While we wait for the bulk of card reveals from the recently announced United in Stormwind set to fully commence, there is still half a week of this slow "dry period" left to get through. The small balance patch we recieved might be able to slightly refresh the Standard meta, perhaps once again making the laddering something enjoyable to do meanwhile. Besides that, we have had a number of teases and pieces of information pertaining to the new expansion, as shared by Hearthstone developers in various interviews or Twitter posts. We figured it would be handy to gather them all in one place, for anyone who doesn't follow these things too closely or might've missed some of the takes.
We have already covered a good deal of such informative insights here before - so we will aim not to repeat most of that again, instead focusing on what wasn't specifically mentioned, fills in the blanks, or otherwise offers a new perspective. All relevant links provided alongside the direct quotes below.
New Tradeable Keyword
- That 1 mana tax (which can't ever be reduced to 0) of shuffling in these cards might prove to be more important than we realize, slowing down the cycling potential of a deck ever so slightly. It shouldn't be a no-brainer.
- There were tons of Tradeable options in the initial batch, but it led to some strange interactions. Feels better when this flexibility is on a handful of cards; even more so when they have largely situational applications.
- Combo decks especially could become fond of this increased potential for consistency, as one could effectively run a 28 (or fewer) card deck. It's a good thing mana constraints remain.
- Trading doesn't count as playing a card, which matters for effects such as Galloping Savior. Drawing a card off the top of one's deck then works as usual, coupled with the reshuffling of the remainder of it.
- The other player gets to see the card once it's been used for trading on the relevant turn.
- Tradeable cards permanently keeping enchantments is interesting (think Kingsbane). For example Rustrot Viper would benefit from Scavenger's Ingenuity, and Impatient Shopkeep get buffed by Stage Dive.
Quote From Celestalon Seen a lot of love for the new Tradeable keyword! The short description of it is: Drag this into your deck to spend (1) Mana and draw a new card. But for those who love thinking about the nitty gritty details…- Trading does not count as playing a card.
- You draw the top card of your deck (counts as a draw, like normal.)
- After drawing, the Tradeable card is shuffled into your deck (DOES keep enchantments, unlike normal.)
- You can Trade while at 10 cards in hand; it doesn't burn the drawn card.
Also: - You can't Trade if your deck is empty.
- The Tradeable card is revealed to your opponent when you Trade it.
Trading always costs (1). The card's cost is irrelevant to the cost of Trading.
In playtesting, it felt like it need more of a visual indicator that you could swap it out for something else, at a glance. The banner under the mana cost is visible without hovering over the card.
Quote From Liv Breeden The other thing that we tried early on is we had Tradeable decks. The goal of doing Tradeable decks would be you just trade and you have a bunch of things on the board that trigger whenever you trade. So we had tons of Tradeable cards, but we found that the mechanic actually really shines when it's on a few cards. When it's really specific that including these in your deck is important, but it's not so prevalent that I'm spending my entire turn just trading with myself, trying to find the right cards to make my deck super consistent.
Quote From Alec Dawson Tradeable cards underwent a bunch of iterations during development like if you play a Tradeable card you get to discover a card from your deck. Things really started clicking when we got the interaction where we drag the card over to the deck to make Hearthstone feel a lot like a physical card game.
Questlines
- Historically, Quest mechanics did not enjoy a great success rate in Hearthstone. We've had a few outliers (the most infamous being The Caverns Below), but there has definitely been more misses than hits.
- Will this current iteration deliver with its incremental rewards and big Mercenary payoff moments? There is always that concern of being too slow as opponents tempo out cheap minions and burst against your quickly depleting Health pool.
- Sorcerer's Gambit wouldn't be such an easy fit in the current No Minion Mage as it might seem at first glance. The only Frost spell there is Brain Freeze, and Fire mainly focuses on Combustion and Fireball (plus a copy of Flamestrike for some). Tons of Arcane spells though. Apexis Blast, Refreshing Spring Water, or Mask of C'Thun play for no particular team.
