I need someone to hold me… please…
STOP THE PRESS.
We have received word of possibly the most important, most groundbreaking, lifetouching and soul-rending story this website has ever seen. Your life will never, ever be the same after reading it, so please do take a moment to compose yourself before bravely continuing forward.
Tychus doesn’t have his cigar in Heroes of the Storm. I know, my friend. I know. It’ll be okay, we can deal with this like we’ve dealt with oh so much before.
There he was, running around the Starcraft universe, happily puffing away at his massive cigar, when he was oh so cruelly ripped from the game and thrown in to the MOBA Heroes of the Storm. While he survived this ordeal, it can be confirmed the cigar in fact did not survive the journey. It had been removed to ensure the game receives its teen rating in all regions.
In a post by a Blizzard employee to Reddit, those involved in this travesty have attempted to explain themselves:
“Heroes of the Storm is a multi-region game with a teen rating. There are a magnitude of guidelines we have to be aware of. From a development standpoint we prioritize making Heroes and Skins as utilitarian as possible, if a single model can be used in all regions, that’s a huge win for development.
In the case of Tychus’ cigar there were regions where he wouldn’t be allowed to smoke. We have two options:
Make 2 versions, one smoking, one non-smoking
Remove the Cigar
Making 2 versions means more data management, multiple duplicates of the asset (if we update an animation, it has to propagate to all versions) such as the death ragdoll model, the facial animations, his morph into the Odin, and apply that process to every skin as well. This mountain of work affects multiple departments and has to be addressed every time we’d adjust Tychus.
OR
Remove the cigar. Put the development time into more content instead of bloating the management of one character. This is a decision based on productivity. The appeal of Tychus should not hinge on a cigar anyways, and we have no issue with that aspect of his character.”
While this statement may go a way to calm down the riots in the streets, and the old women sobbing quietly in their homes, the effects of this monumental change will forevermore affect our very existence.
