The latest character for Heroes of the Storm, Alexstrasza, was too large for the game. The developers worked with gigantic sizes.
At BlizzCon 2017, the next heroes for Heroes of the Storm were introduced – including Hanzo from Overwatch and Alexstrasza from World of Warcraft. In line with this, there was a cool cinematic showing Hanzo and Alexstrasza battling each other.
Strictly speaking according to “lore”, the fight should be quite one-sided: After all, Alex is a gigantic dragon lady blessed by divine creators while Hanzo is just a human with a bow and absurd ghostly powers. However, in the Nexus of HotS, they are evenly matched.
This inherent disparity in power has always been a problem for the developers. How do you make Alex feel powerful yet “weak enough” to be defeated by other characters? The answer was the dragon form.
Too big for the battlefield: Alexstrasza’s true form
Alex can regularly transform into a dragon during battles, making her harder to kill and giving her stronger abilities. Not to mention, she becomes much larger.
Initially, the developers experimented with the actual size of Alexstrasza’s dragon form. It ended up taking up the entire screen. While it looked cool, it didn’t help the flow of the game. It was more of a short gag to test out.
Alexstrasza’s final dragon form, however, is only about 2-3 times larger than her elven body. This way, she doesn’t obstruct other players’ views, and proper gameplay is still possible. However, she no longer appears very imposing.
A part of Alexstrasza’s gigantic dragon form still exists in the game, by the way. When she switches to her ultimate flight form, you can at least see the shadow of the dragon hovering over the battlefield. A small reminder of what could have been with a crazy idea (that everyone would have hated).
How do you like the design of Alexstrasza in Heroes of the Storm? Is it acceptable to tailor characters to the game? Or should they have completely avoided a dragon form?
