Not a fan of the new hero

General Discussion
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I know I’m about to get flamed for this post because that’s what happens with this topic, but frankly, I’m disappointed in the new hero. Blizzard has dozens of characters within its IPs to draw from, but chose to ignore all of them in favor of this new character. The entire HotS concept is to bring heroes from Blizzard IPs to fight in a MOBA arena. They use established characters. Even the ones who are a reach like Probius have at least some basis in established lore. Even the Nexus original, Orphea, was introduced in a comic and lore built around her before adding her. And while I thought that was a haphazard, slap-dash way to shoehorn in a new hero, they did at least do the work of creating a character.

This new one has none of that. She just appeared, full of stereotypes, and checking off the SJW boxes.
-Not male [check]
-Not white [check]
-Strong female “alpha” character [check]
-“Unapologetically African” black character [check]
-“African hunter” theme to her abilities (the Shaka Zulu stereotype)

Blizzard has had a habit of embracing the SJWs. They wanted more “diversity” in their games, so they decided to force it by retconning established characters. Make Sgt Hammer into a woman. Make the D3 crusader into a woman. Make the D2 necromancer into a black guy - the D3 witch doctor. Make the Diablo barbarian a woman. Spotlight strong female leaders in WoW. In HotS, they made most of their new male characters be jerks, bad guys, or so toxic that people eagerly ban them: Imperius (jerk), Mal’ganis (bad guy), Mephisto (bad guy), KTZ (bad guy), Stukov (bad guy), Malthael (bad guy), Genji (toxic, ban on sight), Rag (bad guy), Gul’dan (bad guy), Alarak (bad guy), Cho’gall (bad guy), Leoric (bad guy), Butcher (bad guy), KT (jerk, bannable).

Of course, like all things, exceptions exist, no rule is absolute, and artists (and I do believe Blizzard creates art) should have creative license. However, this takes place within a larger cultural context where countless content creators are doing the same thing and for political reasons. It is a pattern that people are being browbeaten with, because if you stand up to say you don’t want to see a classic character fundamentally redefined (like James Bond into a black woman, for example), you’re labeled as fearful, hate-filled, amoral, or worse.

I’m not against having women or non-white characters in the game. I never criticized Ming or Lucio, for example. They were their own unique characters who fit within their respective stories and were worthy of being added, as were many others. If Blizzard wanted to add Qhira, they should have done it properly, by actually building a lore around her and creating a compelling hero that people actually cared about. They didn’t. They ignored heroes they actually did have lore for and who players have been eagerly awaiting for years - and gave us a stereotype with no context that doesn’t seem to fit anywhere in the established Nexus lore.

Blizzard can, and should, do better.

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I have nothing against her because of her gender or race, and I’m sure her kit is great, the only reason I dislike her is because she wasn’t an existing Blizzard IP.

(And yes, I was very vocally against the inclusion of Orphia as well, and have never played Orphia due to my dislike of them bringing in OCs.)

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I think the only misstep they made with her implementation is that they didn’t utilize the pre-established lore places for her character’s origins. She could totally have fit in as a Luxorian (Sky Temple and Tomb of the Spider Queen’s realm) instead of coming from an entirely new location. She’d even make sense for her ethnicity to be Luxorian (I assume).

As she is right now, she gives me total Wakanda vibes, which doesn’t feel HotS-y imo.

However…

What is this argument supposed to be? Blizzard siding with ‘duh SJWs’ ?
“male heros r evil!!!1!1”

You’re clearly cherrypicking here.

New male heroes that aren’t bad guys

  • Deckard
  • Fenix (gender debatable but has a male personality)
  • Blaze (awesome)
  • Varian (Alliance dad)

… really?

Not to mention how any of the ‘turned female because SJWS grr grr!’-heroes aren’t all good guys either. Sonya is a jerk too you know.

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I agree strongly with what you said here. I mean, the greatest appeal of HotS is playing as iconic characters from Blizzard franchises. I honestly, have zero interest in playing as some made-up character from the “Nexus.” Like I might as well go play Dota 2 or something if I want to play as random characters I don’t care about.

There’s still so many big and requested names missing in this game. Arcturus Mengsk? Archimonde? Baal? Come on, Blizzard. I have never seen anyone asking for more Nexus characters. I really question the mindset of the developers when they decide to develop a character like Qhira over Cenarius or someone that people actually want and are interested in.

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What would you prefer?

  • She was white?
  • She was male?
  • She was whiny and useless?
  • She was Americanized?
  • I don’t even know what you’re trying to say with this.

How much of the above would make her “not an SJW”? Should every character be a white dude from New York?

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i still wait for shadowhunter , Tauren chieftain , witchdoctor heroes wc3 style!

4years later im still waiting♥

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Even a random nameless protoss would have been more charismatic and Blizzard-related than this… :expressionless:

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feels more lol then nexus maybe next hero JINX :smiley:

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It’s a trend. I don’t think people would mind if it was less stereotypical or more established. This just seems half-assed.
“… then, suddenly, a wild african huntress appears!”
For example, if she has a “singularity shard” or whatever it was, why isn’t her weapon socketed with a glowing gem that generates sparks of power? If she’s from an ancient powerful race, why is her outfit so bland? All other nexus stuff looks cool.

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Not gonna lie. It’s impossible to take anyone who unironically says ‘SJW’ seriously.

We know next to nothing about her, and you just flat out decided she was automatically a ‘catering’ character because… she’s a black female? No seriously, there’s next to nothing about her other than she comes from a previously destroyed civilization and she’s a huntress of sorts who doesn’t like her job. Where the hell (well, outside of putting her into a stereotype because of the color of her skin and her gender) does ‘catering’ play in here?

