great, more disruption and still ZERO way to protect against it. because everyone already loves playing against theotar and his endless ability to create non-games, who wouldnt want even more? blizzard needs to figure out that making this shit a year in advance is destroying their ability to check the meta completely, especially considering every time they actually make changes to cards they almost always do nothing to actually affect the meta (almost as if no one on the hearthstone team actually plays the game they're working on more than a casual player)
MAAAAAAN WHY THEY GOTTA TAKE MY OOPS AWAY AGAIN MAN THATS MY FAVORITE GOOBER THEY COULDA AT LEAST WARNED ME I THOUGHT WE WERE ONLY GETTING CONSTRUCTED CHANGES
very cool druid and mage get nuked (rightfully so) while questline hunter, the deck that has been making the game worse in both formats since it was added, gets 1 single additional spell that has to be cast. brain damage
i dont need a writeup of their quarterly earnings (which were 280 million net income and 1.64 billion in revenue just in the second quarter of 2022 BTW) to see that cosmetics are making money. you see them all the time while playing the game, blizzard is constantly releasing more of them and they're not cheap. obviously they wouldnt be making more of them if they werent making money.
with all of that being said, there are plenty of AAA games that bring in millions of dollars annually that charge exclusively for cosmetic items and allow players to earn anything that would give them a major advantage in the game. its literally been the standard free to play model for online games as a whole for years, and consumers get (rightfully) upset when companies try to kneecap that model in order to push players to spend money on the game (e.g. diablo immortal).
even with all of this being said, my baseline argument is still that this company makes an impossible to comprehend amount of money and there is no universe where a company that wealthy NEEDS to lock non-cosmetics behind a paywall in their free-to-play game. they're not struggling, they just want more and we dont have to give it to them.
people arent saying they want a free ride, they want to be able to earn their battlegrounds advantage by playing the game instead of being forced to pay money. blizzard makes more than enough off of battlegrounds cosmetics, there is literally zero reason for them to charge money for an inherent advantage over your opponents, especially when you could get it free up until this point. stop simping for multi-billion dollar corporations, its people like you that will happily hand their money over completely satisfied having features put behind a paywall for no reason other than greed that are leading to more developers putting more micro transactions in their games. again, this is a multi-BILLION dollar corporation that is already making millions off the game, they dont need the extra money, they're choosing to charge because they know people like you will still gobble it up.
greed like this is precisely why ive spent no more than 20 dollars on this game ever since blizzard first started going to shit (prob around 3-4 years of daily play). activision-"blizzard" is going to keep pushing more aggressive monetization until either people stop buying into it or the game chokes and dies. but given how much money they've made off diablo immortal so far, it seems most consumers dont care enough about the quality of the product to not feed into these god awful practices.
face it bud, theres literally always going to be comparatively uninteractive decks, because there will always be people that have fun playing them, as well as certain lists that require actual skill and critical thinking to play well with (e.g. pillager rogue, turtle mage, mill rogue, topsy priest etc.). just because you throw a hissy fit whenever you play against a certain deck doesnt immediately mean that deck needs to be stamped out of existence; it could mean more interaction with that deck's main mechanic should be printed (e.g. okani) or that you're playing the matchup wrong, or that your deck isnt very good in that matchup.
magic: the gathering's system of making it easier to interact with combo decks through counter-magic would serve as great inspiration for better combo interaction in hearthstone, though it would need to be balanced differently since combo decks in mtg can often afford to play into a counterspell due to being able to run 4 copies of each card.
either way though, quest mage is nowhere near as strong in this meta as it used to be, and to act like the mage quest is anything less than beloved is disingenuous. exodia mage was arguably the most beloved deck in the game before apprentice was nerfed and copying the reward became the norm.
yeah, deathrattle rogue was doing things before Shattershambler could discount illusionist down to 3, i cant imagine the decks gonna die now that that 3 becomes a 4
yeah lets just kill the most central card to a very beloved deck that hasnt seen any success in any other variant since apprentice got nerfed and exodia died. not even close to a problematic deck right now, especially considering the high skill cap and the prevalence of decks like implock that annihilate it even with ice block.
