Blizzard is truly an incredible company. To complement the ongoing card reveal season, Blizzard has decided to spread misinformation to the casual masses via Twitter, which goes well with that whole Elon Musk acquisition thing that's been going on.
Quote From BattleNet Check out some of the new March of the Lich King DK core set cards
They followed this up 11 minutes later with the following tweet:
Quote From BattleNet Gotcha! Head on over to @PlayHearthstone for the ACTUAL reveals.
Here's the problem. These cards are all from the Knights of the Frozen Throne adventure during your fight against The The Lich King. This content is ancient. Many players probably never took part in their fight against The Lich King and more importantly, folks that were around when it was current content back in 2017 probably don't remember the exact cards used in the fight very well.
With players looking for new cards, they're going to assume at a glance that an official Blizzard account is giving them real news. People use apps like Twitter to scroll past information without looking any farther into anything, only reading headlines, which is why we're in this horrible age of people being so misinformed. Blizzard is disappointingly adding to this problem by promoting the new expansion under the guise of relevant reveals.
They are doing the community a disservice by pushing out content like this. As a community website that has a large focus on delivering factual Hearthstone content, we condemn Blizzard's actions.
Comments
Whatever.
I haven't spent a dime on Hearthstone, let alone coded an entire fan WEBSITE around it. The absolute nerve of invoking muh Bobby Kotick.
Here go my hopes of tagging along in case you ever got that personal invite from Bobby, and having a chance to capture that yacht for ourselves.
Hilariously, I bet ol' Robert here Did It For Free when he made this entire website.
I bet this tirade is less a crusade against the capitalist pigs but rather being bitter over no longer being a corporate darling.
Yeah, not so much. If there is one thing Flux never did benefit from is their corporate love. You don't need to look far for proof. And arguably it might've been a far more sound business move to play ball from the get go and just fall in line, especially where long-term profits are involved.
Mind that Hearthstone team is rather quick to call out people and look down upon their actions if it's not to their liking (or just sulk), even as they are themselves technically still supporting Activision and making them money despite their own personal beliefs expressing distaste for the leadership. Nobody has much of a superior moral hill to stand on there.
Also, you can clearly see the difference between the old and the new. Ben Brode & other devs are now at Second Dinner with Marvel Snap, and they literally have a channel on their *official* Discord called #spoiler-leaks with info from 3rd party sites. They let people discuss and even occasionally engage with them through cryptic comments.
If you think for one second that I'm bitter about not being in their pocket, you are an idiot. Do you know how easy it is to be in Blizzard's pockets? Because anybody can do it, you just have to be willing to play by their rules. I've never played by their rules.
The stakes were never very high though. Hearthstone was young, they needed the big people in the community more than those people needed them so as long as you weren't hosting your own cosby suite that the world knew about, they didn't care and would work with you.
I have a record of calling them out on their bullshit, I have a record of datamining their games, and I have a record of ignoring their requests because I value independence. The new guard on the Hearthstone team doesn't like that and they really don't like when they make mistakes (like uploading their data to a public cdn) and then people talk about them publicly.
The Hearthstone team has every streamer in their corner, deciding what they can and cannot say. Notice how quiet people are during leaks and datamining? Yeah, it's not allowed to be talked about because people know if they do they risk ruining their relationship with the company and then they won't get invited to events. I'm not going to hold stuff back from being published, that's how you make money.
Out of Cards has always been for-profit and independant. No one dictates what we post and it isn't possible to run large websites anymore without a business model in mind. Companies can ask us if we'd like to post about a certain topic, and they do, but they don't dictate if the message goes out or what the message looks like. That's shitty content. Blizzard's Gear Store team regularly talks to me about the new products they have. Sometimes we post about them, but it's rare. In that scenario it has to be products I think would fit well with the audience and I'll tell you, Overwatch merch does not fit with the audience here.
but were not allowed to talk like that on out of cards...typical
We let people tell others they're crybabies. That's why comments here are still posted.
I don't think such heavy language is warranted for this case. Even if you are "right", you lose all merit when you talk like this. It's just a joke - possibly failed one and bad-timed, but still.
Flux, seriously... this is not the right take. Anyone who couldn't tell those cards are fake deserves to get trolled. I don't understand why you're doubling down on this being somehow bad.
You need to calm down, Flux. Blizz is trying to have a little bit of fun here and you're turning it into existential dread. Relax.
What a weepy drama queen.
They’re just having fun with reveal season since they know people are anticipating DK to be overpowered like DH was on launch. If casual and professional players can’t tell that “gain 100 armor” is a joke then that’s that individuals problem, not Blizzard’s
Are you seriously upset at this or is this also a meme? Because this is such a non-issue, no one is gonna believe they are real collectible cards
You have to understand that there are very different audiences in games.
First, you have your ultra hardcore players that are dialed in to the point where they don't miss a thing, they know everything there is to know about the game, and they are ultimately super passionate even when they stop playing.
Then you have your casual player who goes "oh I love game" and they login to play for a few days when new content comes out and then maybe randomly a few more times before another set, and that's that.
Misinformation like this doesn't harm the first kind of player, but it harms the second.
Imagine a scenario where a second player sees that tweet, thinks Death Knight is super overpowered. There is a chance they buy products based on what they see. A product that Blizzard ultimately will refuse to refund because card packs aren't eligible for refunds (though they have done this in rare circumstances for unopened packs). I'd also be willing to bet some people might not even bother with coming back to the game if they see another hero class getting OP stuff, but this probably wouldn't be that many people.
So you're 100% right, this is a non-issue for 10%, maybe 15% of the playerbase. The overwhelming majority of players in any game though aren't hardcore about it and misinformation is bad.
Misinformation is always bad.
lmao wtf
At first, I totally disagreed with you and thought you were being pissy for no reason, but when you frame it that way it makes a lot of sense. I still l don't think it is that big of a deal though.
Though I am curious, when do you believe the responsibility of knowing what is factual and what is not fall onto the consumer/individual?
I generally believe that people should do their own research before doing anything. But, I know that I'm definitely not in the majority when it comes to this line of thinking. Because of this, I do think companies should keep their communications factual as much as possible.
That's the fun thing about everything in life though.
George Carlin put it best.
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."
Everyone has a different frame of reference. Folks that are most hardcore about Hearthstone don't really see the game in any other light. "Oh but people will know x y z", except they don't. This is something I've had trouble communicating to our writers about over the years because it isn't something people remember about. Creating content has to be done in an accessible manner. Sometimes it is worth pointing out "obvious" things because although we may think they are obvious, they really aren't Learning how to think like other players is super important.
I honestly don't believe Blizzard puts a lot of thought into their social campaigns. I also believe they are very bad at promoting their stuff and this certainly didn't help their case.
I get it. Had they mentioned that it was a joke in the initial tweet, it would not have been issue. I agree with you.
Just let them have some fun. If you think they are actually going to have a card that gives 100 armor, that's almost fully on you.
Maybe Blizzard wants to break away from Twitter before shit really hits the fan.
I honestely hate Twitter, it is even worse than meta.
Twitter is being used as a 140-token of truth, science is being reduced to 140 tokens.
Just use it for fun and not to discuss politics or announce news.