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How is it worse than “Russian space man who drinks vodka and talks about the motherland”? Stukov has the Zerg thing. Qhira has an overriding bounty hunter thing. Stukov has an infested arm. Qhira has a whip sword. The only difference is that one is a white male stereotype and the other is a black female stereotype, so the black female stereotype is somehow SJW pandering.

Blizzard has never exactly been subtle with their cross-cultural characterization. Let’s not pretend this is a new development, okay?

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I just don’t get it.

She’s dark skinned, but she’s not straight from Africa or something.
She hasn’t displayed herself as any more confident or self assertive than literally any other female in the game. (Have you SEEN Li-Ming?)
Her attire is more resembling of Predator than any African Culture, ESPECIALLY in her display art.

In fact, she seems much more of a solemn and regretful than anything else, forced to live by an occupation out of necessity rather than what she wants. If that’s not apologetic I don’t know what is.

Even OP’s second point is ridiculous and nonsensical when you take five seconds took look at the game. The hero literally before her was a blonde haired blue eyed priest boy who stutters when he sees Nova’s skin tight outfit, and just wants to do his best for his people. There’s TONS of good strong male characters in the game OP glossed over just to try and make some inane point. Varian, Raynor, Thrall, Medivh, Kharazim, Artanis, Fenix, Deckhard Cain, Tyrael, Uther, Tassadar.

It’s like “Show us on the doll where the inclusion and increased diversity touched you”. The character obviously doesn’t cater to you, and if you don’t like her, don’t play her.

Honestly, it sounded like OP just wanted an excuse to rail on something that doesn’t actually effect him…

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This is a fun game. Let’s see if your post can check off the racist boxes, just as a thought experiment:

  • Assumes dark skin means African
  • Doesn’t differentiate between any of the various ethnicities native to Africa
  • Assumes that using a chain sword somehow relates to the Zulu, when Shaka is credited with improving the spear (unless you’re talking about an emphasis on mobility, in which case Tracer checks the SJW box for being a Shaka Zulu stereotype)

Really?

Girls exist. Different skin tones exist. Africa is a continent, not a nation or a homogeneous ethnicity. Come on, at least try harder.

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Cool! Then this shouldn’t bother you.

The problem was there was almost no diversity in their games to begin with, especially for their big three franchises. The fact that HOTS tried a teensy bit by thinking up new characters that could exist in these universes is hardly “embracing SJWS”. They aren’t forcing you to play gender merry go round and applying to a redlined district for god sakes. There’s a girl in a tank, don’t freak out now.

This kind of reductive thinking is just perplexing to me.

Yes, it would have been preferred to have this character have an established lore for us to get excited about. But aside from going back in a time machine, and reshaping years of hegemonic culture so that that creators were more creative in their designs, this is sort of what we’re left with.

At first I was like WTF, but after watching the video, she looks pretty awesome. I do wish she would have her own video game though.

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The only time I ever have to think about the race and sex of a humanoid character is when someone brings it up.
So what are you, an anti-sjw? What’s that solve?

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Your point would be valid if Stukov was just that. But he’s not some space man who drinks vodka and talks about the motherland. He’s a mutant. A mutated arm capable of growing expontentially is a hell of a lot more interesting than a whip sword. Your point would be valid if stukov only had some unusual gun. Not to mention I’m pretty sure Stukov has more details in his design than Qhira. Also the “bounty hunter thing” is hardly a prevalent part of her design. What part of her design shows that she’s a bounty hunter? Does she keep trophies? Does she have a net or some kind of capture device? She’s just a hunter/warrior.
Whether you like it or not, adding black characters is a recent trend more or less for the reasons mentioned. This seems to be part of that trend since the character doesn’t have all that much going for her.

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“Does she keep trophies?”

I mean, it was literally in her stock image that she was keeping trophies. Bruh, how about actually paying attention?

“Adding a black character is a more recent trend.”

Show me on the doll where the increased diversity touched you.

“She doesn’t have much going for her.”

This would be a valid point if it were the only thing people were complaining about. However, we had doofuses who are apparently afraid of black female characters looking way too much into it.

“I’m not af-”

Yes. Yes you are. There’s literally no other reason to bring up race or gender otherwise.

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for all the weird hatred that SJWs get for trying to be fair, it never seems to strike anyone as odd how incredibly safe it is to not be one…

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in the teaser image…? yeah. Sure. That covers it. Stukov should just have a release trailer featuring zergs and that would be his connection to them. Then we would call him “zerg-infested” and it would sound cool as he rampages across the nexus with his revolver!
Increased diversity keeps touching stuff and breaking it. Not all stuff I like, but some of it is. It’s garbage. You wanna be diverse, do it properly. It’s not an excuse for incompetence.

ugh. This conversation is pissing me off and I finally figured out why: I could pick up a notepad and create a better and more interesting character in 30 minutes, maybe an hour. This character design, backstory and integration are all lazy A.F. Maybe in 2 weeks I’ll have forgotten about all this and will be happy to have a new ninja to play with. /rant

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Ya know what would have made for a much cooler ‘black’ character? A Southsea/Bloodsail pirate from WoW. Either create a named one or maybe repurpose Dread Captain DeMaza (no one would care that in WoW it’s a pasty white model). Kit could be similar to the Outlaw Rogue (she already has the grappling hook). R1 could be her slashing around with her sword. R2 could be cannons firing.

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