by JR Cook - 7 years ago     show comments

Blizzard has announced their latest in-game event with Echoes of Alterac, a brand new WarCraft centric event that will ask players to choose their allegiance between the Alliance and the Horde, and maybe answer for once who is the stronger side (at least in the Nexus!). The event will include the usual portraits, sprays, a new map, and a new hero to coincide with the event.

Yrel will be the newest hero to join the Nexus, bringing the first Draenei into the Blizzard brawler bringing another melee warrior into the ranks. We have more details about her toolkit in our spotlight article.

The new battleground may be the more interesting content drop, especially for veteran WarCraft players with fond memories of Alterac Valley of the past, as Blizzard is reshaping the infamous battleground and giving it a Heroes spin. Alterac Pass will be coming into the Nexus and replacing the usual cores will be the opponents players face in Alterac Valley in Drek’Thar on the Horde side of things and Vanndar Stormpike on the Alliance. More details about this brand new battleground, and the way it is shaking up what we think of a map in Heroes of the Storm is available in our spotlight.

With the event players following the questline will unlock various rewards including a special event chest that will guarantee a WarCraft hero, from a pool of 28 different heroes. This will be a great way for players just now joining the game, or rejoining for this event to build up their hero pools. Included in the other rewards are a faction portrait, faction banner, and faction mount. Included in the event chests are some absolutely epic new skins transforming existing heroes into iconic WarCraft characters like a Spirit Healer Auriel, Goblin Junkrat, and Orc Johanna skin.

We got to discuss the reveal with Kaeo Milker (Production Director), Matt Villers (Lead Hero Designer), and Matthew Cooper (Lead Content Designer). They overviewed how the battleground came to be, and the collaboration with the WarCraft team helped them keep the flavor of the new map. Taking that fantasy and breaking it down into a “Heroes sized” piece of content was one of the more challenging aspects, and they’ve seemingly been able to hit the feel of AV with the bosses designs, the camps, breaking out your calvary and much more.

On the topic of communication with the community Kaeo Milker really stressed that the community concerns are heard and that they are working internally on a plan to better release this info to the Heroes player base at large so the community doesn’t feel as left in the dark. This should result in more frequent updates to the community in more bite size chunks, and not outlining stuff coming something six months down the line perhaps.