- For what it's worth, we can expect a lot of Fire Mage support to arrive soon.
- The Demon Seed coming for Warlock doesn't necessarily mean we are going to see even more strong healing options for the class. The dev team is wary of instances where it might become too much (that said, let's note that they still chose to make Touch of the Nathrezim, as revealed just recently).
- Blightborn Tamsin will even deal our fatigue damage to the opponent instead. New Altar of Fire shenanigans about to commence?
- In the most recent episode of The Angry Chicken podcast, we've heard even more teasing about that special Priest Questline, and how aggressive the Warrior's one is. They better deliver!
Quote From Chadd Nervig As much as it sounds like, oh, that could just go in no minion Spell Mage […] I think popular versions of Spell Mage right now don't actually run much Fire. And so it ends up being fairly important that you have an even mix of them, and that they're cheap enough to mix them in the right orders.
Quote From Liv Breeden You have to play a Fire, Frost and Arcane [spell] before moving onto the next step. So you can't just play two Fires and move to the second step and get progress on that second step. No, I have to order which spells do I play? So you do favour putting cheaper spells in[to your deck]. Things like Flurry probably get a little bit more gameplay, which I think is good… the spell damage plus three [reward] is super huge…[…]
That said, Mage gets a lot of Fire stuff this expansion.
Quote From Liv Breeden Warlock has a bunch of healing right now, as it stands, with the Soul Shards. So I think that's something we're actively watching. Because… Warlock has a really good hero power. The downside is, is that you don't have a lot of ways to heal yourself. And lately we've swung the other way where they've got a lot of healing. So I think we actually have to watch how much healing we give Warlock.
The Shadowy Future of Priest
- Just the arrival of Darkbishop Benedictus seems to have everyone on the dev team excited about the new possibilities, and how it puts all existing cards for the class in a new light.
- In fact, Darkbishop Benedictus has earned that rare honor of being one of the two Diamond cards for the upcoming expansion (we have yet to see whether it's going to be obtainable through the Tavern Pass purchase or by collecting most of the Legendary cards from the set).
- The hype around the returning and revised Shadow Priest identity is substantial, but it won't be the only class archetype in the set that gets some support (cue the collective groan of Standard Priest detractors).
- There are two more confirmed but not yet revealed cards that should fit in nicely with the Shadow theme - so it's actually not as much as one might've hoped for.
- Best not expect the kind of burst direct damage that Face Hunter is capable of (or a new Mind Blast), but rather a more midrange focus with some minions and situational removal.
- Currently, Raise Dead, Palm Reading, Hysteria, Soul Mirror are all Shadow, and we have seen their power (all too) often. Only Devouring Plague heals a little, but then what is Discover for. At least Shadowed Spirit may not feel as alone anymore.
- Bring on the Shadowform!
Quote From Liv Breeden I think it does almost create a new class identity for Priest where it's like, yeah, I can go face, but at a certain cost. Nearly all of my healing, if it's not Lifesteal, comes from Holy spells. So there's a huge cost to going down the Shadow path. It's one of their major archetypes [in this set], so they're going to get a couple of pieces that go along with it.[…]
There's just something about Shadowform that we want to keep returning to, and this is a tool that I think we could use in the future as well. We've tried cards in the past like ‘if you are in Shadowform, do something.’ And I think that with this sort of base, we can start doing those cards again. And so I'm excited to see what this looks like in the future, too.
Quote From Chadd Nervig I don't know if it's quite as just face-centric as something like Face Hunter. It's a little more [of a] tempo-y, mid-range-y version of that. You do play some minions, but you've got that situational removal. You've got these spells that can go face, some limited healing through Lifesteal and two more cards that we haven't revealed yet, but will fit in that nicely.[…]
There was a while where we were like, okay, Priest, no face damage. But we decided – with making the right restrictions on your play style to go along with it – we think this is a cool thing to do now, to be – okay, if you're doing the Shadowpriest thing and you're very upfront about being a Shadowpriest and you have made these concessions to how your deck works, you can do that thing and be good at it. So the Shadowpriest archetype is definitely something I'm really excited for. And it makes you look back at your cards from previous sets and be like, okay, wait, which ones were Shadow? What's my deck going to look like? What can I use out of those? I love that it re-evaluates or recontextualises the existing cards as well.
