Lady Vashj is a fairly popular suggestion - she’s one of the handful of missing Warcraft III hero classes, she’s a popular lore character, she represents a unique race, and she’s got great visual design. It’s like a good mix of everything you’d want from a Warcraft hero.
Earlier today, I was playing a game on Dragonshire. For those who haven’t noticed, recently (I think with the Hogger patch but I’m not 100% sure) they added an animation to the core’s stun effect. Previously it was just a normal stun, but now it actually turns your character to stone. This is a totally unique graphic. It’s obvious that the HotS team is strapped for resources, so why bother making a new effect, even a simple one, for something so tiny?
My theory is they’ve started finalizing Lady Vashj. She’s going to have an ult that turns enemies into stone. Granted, that’s not an ability Naga Sea Witches have, but it is an iconic ability shared by Medusa and Cassiopeia in Dota and LoL respectively. Given Vashj’s obvious medusa basis, it works thematically for her. With that effect finished, they gave it to Dragonshire for some extra flavour.
It could also be another character with a similar ability, but I can’t think of any notable Blizzard character that would turn people to stone. Given her popularity, I think Vashj makes the most sense.
This is just my crackpot shower thoughts theory. Do you agree? Is it plausible? Does anyone even want it to be Vashj?
I do suspect she is coming soon or at the very least on the list. Whether she is the next hero I am not too sure.
If we do get another WOW hero it would most likely be her. As for getting another WOW hero. I want to say probably not since we got Hogger but the team normally adds whichever hero they are interested in. Which means we could potentially get another WOW hero next.
As for the hero itself, I’m down with it. I always found Nagas to be very cool.
It has some nice observation and since they did something similar with Hogger, so it could be. And if we assume your theory is right, don’t forget the devs also have at least two options between Vashj and Azshara. Both are Nagas, both are wanted.
True, but still Warcraft is the biggest universe from Blizzard, so it’s only natural that it has the most heroes, because bigger universes means also more characters, more ideas. So I don’t mind if the most heroes are from warcraft, especially if they are unique like Hogger, who could also count as a Nexus Original, even though his origin is from World of Warcraft.
Between those two, I vastly prefer Vashj. Azshara looks like a squid thing, and Vashj actually looks like a Naga. All bets are off when Vashj makes it in, but I’d much prefer the classic design get in first.
I’m still 100% certain Mengsk is coming this year. I mean, they literally name-dropped him while they were talking about characters in development. I’m all on the Mengsk boat.
It’s just, the stone graphic is kind of an odd thing. It really throws a wrench in that.
This was an intentional change that they planned to make after the choice to keep the anomaly in the game.
also, visual changes are one of the easiest thing to do.
And part of the smaller team seems to mean that they will test ideas out before “polishing” them visually.
See the tunnel on Warhead junction. It is just ripped out of Haunted Mines. If the tunnel stays, I suspect they’ll get more fitting art for it when they can squeeze it in.
I understand it was always thematically supposed to be that, but why make the change? Why now? Why do it eight months after the ability was added? Unless they had another reason to make a turn-to-stone graphic.
I know it’s not a complex thing to implement, but it still takes some of their limited man power. Just adding that graphic for one core ability doesn’t seem like a high priority.
they said after they released hogger that they released too many wow heroes and were gonna look into other franchises, so i don’t think she’ll be coming any time soon
We couldn’t find a Diablo/SC/Warcraft/classic character where the kit fits, so we have a new nexus hero who slithers, shoots arrows and turns people into stone.
The only thing I’d add here is that there have been fairly credible rumors about a D2 remake called Resurrected, which would presumably include the LoD expansion. There’s been speculation it might be announced at BlizzCon. If so, it would make a good tie-in to pull in the 3rd Prime Evil. I’m not entirely sure how they’d adapt him to HotS though, given that his abilities don’t line up well with a coherent HotS kit. They’d have to be creative.
I wouldn’t be upset by it, but there are a few others I’d prefer if I could choose.
