BlizzCon 2018: Heroes of the Storm Gets New Hero Orphea

At BlizzCon 2018, Blizzard revealed a new hero to Heroes of the Storm called Orphea. Unlike other heroes in Heroes of the Storm that originate from other Blizzard franchises like Diablo, Overwatch, and World of Warcraft. Instead she originates from the Nexus the transdimensional cosmic storm that serves as the reason for several Blizzard universes colliding. She the Heir of the Raven Court and the daughter of the Raven Lord, a central character in the happenings of Heroes of the Storm. She's an assassin class character and is free for those who have the Blizzard Virtual Ticket or for those attending BlizzCon 2018 in person.

"Available in the first major patch after BlizzCon 2018 (which runs from November 2-3,) we are upgrading the Hero collection of all BlizzCon attendees and Virtual Ticket holders with our first Nexus-born Hero, Orphea," a post from Blizzard reads.

An animated short at BlizzCon 2018 showed off Orphea squaring off against the Raven Lord and hints at some massive changes to come to the Nexus. It ended with a hint of what to expect from the game in terms of updates and skins.

With that in mind, it appears that Heroes of the Storm continues to buck the trend of battle passes that games like Fortnite offer, focusing on a solid team experience. This makes Orphea an interesting addition to Heroes of the Storm.

That said, the focus is ensuring choice doesn't get in the way of Heroes of the Storm's overarching goal of players working together as a team. It's the reason why the game doesn't consider a system similar to Fortnite's Battle Pass for its events and challenges, which could make quests easier for newcomers as well as unlock additional revenue for the company.


"No plans for that right now but we're definitely watching all things going on in various games around the industry and we play all these games," said Production Director Kaeo Milker in an interview with Gadgets 360. "We'll keep looking for things that are a good match our game and our players but yeah, nothing like that on the table right now."

Lead Hero Designer Matt Villers elaborated further. 

"One thing we have to watch out for given the team-based nature of our game is we want to make sure that any objectives we give you aren't clashing with the objective of working with your team and winning the game," he explains. "Sometimes people ask 'why don't have a quest that lets you poke others with Stitches [another hero in the game]?' The reason we don't do that is we don't want someone to favour completing that quest over actually doing what their team needs to win the game so that's something we have to think about when we're designing any objectives.”

Disclosure: Blizzard sponsored the correspondent's flights and hotel for BlizzCon 2018.

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