Quote From Matt London One of the things I think is amazing about releasing cards like this is that it makes you reevaluate all of the spells in Priest that have come in the last couple of years.[…]
Now you have to think about spell types, what Shadow cards does Priest have available, and that to me is one of my favourite things about Hearthstone - each new set, each new mini-set, makes you evaluate each new card that’s currently in Standard.
Storytelling in Hearthstone
- We are used to various narratives being told and shown to us mainly through single player Adventures, so this year's focus on chronicling the journeys of Mercenaries through an array of ways comes across as a certain novelty.
- The team seems committed to continuing down that path, creating and exploring that vast Hearthstone and Warcraft lore.
- Given that Stormwind is such a major hub in the Warcraft universe, we can expect some well-known characters to make an appearance. It's been a long while since we've had a version of Varian Wrynn.
- When talking about their favorite Mercenaries, Celestalon picked Varden Dawngrasp, while Matt London sided with Guff Runetotem and then teased Xyrella's Questline as one of his absolute top cards. If it turns out to be even half as flashy as her current animations, we will be in for a treat.
Quote From Matt London One of the things that we wanted to do when we started Year of the Gryphon was to have the stories of these Mercenaries represented in all the pieces of Hearthstone: collectable cards, singleplayer content, Battlegrounds heroes. We wanted it to be everywhere in the game. I was always fascinated by transmedia as a storytelling mode and I felt like Hearthstone itself tied into that nicely.
I find it very enjoyable to be able to tell stories inside of a card game. It may not be a natural, logical storytelling format, but I was able to draw from older storytelling modes, whether that be radio drama or even theatre. […]
And so far it seems like players have responded really positively, that they are able to suspend disbelief, just like you would when seeing a play, and get into the story even though you have that bit of distance, what with it being a card game.
Quote From Chadd Nervig Well, we’ll get to see some of that coming in Stormwind. It’ll be fun - I don’t want to spoil any cards that are yet to be revealed, but there are some major characters that you’d expect to find in Stormwind that’ll be appearing in the set. But also, WoW is just a really rich source of material, and it’s fun to pull from that rich canon and also from our imagination, as well as how those things mix. The Mercenaries and how they interact with canon characters.
When there is a big cohesive set of settings and characters - that makes a great situation for a new expansion set (or mini-set if it’s that size). For more one-off characters, we tend to go for Hero Skins, or now Battlegrounds Hero skins and Bartenders. So I’m looking forward to all the ways we can mix and match and introduce more of these characters in.
Battlegrounds Cosmetics
- It's been a long wait, considering how Battlegrounds first appeared on everyone's radar over 1,5 years ago. Not that they could've exactly predicted or planned for this kind of widespread popularity.
- Looks like the team is quite satisfied with the customization options they've managed to come up with for the game mode so far. And very much excited about what else is on the horizon. If it all works out, the profits might be substantial.
- Could this mean that in the future they might also be able to stop charging for the artificial gate-locking in the form of Battlegrounds Perks and just bake it in by default? One can dream.
- The two upcoming sets of Hero Skins follow very specific themes (Beach Party and Shadowlands, respectively), and Celestalon kindly provided all their names ahead of time.
- Don't worry about Battlegrounds Skins being mixed in with their Constructed counterparts - there's a new Collection window attached to the game mode.
- Alternate bartenders Ragnaros and Ve'nari will most certainly find their fans, especially if somebody prefers a different kind of attitude than what Bob has to offer.
