BlizzCon 2017 Opening Ceremony Panel Transcript

Heroes of the Storm

Kaeo Milker: Hello, BlizzCon… and hi everybody watching at home on the stream. I miss you.

(Attendee yells: we love you, Kaeo!)

Kaeo: Thanks, mom. So much has happened in the Nexus since I was on this stage with you last year; and thanks to the feedback and support from all of you in our community, we have continued to expand and evolve Heroes of the Storm together. With Heroes 2.0 in April, we uncapped level progression, and opened up all of the games content as rewards every time you level a hero. Heroes 2.0 was the biggest moment for our game yet. It was even bigger than our original launch. So I want to thank everyone who came in to check out all of that great content with us, thank you.

But of course, new content is the lifeblood of our game; and since launching in 2015, we have doubled the number of battlegrounds and more than doubled the number of heroes, with 15 new heroes added since last BlizzCon alone. Yeah, so those of you who are with us know that we have had a very busy year with some incredible additions to our heroes roster, but we are not done yet.

Now, the coolest thing I get to do up here is debut a new cinematic. So, let’s see which new heroes have arrived to explore the secrets of the Nexus.

It is amazing getting to experience something like that with you for the first time, and I love getting to see Alexstrasza and Hanzo together in Dragonshire testing one another; and you definitely get the feeling that something is stirring in the Nexus as well. So, Alexstrasza =the life-binder is a versatile range support who manipulates her life energy to heal her allies, and when her life or those of her teammates is threatened she can transform into a mighty dragon using her trait Dragon Queen… and for all of you Hanzo mains out there… I see you, rejoice because the Shimada clan’s most dangerous archer is a nimble-ranged assassin who can deal damage from afar and serve as a nimble scout for his team.

So, in addition to bringing these two iconic dragons to the Nexus, we also have some other exciting news to share with you at BlizzCon. You see, well, Heroes 2.0 was our time to reimagine progression and rewards in our out-of-game experience. We are also turning our eye towards improving our core in-game experience as well, and I brought along a video that will not only show you our double dragons in game, but also gives you a taste of some of the big changes to come.

Yeah, it is so cool to see Alexstrasza and Hanzo in action, and I can’t wait for all of you to get to play them, and experience our 2018 gameplay update. I am also really excited about bringing performance-based matchmaking to the game, because it rethinks our traditional win-loss based system, and lets your personal performance in matches directly influence your matchmaking rating whether you win or lose. So, we know how important that is to our community, and we have heard your feedback. So please keep it coming.

Now, no doubt you have some questions about our new heroes and the 2018 gameplay update. So for all the details on that, and more please check out the Heroes of the Storm: What’s Next panel today, and our Deep Dive panel tomorrow; and of course, for all of you here at BlizzCon, our new heroes and the gameplay changes are playable out on the showfloor. So please go try them out, and let us know what you think.

And for all of us, what better way to wrap this year than to see the best players in the world at the Heroes of the Storm’s Grand Championship World Finals tomorrow night. I know I can’t wait to see these teams battle it out this weekend.

Okay, BlizzCon. We have some incredible things coming for you all in the next year, and while we will be bringing you epic content, and unforgettable heroes, we also have plans to dive deeper into events that are unfolding in the Nexus. We can’t wait to share that, and so much more with you; but in the meantime, thank you for inspiring us to make Heroes of the Storm bigger and better than ever, and we will see you in the Nexus.

Now, it is my pleasure to hand it off to Hearthstone’s game director Ben Brode over at the Hearthstone stage.

NEXT: Hearthstone

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