Heroes of the Storm turns 10 — with a surprise new skin for Thrall players

It’s the tenth anniversary of Heroes of the Storm! Blizzard has even done a little work to make that feel like the special milestone that it is. From now until June 15, players who log in will receive a pair of new icons, be able to play any hero in the roster for free, and even be able to purchase a brand new Thrall skin for 1500 gems.

This is the first brand-new content to come to Heroes since the maintenance mode announcement three years ago — it also might not be the last. In their 10th anniversary post, they mention that Gear Head Thrall was chosen because of the nice double whammy of the Heroes 10th and Warcraft 30th anniversary celebrations, but that the Classic games team is going through the vault looking for other skins that might not need a lot of work to get game-ready.

Gear Head Thrall is a pretty strong stand-out skin to be the first release, too. Not only does he have a super unique cel-shaded look that makes him pop on the battlefield, but he also gets a tweak to his Spirit Wolf ability. Now, instead of launching a wolf forward to root his foes, it’s a spiked tire!

It is also a bit bittersweet, as now I’m sure there are at least five other skins from this same universe of steampunk-meets-road-warrior trappings. Would we have seen Jaina in a top hat covered in gears? Deathwing as a massive clockwork dragon? Steam Elemental Ragnaros? I could keep speculating for all 90 heroes in the game, but I’ll leave some of that up to you. The more I look at it, too, I’m struck by how much Thrall looks like Mario in this skin. Maybe we would’ve gotten a whole line-up of Mario Kart racers!

Hopefully, we’ll get the opportunity to see some of them in the future. If more players than expected log in and buy the new Thrall skin, hopefully we’ll see more of the vault opened sooner rather than later.

What does this mean for the future of Heroes of the Storm?

I know that I want it to be a sign of greater things to come. We’ve been getting routine patches over the last few months that not only have balance fixes, but also complete ability reworks. Ana and Imperius are the most recent recipients of some of that extra attention, bringing their power up to be more in line with other heroes. However, neither one was exactly the bottom of the barrel and crying out for fixes, which says to me that there’s a developer out there looking for any way possible to improve the game with the time and resources that they have. Heroes even got a Microsoft Games Pass bundle that lets players have a great collection of heroes for nothing!

Every time a Heroes patch comes up, I’m always amazed at how many people jump out of the woodwork and say how much they enjoyed playing the game, and want Blizzard to keep production going on it. There are still Twitch streamers out there who are playing Heroes of the Storm weekly and putting up great numbers — the community is there, Blizzard just needs to believe in it. I don’t think we’re looking at a situation like when Sony re-released Morbius into theaters because of all of the online memes creating buzz, only to flop harder than it did before. If Blizzard released a new Xal’atath or Lilith hero in Heroes, people would log back on instantly. I know I would.

With BlizzCon 2026 on the horizon, Blizzard could be working on something big to announce in the Heroes realm. Both Diablo and Warcraft have big expansions that are likely to be given more details over the next year, and having the first new hero since Hogger drop alongside one of them would be a great way to get a lot of extra buzz. I can see the marketing copy now: their expansion is going to be so good that it can even bring Heroes of the Storm back from the dead!

I know all of this is a long shot, but it doesn’t feel like quite as long of a shot as it used to. I’ll know I’ll keep the torch burning in my heart until the servers get brought offline.

Until then — I’ll see you in the Nexus.