Warcraft’s parentage in Heroes of the Storm is a dual one. First, as a MOBA, it is a child of the Warcraft III mod Defense of the Ancients (DotA). Second, Warcraft is one of the three Blizzard franchises—alongside Diablo and Starcraft—that gave birth to Heroes of the Storm. These three universes were later joined by Overwatch, once the game was released. The Warcraft universe, initially focused on the planet Azeroth, has grown a lot since the original Warcraft games, expanding to tabletop and card games, novels, comics, a movie and, of course, the popular videogames World of Warcraft and Hearthstone. How well represented is this large franchise in Heroes of the Storm?
The connections between Heroes of the Storm and Warcraft III are obvious. Many heroes come directly from DotA or are reimaginings of preexisting archetypes. Some of them were anonymous characters who now have a name, others are new champion to embody an old-times role and a few are still the same old characters, carrying their legacy from one game to another. Unlike the original Real Time Strategy games, Hearthstone has eluded the Nexus. The Innkeeper appeared in many wishlists as a potential candidate to join the Heroes of the Storm roster, but he never did. The card game has explored and expanded the lore of minor Warcraft characters and factions, such as the League of Explorers, but none of these misfits heard the call of the Nexus. That leaves us with the biggest game among the Warcraft titles, the MMO World of Warcraft.
WoW began recreating some of the events from the Warcraft RTS games, but once they exhausted the existing lore, they carried on and wrote their own story. And they delivered. Throughout the different expansion sets, the players traveled through space and time, visiting new planets and different timelines, and even the realm of death. All the main playable races from WoW are represented in the Heroes of the Storm roster (if we consider Chromie to be both a gnome and a dragon and we don’t limit the forsaken to undead humans). However, the prominence of each race is quite different. This is an infographic of the race distribution:
Data comes directly from the select screen search bar, which includes a few inaccuracies. For example, Lunara is considered a night elf and all the characters from the Scourge are listed as undead.
Apart from the races, the other main choice when creating WoW characters is the class, the archetype that will determine whether your rag doll hits like a truck or babysits the party. The nine original classes are represented by their Hearthstone embodiments: Gul’dan (warlock), Jaina (mage), Uther (paladin), Rexxar (hunter), Valeera (rogue), Garrosh (warrior), Thrall (shaman), Anduin (priest) and Malfurion (druid). Illidan later joined them as the paradigm demon hunter. Though not appearing in Hearthstone, there are two additional classes in WoW: death knights and monks.
The Warcraft representation in Heroes of the Storm is rich and, in fact, the largest across the different Blizzard universes that are part of the game. However, the fast pace of WoW updates and the slow cadence of the last hero releases (which stopped completely after Hogger’s release, back in December 2020) made the Warcraft roster slightly outdated. For example, the allied races didn’t make it to the Nexus, some of them not even as skins or tints for existing heroes. Some other races, such as the naga and the tuskarr, were part of the original DotA roster, but never joined Blizzard’s MOBA. The nagas Azshara and Lady Vashj were two of the most wanted characters in the heroes wishlists.
All in all, the Warcraft universe is greatly portrayed in Heroes of the Storm. Besides the 43 heroes, the franchise has the Alterac Pass battleground and many skins and mounts. Azeroth is well represented in the Nexus, though the four races from Warcraft III (orcs, humans, undead and night elves) keep hoarding the spotlight to the detriment of many other interesting races and singular characters.
Which is your favorite Warcraft hero? Which is the one you miss the most?
