Obviously they have already removed the wording 'Chaos' for the Chaos Warrior and Chaos Warlock figures and dropped Fimir in favor of Abominations, but what other changes would be necessary?
Not that much actually.
I went line by line in the HeroQuest Instruction Booklet, and the Quest Books for the game system, KK and ROTWL, both EUR and North American versions although Hasbro said the rerelease will be based on the North American version only, to see exactly what GW material would need to go. Here is what I found:
'The Empire' and 'Emperor' phrases could be construed as GW content relating to Warhammer and The Empire, but the terminology is fairly generic so I doubt that they would actually need to change it; however suitable loan words such as realm, kingdom, king etc. could easily replace these multiple references throughout the original material.
Hordes of Chaos, Forces of Chaos, Chaos Warriors, Chaos Warlock, Chaos Spell cards, Stronghold of Chaos, Great Powers of Chaos, Chaos Magic, Bastion of Chaos, Cloud of Chaos, Chaos Knights, etc. could all be easily replaced by Hasbro's selected alternative word 'dread.' Interestingly in many of the U.S. version references 'Chaos Warlock' figure is used in the original while the phrasing in the original European version is 'evil sorcerer' instead. With the creation and unlocking of the 'Warlock' player character they made the change from Chaos Warlock to Dread Sorcerer presumably to reduce confusion.
Several specific in-text place names of GW Warhammer Geography are found in the above mentioned products (not to mention an actual Warhammer map with lots of place names on the back of ROTWL Europe version of the quest book!) such as The Borderlands, World's Edge Mountains, Athelorn (used in BloodBowl, unsure if there are other GW references), Sea of Claws, Northern Chaos Wastes, The Empire, Black Mountains, Black Fire Crag, Barak Tor, Black Fire Pass, and Karak Varn.
Back cover of Return of the Witch Lord:
"The orcs of the Black Mountains have been using Fire Magic in their Raids." "The thieves are a well known band of orcs whose lair is in the Black Mountains. They are led by Guthor, a Chaos Warrior." "The Emperor rode with his army towards Black Fire Pass, that perilous mountain route linking the Empire and the Borderlands."
It could be argued that Prince Magnus is the future Emperor Magnus of Warhammer, so a name change is possible but considering Mentor, Ragnar and many other names contained therein are unchanged for sure I doubt Magnus would be removed.
The image on the back of Kellar's Keep Quest pack (Europe version) has a Fimir, a Chaos Warrior, and a Snotling
The artwork and figure sculpt for the original HeroQuest Dwarf character is literally THE White Dwarf, the mascot of Games workshop and the namesake of their in house magazine.
Cover of White Dwarf issue 90, June 1987 (10th anniversary issue).
They have changed the Dwarf character artwork and sculpt however, as well as the original box art by Les Edwards, including altering the cover of Kellar's Keep which shows the exact same dwarf. Interestingly much of the artwork for Advanced HeroQuest (strictly a GW product with no Milton Bradley Involvement) also shows the same characters from the Original HeroQuest game.
I did not look in any other original HeroQuest material such as the Elf Quest Pack, Barbarian Quest Pack, Against the Ogre Horde, Wizards of Morcar, HeroQuest Advanced Quest, the Adventure Design Kit, the three HeroQuest game novels, the Winter Special, the HeroQuest Sticker Book, or the magazine quests because Hasbro has not made any announcements of their possible rereleases. All of those products contain much more Games Workshop material (usually relating to Warhammer) including names, places, persons, monsters, images and maps.
We can only speculate what story changes Hasbro will make to the old material, and the world of HeroQuest going forward (so far just with the unlocked Stephen Baker new quest book)
