Orphea is the result of the Heroes of the Storm team having “almost total freedom”

Heroes of the Storm characters have always been migrated over from Blizzard’s most iconic universes. Overwatch’s cheeky Brit Tracer is in there, ferocious orc warchief Thrall from World of Warcraft too, and Diablo’s undead skeleton king Leoric. You can choose from a roster of over 80 Blizzard characters to brawl it out in the multiverse of the Nexus. That’s a lot. Which is why it’s surprising it has taken until now, three years since the game released in 2015, for Blizzard to introduce a completely original character. The floating gothic assassin, Orphea, is the first character to be born from within the Nexus - the first Heroes of the Storm character created from scratch. “Being able to build our own hero, story wise and design wise, everybody was so excited,” concept artist Peter Lee says. “We love bringing in more heroes from different universes but we have to stay true to the original design. With Orphea, we had almost total freedom, and it gave us a lot of design opportunities.”