Oh noc, i am really glad that they want to kill the heroes.
i dont know if you two have been in GW from the start on... but GW was much better, before they introduced these Hereo-mechanics.
sure, it's nice to start whereever you want, and whenever you want, you could easily invite your heroes and everything was set up, but this killed teamplay in GW. first thing you asked a new one, during set up of a group, was his build, if it was nothing not the exact thing you looked for, he got kicked, and soon after, a a heroe was invited (due to the maximum group size of 8 people, 2 real players are enough to fill a group with heroes).

the henchmen, on the other hand, have been a nice idea, 'cause you could fill one or two positions with them. But more of them could cause a wipe, they've been to dumb to go out of an AoE attack.
so you had to take human players, most of them would go out of a flame rain or something like that ^^