- Celestalon was full of praise for Matthew Mercer's work as Tiki-Lord Ragnaros - if you haven't yet listened to the samples, make sure to check them out here!
- After all, this is only the beginning.
Quote From Celestalon Names of the Shadowlands Battlegrounds Hero Skins:Finley of the Kyrian
George the Ascended
Ysera of the Night Fae
Faewarden Omu
Necrolord Patchwerk
Margrave Baz'hial
Venthyr Tess
Chained Kael'thas
Quote From Celestalon Beach Party skin names:Ragnaros, Tikilord
Chillin' Vol'jin
Flexfire Tickatus
Grill King Bolvar
Pool Party Maiev
Volcanic Chenvaala
Pyrospike Millhouse
Sunlounger A.F.Kay
Quote From Chadd Nervig Battlegrounds is super-popular and we’re going to keep supporting it - new minions, heroes, that stuff. But there’s another real big piece coming and that is along with the release of United in Stormwind, we are launching customization options for Battlegrounds. Just like the Hero skins for the constructed game, we’re launching Hero skins for Battlegrounds, as well as alternate Bartenders!
Quote From Chadd Nervig That is Tiki-Lord Ragnaros! He’s set up shop in a Tiki hut and is selling Sulfuron Slammer drinks, and he’s our new Bartender! If you like Ragnaros, if you want to get yelled at, want to get called an insect, Ragnaros sounds like a good bartender.
Other
- We shouldn't really expect the coming iterations of the Rewards Track to be much different than what we got with Forged in the Barrens. Even though it would be nice to see a few more tweaks.
- We've had a closer look at the Stormwind board directly from the artist who designed it. There might be something secret to uncover...
- Mailbox Dancer might well be the unofficial human mascot of this next expansion, and we've been given some insights straight from the source. Namely, where did the fish come from.
Quote From Chadd Nervig I think we’ve got it in a really good place now, so there’s not a whole lot of major changes to it between the sorts of things you saw in Forged in the Barrens and United in Stormwind. But there is lots of new content - new Hero skins, new card packs to earn, gold to earn, achievements to do. Gameplay achievements especially are a ton of fun to give; exciting opportunities for all the cards in the set to shine. But overall we’ve been refining and narrowing the progression system down to just the right spot and it’s in a pretty good spot, I think.
All in all, there is a lot to look forward to. We should start having more detailed answers soon enough. It might be because I've played way too much Alliance across various Warcraft games, but everything is shaping up to be even more promising than the start of the Year of the Gryphon was. What are your sentiments?
Comments
with the re-introduction of Shadowform, I would like to see the revert of "If already in Shadowform, increase the damage by 1". With Mage getting the bonus to be able to deal up to 3 damage per use of their Hero Power, it only seems right to allow the aggressive form of Priest to do the same thing.
The devs keep talking about how fun and well received all their side projects have been - the Mercenaries single-player content, the Rewards Track achievements. I don't really get it. All those are to me is stress - a thousand small things to do for small rewards. It got to be so overwhelming that I haven't done any of the single-player content in months. They felt bland; hardly any challenge, no deck-building, no crazy surprises. None of the elements that made some of the older adventures or Dungeon Runs worth my Hearthstone time. I wish they'd use all that dev time spent 'filling' Hearthstone to improve their friends options and game modes, instead.
Hopefully that adventure they're planning to release has a bang-on Heroic Mode!
Keep in mind that you are part of the <1% of players who actually voice their opinions in public forums. Their data surely show that the average player enjoys, or atleast use those things.
I do, and you're right... sadly. It's strange that a game so popular has existed for so long without some features that other games consider basic necessities - friendly challenge lobbies, the ever-elusive 'tournament mode', guild systems, profiles, stats, stackable collection searches, etc. New content is king, but surely they know that introducing some of those features would revolutionize how players stream and share Hearthstone to viewers and friends.
