Heroes of the Storm gets new Diablo characters — including an old favorite

It’s time to raise an old character back from the dead

Blizzard’s multiplayer online battle arena, Heroes of the Storm, is getting two new characters from the Diablo universe, as GameSpot revealed today. New characters like these help ensure that a competitive game can continue to grow and keep players invested, which is especially important for a free-to-play title like Heroes of the Storm.

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One of the new fighters is Li-Ming, based on the female Wizard player class in Diablo III. This now means all six classes from Diablo III are in Heroes of the Storm (along with the Monk, Barbarian, Demon Hunter, Witch Doctor, and Crusader).

The second Diablo character, Xul, is different. He’s the first Heroes of the Storm character based off of a class from Diablo II (as long as we’re not counting Barbarian, which was in both Diablo II and Diablo III). We don’t know when these new characters will come out for the free-to-play PC game.

Heroes of the Storm has been a success for Blizzard. The MOBA had 17 major ($25,000-plus) tournaments in 2015, paying out over $2 million. While it doesn’t yet compete with the insanely popular League of Legends, 2016 could be a big year for the MOBA. We know that Heroes of the Storm is popular, but since Blizzard doesn’t release numbers for its player base, we don’t know exactly how much it’s growing (or if it’s ahead of Smite, another popular MOBA).