iksar is one of like 5 human beings on planet earth that actually wants secret mage to be viable so hes just gonna keep pushing secret mage cards into standard that never see any play in the format but become the most annoying shit on planet earth in wild e.g. arcane flakmage
you obviously havent encountered the secret mages that camp in d5-1 every time im about to hit legend. deck is not bad at all, just extremely underplayed and very annoying
because those uninteractive play patterns can require a level of skill to perform that justifies the slight frustration that can come from it. if its overpowered they can nerf it, its not the end of the world and they shouldnt completely limit themselves from the number zero just because it makes all the people that dont understand high skill cap uninteractive decks complain about it.
im gonna try to be charitable for this one but blizz hitting lightning bloom genuinely makes me so upset. to all the people praising the lightning bloom nerf: how are you justifying nerfing a card that is relevant in like 5+ different druid decks (NONE of which are overpowered) instead of any more specific cards to big shaman that would affect only that deck? what is the point of hurting a wide variety of druid decks that currently arent hurting the meta in any way? furthermore, big shaman has been a thing long before now using lightning bloom and hasnt been an issue until the printing of that 7/7 fish fuck i cant remember the name of and the colossal legendary. therefore, why nerf a card thats been non-problematic in that deck for ages and (more importantly) has an incredible degree of importance in a huge number of other decks instead of nerfing/banning one of the new cards that has caused this imbalance of power? malygos druid JUST managed to get back onto its feet after being mostly outmatched by other ramp druid variants, now maly druid along with a good number of those other variants are getting kneecapped for NOTHING. we have the statistics to see that they are not winning to an overpowered degree, there's a wide variety of different decks and variation between archetypes that stimulates such interesting deckbuilding between different versions, so why hit those decks? really depressing for me, i truly dont understand why druid had to be punished infinitely harder than the class that was actually causing problems.
edit: important to note that calling this card "the new glide" and then complaining about it is hilarious considering glide was essentially unplayed for its entire duration in standard
nathanos is 10/10 but motion denied makes me want to break my own legs and roll down a hill
great, more disruption and still ZERO way to protect against it. because everyone already loves playing against theotar and his endless ability to create non-games, who wouldnt want even more? blizzard needs to figure out that making this shit a year in advance is destroying their ability to check the meta completely, especially considering every time they actually make changes to cards they almost always do nothing to actually affect the meta (almost as if no one on the hearthstone team actually plays the game they're working on more than a casual player)
MAAAAAAN WHY THEY GOTTA TAKE MY OOPS AWAY AGAIN MAN THATS MY FAVORITE GOOBER THEY COULDA AT LEAST WARNED ME I THOUGHT WE WERE ONLY GETTING CONSTRUCTED CHANGES
very cool druid and mage get nuked (rightfully so) while questline hunter, the deck that has been making the game worse in both formats since it was added, gets 1 single additional spell that has to be cast. brain damage
i dont need a writeup of their quarterly earnings (which were 280 million net income and 1.64 billion in revenue just in the second quarter of 2022 BTW) to see that cosmetics are making money. you see them all the time while playing the game, blizzard is constantly releasing more of them and they're not cheap. obviously they wouldnt be making more of them if they werent making money.
with all of that being said, there are plenty of AAA games that bring in millions of dollars annually that charge exclusively for cosmetic items and allow players to earn anything that would give them a major advantage in the game. its literally been the standard free to play model for online games as a whole for years, and consumers get (rightfully) upset when companies try to kneecap that model in order to push players to spend money on the game (e.g. diablo immortal).
even with all of this being said, my baseline argument is still that this company makes an impossible to comprehend amount of money and there is no universe where a company that wealthy NEEDS to lock non-cosmetics behind a paywall in their free-to-play game. they're not struggling, they just want more and we dont have to give it to them.
people arent saying they want a free ride, they want to be able to earn their battlegrounds advantage by playing the game instead of being forced to pay money. blizzard makes more than enough off of battlegrounds cosmetics, there is literally zero reason for them to charge money for an inherent advantage over your opponents, especially when you could get it free up until this point. stop simping for multi-billion dollar corporations, its people like you that will happily hand their money over completely satisfied having features put behind a paywall for no reason other than greed that are leading to more developers putting more micro transactions in their games.
