Everyone knows that HotS has been in a bad place ever since Activision-Blizzard killed the e-sports side of it. The most noticeable aspect for someone from the outside, such as myself (by “outside” I mean I used to play the game a lot, but stopped doing so and kept watching from afar), is the decrease in hero releases. It was already quite slow back when I played it, but ever since the e-sports thing, hero releases are the only thing that make me look back at this game, because skins and events just don’t really interest me and honestly, Qhira didn’t make me interested at all.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate the character, nor do I dislike the idea of Nexus-original characters, in fact, I did defend Orphea back when she was released, and I like that HotS tried to include its own characters as playable, the problem is: not only was Orphea poorly hyped, but in the current state of HotS, releasing a character that nobody knows or cares about, such as Qhira, is just a terrible choice as well. The main reason people are/were interested in HotS was the fact that its a crossover between Blizzard characters, and if the schedule is only allowing a smaller number of characters to be released, all releases should be an opportunity for beloved characters to make it in.
Characters people want have been part of their past and/or present with Blizzard games, whether it was because they were playable heroes in the story of those games, bosses that showed themselves as powerful obstacles for the heroes or, in the case of characters like Blaze, just cool units you love to see in action in the RTS games. That is something that Orphea had incredibly little of and Qhira had literally NONE of.
To be correctly done, Orphea either had to be hyped MONTHS before her release through constant story updates, OR continued to be hyped a lot after her release. IIRC, Orphea had, like, two comics about her, and then, nothing else, nothing interesting at all, which doesn’t help her in any way. Now, if Orphea was poorly done with her having material, imagine poor Qhira, who, not only doesn’t have anything interesting about her, no hype material, and was released in a time when hero releases are scarce and people’s expectations are high for every new character, only to find out that the next one is someone that they never ever seen.
Original heroes were, once upon a time, a doable thing, the opportunity was there, the first attempt occurred, but it was poorly executed. Now the opportunity is gone, and this is no time to do that kind of release. No hero release will bring HotS to the spotlight it once had, but at least try to not disappoint the current playerbase. Hell, there are lots of characters from WoW, SC, Overwatch, Diablo, and even characters from older games, like Kyle Blackthorne and whoever can be added from Rock’n’Roll Racing. Hell, I bet that even adding something from Activision like CoD Soldier nº 1 would have been a better idea than a hypeless Nexus-original characters at this point. Seriously, HotS needs to get its priorities straight, or it might as well just announce its cancellation at this point.