‘Overwatch’ And ‘StarCraft’ Characters Shine On ‘Heroes Of the Storm’

Crossover characters from Overwatch and StarCraft bring back life to MOBA Heroes of the Storm.

Heroes of the Storm (HOTS) is Blizzard’s bet against the bigger League of Legends (LOL) and Defense of the Ancient (DOTA). Although Heroes of the Storm continues to lag behind these two multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) giants, Blizzard tries to keep its players interested and invested in the game by crossing over other Blizzard favorites into the Heroes of the Storm’s hero list.

This week, Heroes of the Storm and StarCraft fans will be pleased to know that Probius, the curious probe will soon make his way to Heroes of the Storm.

Probius comes all the way from StarCraft 2, where its primary function lies in gathering resources and setting up structures to create units. But Probius gets a makeover in Heroes of the Storm,PC Gamer reports, as the humble probe becomes a “high damage, area denial specialist, who warps in their own Protoss structures, no vespene gas required.”

The Probius brings in the Warp In Pylon Trait, which lets a Probius spawn a Pylon to regenerate mana; and the Worker Rush Mount, which gives Probius a passive 10 percent boost in movement and a further 50 percent movement boost upon activation.

Probius also ships with Disruption Pulse, Warp Rift, Photon Cannon, and Pylon Overcharge and Null Gate.

According to Polygon, Probius will be available to play on Heroes of the Storm’s public test realm on March 6, although there is no specific date yet as to when Probius makes it to the non-PTRs.

Heroes of the Storm has tons of characters from StarCraft and Warcraft but Overwatch characters are just starting to transition into Heroes of the Storm.

So far, the latest Overwatch character to get introduced into Heroes of the Storm is Lucio, the third Overwatch hero, following Zarya and Tracer. As of now, according to Uber Gizmo, Lucio is playable on the Heroes of the Storm PTR.

These hero crossovers are one of the perks in Heroes of the Storm, since it shares a license with other Blizzard titles. If crossovers were so easy, why isn’t Blizzzard sending more Overwatch heroes in Heroes of the Storm?

PC Games N talks to game producer Claudio Gentilini and he reveals that importing heroes is not as easy as it looks.

“Not every Overwatch hero transitions very well into Heroes, or we won’t speculate that they will. I’ve used this reference before but Pharah – verticality in a MOBA is very difficult, there’s no structures to land on. Things like that are challenging.

Some would be technically very expensive and very challenging, a hero like Reinhardt, [with] his shield – what does it absorb? How much? It’s just like ‘we’ll think about that later.'”

Apparently, not every Overwatch character gets molded perfectly in a Heroes of the Storm landscape, in the same way that players found the Lucio and Zarya crossovers a perfect fit.

Gentilini explains that even Lucio proved challenging at first, but working out the numbers and his abilities landed in a really good spot in the end.

“Wall-ride we weren’t sure how it would work in our game, we figured we could probably [sort] it out. [At its simplest,] it would maybe be a speed boost where he skates faster. Then Nathan LaMusga just knocked it out of the park, it worked great from the outset and we made very few changes to it and players really, really liked it.”

With the good feedback they’re getting from crossing Overwatch heroes into Heroes of the Storm, Gentilini reveals that they plan to import more in the future.

“Overwatch is something we’re going to keep doing, we’re going to do it at the right time and there are more coming.”

Outside Overwatch, StarCraft,Diablo, and Warcraft, Blizzard has also made vocal their plans to introduce other Blizzard heroes into Heroes of the Storm such as Blackthorne.

Blackthorne is a 1994 SNES classic and plans to introduce him to Heroes of the Storm go way back to 2013, according to Moba Monster. As of BlizzCon 2015, however, Blackthorne continues to be “in talks,” with no further details that could be disclosed.

Which Overwatch or other Blizzard character are you hoping to see in Heroes of the Storm?

[Featured Image by Blizzard]