again, this is a multi-BILLION dollar corporation that is already making millions off the game, they dont need the extra money, they're choosing to charge because they know people like you will still gobble it up.
greed like this is precisely why ive spent no more than 20 dollars on this game ever since blizzard first started going to shit (prob around 3-4 years of daily play). activision-"blizzard" is going to keep pushing more aggressive monetization until either people stop buying into it or the game chokes and dies. but given how much money they've made off diablo immortal so far, it seems most consumers dont care enough about the quality of the product to not feed into these god awful practices.
please for the love of god vote with your wallets
face it bud, theres literally always going to be comparatively uninteractive decks, because there will always be people that have fun playing them, as well as certain lists that require actual skill and critical thinking to play well with (e.g. pillager rogue, turtle mage, mill rogue, topsy priest etc.). just because you throw a hissy fit whenever you play against a certain deck doesnt immediately mean that deck needs to be stamped out of existence; it could mean more interaction with that deck's main mechanic should be printed (e.g. okani) or that you're playing the matchup wrong, or that your deck isnt very good in that matchup.
magic: the gathering's system of making it easier to interact with combo decks through counter-magic would serve as great inspiration for better combo interaction in hearthstone, though it would need to be balanced differently since combo decks in mtg can often afford to play into a counterspell due to being able to run 4 copies of each card.
either way though, quest mage is nowhere near as strong in this meta as it used to be, and to act like the mage quest is anything less than beloved is disingenuous. exodia mage was arguably the most beloved deck in the game before apprentice was nerfed and copying the reward became the norm.
yeah, deathrattle rogue was doing things before Shattershambler could discount illusionist down to 3, i cant imagine the decks gonna die now that that 3 becomes a 4
yeah lets just kill the most central card to a very beloved deck that hasnt seen any success in any other variant since apprentice got nerfed and exodia died. not even close to a problematic deck right now, especially considering the high skill cap and the prevalence of decks like implock that annihilate it even with ice block.
iksar is one of like 5 human beings on planet earth that actually wants secret mage to be viable so hes just gonna keep pushing secret mage cards into standard that never see any play in the format but become the most annoying shit on planet earth in wild e.g. arcane flakmage
you obviously havent encountered the secret mages that camp in d5-1 every time im about to hit legend. deck is not bad at all, just extremely underplayed and very annoying
people who suck at combo decks: overpowered, cant wait for this to be 1600 free dust!
me, whos going to hit legend with it first:
because those uninteractive play patterns can require a level of skill to perform that justifies the slight frustration that can come from it. if its overpowered they can nerf it, its not the end of the world and they shouldnt completely limit themselves from the number zero just because it makes all the people that dont understand high skill cap uninteractive decks complain about it.
NUTTING
im gonna try to be charitable for this one but blizz hitting lightning bloom genuinely makes me so upset. to all the people praising the lightning bloom nerf: how are you justifying nerfing a card that is relevant in like 5+ different druid decks (NONE of which are overpowered) instead of any more specific cards to big shaman that would affect only that deck? what is the point of hurting a wide variety of druid decks that currently arent hurting the meta in any way? furthermore, big shaman has been a thing long before now using lightning bloom and hasnt been an issue until the printing of that 7/7 fish fuck i cant remember the name of and the colossal legendary. therefore, why nerf a card thats been non-problematic in that deck for ages and (more importantly) has an incredible degree of importance in a huge number of other decks instead of nerfing/banning one of the new cards that has caused this imbalance of power? malygos druid JUST managed to get back onto its feet after being mostly outmatched by other ramp druid variants, now maly druid along with a good number of those other variants are getting kneecapped for NOTHING. we have the statistics to see that they are not winning to an overpowered degree, there's a wide variety of different decks and variation between archetypes that stimulates such interesting deckbuilding between different versions, so why hit those decks? really depressing for me, i truly dont understand why druid had to be punished infinitely harder than the class that was actually causing problems.
so was blizzard just lying when they said they'd push face hunter less or...
posts like this are why i play warlock
edit: important to note that calling this card "the new glide" and then complaining about it is hilarious considering glide was essentially unplayed for its entire duration in standard
i know, thats the future i want to live in
now that drek only summons one, could we ever get 3 mana sorcerer's apprentices? i miss my darling apm mage