Your final phrase touches on something I'm curious about, as well. When they say that players enjoy certain content, is there more to that than '20% of our playerbase completed this single-player adventure'? If that's all, it incentivizes them to look positively on completionist coercion - i.e. you locked an achievement behind this mode and I feel obligated to do it - which is part of why some of these updates cause me to feel exhausted.
I'm really hyped for this expansion and I'm not gonna lie, I'll throw money at them until I get that diamond Benedictus. Pretty sure it will be tied to the 25 legendarys achievement though. Let's hope they'll be worth it!
I was hoping Tradeable was going to be limited to once per turn.
I can bet there's gonna be some problems with Tradeable mechanic on mobile phones.
I really like mercenary stories, unlike things that are happening right now in WoW, we don't need super epic stories.
I am also a WoW-player. It looks like the Hearthstone-team has much more innovation and creativity than WoW.
Imagine if a team with this spirit and motivation develops WoW. HS-devs are telling players what their fun with the game is and creating expansions because they think gamers love it. Big love for developers like Liv Breeden and others.
WoW-devs are telling players what they should do to have fun and why it is fun. That is not how you design a game.
I thought the Uldum approach to quests was ideal: they were achievable within a reasonable time frame, and triggered automatically once you'd fulfilled their condition.
These new quests seem like a step back, in that I expect that over 90% of the games, you won't have time to complete them. In particular, I'm highly dubious of the mage questline -- even if you do have the right mix of spell types in your hand, how can you make sure that the spells are actually relevant for the current board state?
The warlock questline looks more promising, especially since it combines very well with the self-sacrifice cards from Forged in the Barrens. I'm still not sure there's enough healing to compensate for all the damage you'll take, however.
I believe one of the devs said in some interview that games being too fast is also the reason why there are these mini rewards for finishing each step. It might seem like getting two extra spells or 6 lifesteal damage is not a lot especialy if it is delayed, but I think that it will be really helpful given that it is almost free reward for just doing what your deck is build around.
This got me excited. I've never enjoyed priest (probably my least favourite class), especially during the current meta. I find the shadow spell restriction quite fun as it'll get more shadow spells like Devouring Plague to see more play. Also lets your opponent know you're running a restricted number of spells. We now also have a viable win condition other than infinite generation and boring your opponent to death.
Can't wait to see the Diamond version!
Also, a shout out to Aesan for summarizing all the new info we've received about UiS. Great job and some awesome news!
Battlegrounds Cosmetics in the Rewards Track
So if we're getting diamond benedictus, does that mean a diamond hero power as well? Wonder how distracting it can get having it hover around on your right.
Quest mechanics often fail because of the deck building restrictions it tends to bring, and the overall power level of the reward itself. Its a delicate balance to get right, as we have seen from the Ungoro quests, probably featuring the best of the lot so far.
- Raid the Sky Temple is a fairly easy quest to complete, but falls short because after its completed it rarely ever wins you the game.
- Making Mummies would have been great, the reward was a fairly broken hp that practically doubles your deathrattles, but the conditions to finishing it forces you to play half your deck filled with fairly standard reborn minions instead of the powerful deathrattles you need to actually win the game.
And now we have Sorcerer's Gambit. The reward is powerful, game winning even. Not much deck restrictions too. But good luck actually finishing the quest, because its way too contrived to expect a game to flow between three different spell types, three times no less. There's a legitimate chance you wont ever finish it even against a control player if your deck is arranged in such a way so one type is all at the bottom. I really hope team5 have designed some real cheap fire spells, or maybe some sort of all spell, like how amalgams count as an 'all' minion type. Otherwise, this one will join that trend of poor success rate with quest decks.
I really think the quests should actually cost 0, because why not? The conditions, the deck restrictions, and the fact that you're practically playing one card less from the start is already limiting enough. Its not like its going to make any of the quest decks OP out of nowhere.
I'M honestly predicting that Fire Spell support will make Hero Power Mage playable sooner than it will enable the quest.
