts with 460,000 unique players.

[37] Laura Baker, the director of marketing for S2 Games, stated that both the "Mac and Linux clients have done well for us.