Heroes of the Storm has Alan Dabiri as the new Game Director. And he promises great things for 2017.
One might think that there are a lot of heads rolling at Blizzard, with how the Game Directors are being swapped. But these are not layoffs: the respective individuals have been assigned to one or more new projects they will now work on. After the departure of Tom Chilton (World of Warcraft) and Eric Dodds (Hearthstone), Dustin Browder from Heroes of the Storm has also “disappeared” and is handing over his position to Alan Dabiri.
In an interview with colleagues from Polygon, Dabiri promised several important changes coming for Heroes of the Storm in the first half of 2017, especially improved eSports conditions. There will finally be proper spectator features and also the ability to swap heroes during the draft phase of a game.
Moreover, they want to completely overhaul the reward and progression system of Heroes of the Storm and also bring new heroes:
“Of course, we also have plenty of new heroes and exciting battlefields planned for 2017. We will just keep on crushing every expectation players have for this genre.”
Where Dustin Browder has disappeared to is currently a matter of speculation. It seems that Blizzard has pulled leadership from every team to unite them in a new project. For Tom Chilton (WoW) and Eric Dodds (Hearthstone) have also handed over their respective positions as Game Director to their successors.
Whatever Blizzard is working on behind the scenes, it seems to be a big deal. But since Blizzard is known to take its time, one should not expect an announcement before the end of 2017 or even into 2018.
