We had the opportunity to talk with Heroes of the Storm developer Kent-Erik Hagman. He was understandably very excited about Cho'gall, but we also managed to ask him about a variety of other ideas as well.

Let's talk about Uther, how do you feel about him right now?

We have some small nerfs incoming in our next patch, the State of the Game panel will reveal more information on that. Some small changes only.

How do you feel the game has done this year?

Amazing! We went from technical alpha, but have added so many heroes over the year. Looking at next year, we want to be even faster on the hero development. At the same time our balance team are constantly looking at existing heroes like Uther, Gazlowe and Rehgar to see how we can tune these guys up to make sure everybody stays competitive and on the bandwagon. So we have two teams working on the present and future of the heroes.

In terms of Gazlowe. Heroes like Gazlowe and Nova are somewhat notorious in the community, usually not doing to well. Is there anything you can say about this situation?

No, sorry. But we are aware of it.

Speaking of Cho'gall, what was your inspiration?

I wanted to see how much I could make my head hurt trying to design a hero... No but seriously, we always want to push and break the genre. We have done it before with heroes like Murky, TLV, Abathur and Leoric, heroes that break the rules. We want to continue this going forward. After last year's Blizzcon, we looked at TLV, we looked at Archon Mode... We have a list of 200 heroes that we could add to the game, but we wanted to pick something special that we could announce at Blizzcon 2015. We'd had Cho'gall sitting around for a long time, and we were always asking ourselves what are we going to do with that stupid second head. We gotta do something with him being a two-headed hero. So we looked back after Blizzcon 2014 and we thought: we have TLV which is multiple characters for one players, what if we did the opposite? Two players controlling one hero? First we thought, that was nuts! So many problems, how can we balance that? But we took it from there, and realized it wasnt impossible but just hard.

After a while we playtested an early prototype for a bit, and during one playtest I told everyone I was going to play Abathur. Im didnt play with mines or locusts, but I used a cheatcode to give myself bonus damage to make up for that and I will be permanently Symbioted to Arthas, because that would simulate me playing along shotgun. I wanted to see what that experience would be like.
Well we did that, and it was a lot of fun. I was constantly communicating with the Arthas player, and it formed a strong emotional bond during that game. Thats where we started

Cho'gall has gone through so many versions, trying out so many abilities especially for Gall who isnt the one controlling movement. We tried things like roots, but it caused a lot of confusing moments where the Gall player would set up a situation but the Cho player would disengage instead. So thats when we realized we had to approach it like a driver-gunner relationship, where Cho doesnt do as much damage but he is the driver. Meanwhile Gall is the gunner, doing a lot of damage with his shadowflame and Dread Orbs. there is still a very high skillcap, as a player I want mastery growth for every player. There is a lot of room to improve on Gall, even though you arent controlling movement, especially with the placing of his Dread Orbs. Initially, we also had his Shadow Flame ignite the Rune Bombs that Cho throws out, but that proved way too difficult even for us Rank 1 players. So we said screw it, just have a specific ability to ignite the bomb. 

I am very excited for Cho'gall to go live and see the teamwork that players will have to showcase to make optimal use of Cho'gall. 

I especially like the synergy between their heroics, how did you come up with those?

Oh man, the Heroics took forever! They went through so many versions. Upheaval for instance used to silence, than slow, all of that. But then we decided give Cho the current two heroics, one to push enemies away and one to pull them towards you.

And something a lot of people want to know, what happens if Abathur copies Cho'gall?

When he does that, he gets access to Cho only! But Cho has a lot of health, and good auto attacks, but it's not a lot of flashy attacks. 

In regard to Greymane, where did you draw inspiration from him?

We wanted to add more ranged attackers like Valla and Raynor. We already knew Lunara was going to get added, but we wanted another very different assasin. We came up with the concept of a hero that starts off attacking from afar, but then finishes the kill up close like a Zeratul. And that sounded, to us, like a shapeshifter. And then we just went straight to Worgen.
When we think of heroes, we want to have iconic taglines for them. Like for Murky, he is the persistent little Murloc that never really dies but continues to wear you down. For Greymane it was: Has two forms, wears you down from afar and then rips your throat out up close.
You will most likely spend most of your time in the human form, but then finish off with the Worgen attacks. We wanted to make the changing form aspect be more than just clicking a button, so thats what we designed his whole kit around. We also wanted to give him have a lot of different abilities, unlike Cho'gall, because that would make him too versatile and hard to balance. So we used his abilities in the different forms to shape how he should be used in those forms.

Are you going to release heroes more frequently?

We want to go faster, but we want to also keep the quality high. So we need to find the balance in the release schedule.

The few new upcoming heroes will be assasins, what roles do you feel are lacking currently in the game after this?

So Lunara, Greymane as well as Gall are considered specialists, while Cho is a warrior. But we also recently added two supports. We feel we could do with more support heroes as well as more specialists, but we also need more assassins because they are the most played heroes and we want to keep that class variety healthy as well.

Do you have plans for UI changes?

We have plans for better showing in-game status effects, like focused attack or block charges. We are still also polishing a lot of different in-game UI things. As far as out-of-game UI, we want to rework the Hero league interface including bans.
For Spectator mode, we really want to work on it but we need to priorize other features right now.

Are we going to see a map editor soon?

Another feature we really want to provide, but it is again a question of time. it is not something we are actively working on, but we have stated we want to eventually give that to the fans.

What about PvE content?

We really think the heroes we have made will also be compatible with PvE modes. It is already fun to fight bosses, and we think we can make it even more fun. So its definitely something we want to do in the future.

And can you say something about guilds?

We want it so much, but probably after Spectator Mode, and better replays and all that...

Any news on a similar event to Eternal Conflict?

I cant really say anything about that, we really liked how Eternal Conflict worked out but we need to figure out a lot more in terms of the length of the event and the amount of content.

Anything more you can say about Tracer, finally?

She is so much fun, but you are going to probably hate her! Haha. Just like in Overwatch, people already hate her zipping by and she will feel the same was in heroes of the Storm.

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