I don't understand how we've somehow regressed in terms of Quest design. Uldum did a decent job by not making you actually play the reward after finishing it and encouraging slower decks with an actual long term win conditions (instead of tempo decks that instantly lose because they skip turn one with -1 card)
Now we've returned to Quests that are somehow even slower than Uldum, require multiple conditions that give you, let's be honest, laughable mini-rewards and still make you play a 5-cost card that doesn't immediately impact the game (at least not the ones so far).
Mage will never be able to play this quest unless they literally get Headcrack, which would then lead into the whole "inevitable win condition that cannot be avoided meaning you can only beat the deck with hard aggro, and then the only way the deck ever appears in the meta if Mage gets the tools to play control and then god help us all because then you'd wish they nerfed Incanter's Flow to 4-mana.
Meanwhile Warlock could be balanced around the fact that control decks get a chance to just kill you because of how much damage you need to take, but if that's the case that just means Warlock doesn't have enough healing which means they can't win against aggro and remain in garbage tier.
The devs have said at least some of the quest rewards will have an immediate impact. What I think matters most though is how well the effect synergises with the deck construction. Part of the reason OG quest rogue worked is that your deck is naturally filled with tiny minions to finish the quest with, so a slow 5 mana card (ignoring prep...) that didn't even have a 7/7 body was plenty because your deck needs to buff its minions in order to pose any kind of threat.
Meanwhile, a lot of other quests (both in Un'goro and Uldum) had a tenuous connection between their conditions and rewards. That hindered them because so much of the deck is geared towards generating a reward that doesn't amplify the deck's core gameplay, despite being independently powerful.
At least the rewards for the two questlines we know are clearly synergistic with their requirements, so that's a good sign.
My greatest worry about the new Questlines is that (as it looks like now) the final, big rewards are all going to be vanilla 5 mana 7/7-s with no immediate impact whatsoever. Because you will already be behind in tempo (-1 card in hand, no turn 1, deckbuilding restrictions), all Quest decks will have pretty bad matchups against any decks that put out pressure. Mid-quest rewards are so far underwhelming, 1-2 mana tiny bonuses, meanwhile their requirements are quite demanding.
I don't see yet how will these decks survive until completing all 3 steps, playing a slow minion and then being able to leverage the reward. Most deck will just outpace them. Especially in Wild, playing an expensive but unimpactful minion is a death sentence against non-control decks. I don't want to see these brand new and interestingly designed effects be very weak.
I think quests are a fundamentally slow design, but that's OK. They've worked fine in the past (I don't agree with Aesan that they have generally been unsuccessful). The real issue is not that there is a category of decks that is weak against aggro, but that the devs have done a horrible job of establishing a good balance between aggro, control and combo over the past year. As a result everything has to be able to beat aggro, rather than being able to carve out its place by beating some other part of the meta.
By far my biggest hope for this expansion is that it can redress the balance between archetypes, not just to allow questlines to shine, but to give players more freedom over what to play more generally. I used to play Standard and Wild fairly equally, both getting to upper platinum/diamond ranks. Now I've become so disinterested in Standard that my season star multiplier has dropped to 3 stars. 3! It takes some serious apathy to not even rank up enough to use up your bonus stars, especially when against players whose MMR is way lower than mine would be if I actually cared.
I'm hyped about what are they going to do with the Xyrella's questline. Matt London said that it may be his favorite card in Hearthstone.
Then why do you keep printing inevitable win conditions for Warlock when they're not allowed to actually heal back damage?
People keep going on about how Warlock is always OP when they have enough healing, but that's just not true. It just happens that whenever they have decent healing they also have some unavoidable win condition so they automatically end up in top tier. That's what happened with Cubelock, Controllock and is what would happen with Tickatus if the deck was any good. Just print some Big Demon synergy to add alongside Jaraxxus and we have a decent lategame win plan that doesn't just fold to aggro and midrange because they just lose more health than they can heal.