The Butcher(ing) of Heroes of the Storm

So I discovered today via my Battle.net launched news that it had been announced a while ago that Heroes of the Storm will be receiving a new map (which people seem legitimately excited about) and a new character (who has been met with kind of the opposite reaction), a demonic villain from the first Diablo game who was re-vamped for the third called The Butcher.

And in browsing through the comments on the release notice, it seems like a lot of other players have the same basic reaction as I did, which was “ugh.”

Obviously as someone who never played Diablo I’m sitting at a disadvantage to those who have, in that I don’t even know this character that I don’t find particularly enticing, but from what I’ve been able to gather from people who do, there’s a lot of muttering about leaving characters from the second Diablo game (which many of said people consider to be the best of the trilogy) out of Heroes of the Storm, seemingly as a marketing move, to directly promote Diablo 3 and the current versions of the Blizzard games that can be downloaded right now, if you would like, they’re right there in your launcher!

The forum comments have thrown around names like Baal and Mephisto (who, I will add, are references to actual demons I’ve actually heard of outside of Diablo and are much less nebulous than simply ‘The Butcher,’ which would probably be more appealing to other people who haven’t played the Diablo games), and even jokingly Deckard Cain, who even I know is a frail old man who talks a lot, as Diablo characters they’d prefer to see over The Butcher.

Which brings me to the major problem I have with The Butcher, which is that it’s frankly undeniable that he looks a lot like Stitches, a WoW character who is basically an abomination made of stitched together parts of corpses. Hell – The Butcher even has stitches on his chest like Stitches. Despite being red-skinned, The Butcher bears a very close resemblance to another character in a game that’s specifically designed to allow you through levelling to unlock different skin colours, and which – up until this point – has done a brilliant job of keeping all of its characters visually distinct.

There’s a clear visual divide even between skins designed to alternate-universe-switch characters into each other’s plotlines, like Malfurion and Illidan, one of whom betrayed his race and took up with demons, and the other of whom stayed behind and became a leader and a genuine tree-hugger. Both of these characters are visually distinct because a lot of focus was put on their GIGANTIC weapons, a staff on one hand and two giant daggers as tall as the character on the other, and this allows players even in the thick of a clump of players to be able to tell who they’re facing so they can react accordingly.

In what pictures I’ve seen of The Butcher, he has literally the same style of weapon – a giant cleaver in one hand and a hook-type implement in the other – as Stitches uses. Oh, but, the hook and cleaver have marginally different designs! You know, kind of like they probably would have if Blizzard had just made a cosmetic “Butcher” skin of Stitches!

Which is another complaint I’ve seen often on the forums. Not only does their similar visual style make them confusing to tell apart on the battlefield, a lot of people are convinced they could have released a product re-skinning Stitches to look like The Butcher for roughly the same amount of effectiveness.

The logic goes: players who liked The Butcher will buy the “Butcher” skin of Stitches. What’s that you say? Nobody liked The Butcher? Then why the fuck are we being asked to play him?

The amount of “awwww yis get hyped for The Butcher!!!!!” PR I’ve been seeing from Blizzard is an amazingly clear proof to me that they actually don’t listen to a thing their audiences say. There could almost not be less hype for The Butcher. The kindest thing I’ve seen said is that The Butcher character model has been tied to Heroes of the Storm since alpha development and that they badly-timed their release of him. Yeah, that’s the kindest one.

The overwhelming cry of “for the love of god release a Starcraft Warrior” has apparently gone largely ignored, which I find sad, because I seriously want to see Dehaka, the primal Zerg from Starcraft 2, make an appearance, and he would fit that character build perfectly.

I would also love to see Blizzard try and come up with a ranged Warrior character. I believe it would work most effectively with probably one of the dragon aspects from WoW, in dragon form, with a ranged basic attack of fire breath or similar depending on dragon breed, and some kind of trait that pulls aggro (or absorbs damage done to other characters) in order to be an effective tank from a distance. And I would probably give them my money/gold for that.

For The Butcher? No.

Even though his play-style is distinctly different to Stitches, there is nothing about The Butcher that entices me.

Where’s Vol’jin? Where’s Crowley? Where’s Dehaka? Where’s Stukov? Where’s Baine? Where’s… that one evil Forsaken guy with the cool voice who shouted “death to the living!” at the Wrath Gate? Where are the dragons? Where’s Aggra? Where are the Draenei? Where’s Tosh? Where’s any character anyone has asked for? Hell, I would be at least vaguely interested in Mephisto and Baal or one of the other angels from Diablo!

Really? The Butcher? Really?

Well at least our expectations are suitably lowered for the next new character reveal.