blizzard wasnt independent or "little", they were a major corporation making millions of dollars with multiple IP's that was still nonetheless dedicated moreso to making quality products than they were to giving shareholders wealth. they were the only company in this capitalist hellhole making big money that still gave a shit about the games they make. if we just let corporations do whatever they want and never hold them accountable because "money rules the world" then these problems only get worse. the individual consumer has such a minuscule voice already in a system run by corporations, why try to quiet it any further? just because blizzard will never be the company i fell in love with a decade ago doesnt mean we should just let it be ruined by corporate greed without a single complaint.
we are losing something though. every time blizzard caves to activision and chooses to release something based on profitability as opposed to it actually being a good game/idea (e.g. mercenaries was a very obvious attempt at making a "gacha game" since games like genshin are so profitable, rumble is obviously attempting to emulate clash since that game is enormously profitable) they lose a little bit of themselves in a way. this used to be one of the only AAA game companies dedicated entirely to the games they make, not the money they make, and seeing them make such an obvious turn in how they operate is saddening to say the least.
so everyones just fine with activision pushing blizzard further in the direction of profit over quality? im not stupid, im fully aware that their intention with this game is to milk money out of their IP by expanding it to the platform easiest to exploit consumers on, but why are we acting like this is an okay thing to do? why are we talking about them pushing a mobile game very obviously based off an already popular and profitable mobile game like theres nothing wrong with that and that its not indicative of activision pushing the company to make more decisions based off profitability as opposed to whether or not its actually a good decision?
they were obviously asking what the point of blizzard releasing a new game entirely on mobile is, especially when said game looks considerably worse than blizzards other mobile game and blizzard fans have made it adamantly clear that they do not want mobile only games.
whats the point of pretending that there's no negative criticism to be had?
as someone who has played a ton of ignite mage (including post-nerf) i would argue it was a significantly more difficult deck to counter that took less skill (albeit more than most people give it credit for) to pilot than kael'thas. furthermore, at high legend full send kael'thas decks have been dropping in winrate as more people learn how to deal with it and tech against it, with a lot of kael players switching to a kazakusan variant.
wasnt a mistake tho, theres plenty of disruption to beat kael'thas and switcheroo needs to be nerfed, not banned. theres no point in killing darkglare priest when the 20/20 boars are the problem
how long do you think blizzard will let switcheroo priest destroy the game before they do something about it? like, at least kael'thas druid can be really easily disrupted with dirty rat/okani/hand transformation spells like savory delight + takes high apm and a bit of practice to execute consistently; switcheroo priest is somehow even easier and even more broken than questline hunter AND this time blizzard had all the time in the world to fix the darkness combo pre-release and didnt.
can we not just get disruption that doesnt instantaneously put the combo player in an unwinnable position like dirty rat? okani was a step in the right direction (even though hes completely broken in wild where shaman can bounce him back infinitely and lock you out of the game), dirty rat is just putting a card back into standard that completely invalidates an entire category of deck a lot of the time. theres counterplay to okani, theres no counterplay to getting unlucky and drawing your combo pieces too early only to get ratted and lose the game out of no fault of your own.
if you play questline warrior in wild i genuinely hope your computer dies and takes every component with it so you're forced to stop ruining every single game you play against someone with your low-skill overpowered dogshit that blizzard refuses to nerf in an actually meaningful way. i said the pirate warrior nerfs wouldnt do shit in wild when they happened and people doubted me, i said the questline hunter nerfs wouldnt do shit in wild and everyone doubted me. LOOK WHOS RIGHT NOW BITCHES edit: shoutouts to the one dumbfuck that downvoted this as if im not 100 percent right and posting in the fucking salt thread, literally just play wild and you will see the shitshow that blizzard has cultivated in my favorite format. reno shaman ruining games and spamming okani so you literally cant play, pirate warriors and questline hunters that can breeze through games off pure rng, unbeatable combo priest games where they drop a nerubian on 2 and win the game by 5-6, blizzard is literally doing everything in their power to kill this format.
as the local combo mage stan i feel obligated to mention that mozaki mage is still putting up consistent results in legend, so is it really a meme? good article as always tho <3
i like that blizz is printing more multi-targeted cards as opposed to random target cards, but also, what happened to moving away from face hunter? this feels like an easy include in both face and questline hunter (another high skill and fair deck people love to play against).
oh hell yeah we got there boys
blizzard wasnt independent or "little", they were a major corporation making millions of dollars with multiple IP's that was still nonetheless dedicated moreso to making quality products than they were to giving shareholders wealth. they were the only company in this capitalist hellhole making big money that still gave a shit about the games they make. if we just let corporations do whatever they want and never hold them accountable because "money rules the world" then these problems only get worse. the individual consumer has such a minuscule voice already in a system run by corporations, why try to quiet it any further? just because blizzard will never be the company i fell in love with a decade ago doesnt mean we should just let it be ruined by corporate greed without a single complaint.
we are losing something though. every time blizzard caves to activision and chooses to release something based on profitability as opposed to it actually being a good game/idea (e.g. mercenaries was a very obvious attempt at making a "gacha game" since games like genshin are so profitable, rumble is obviously attempting to emulate clash since that game is enormously profitable) they lose a little bit of themselves in a way. this used to be one of the only AAA game companies dedicated entirely to the games they make, not the money they make, and seeing them make such an obvious turn in how they operate is saddening to say the least.
so everyones just fine with activision pushing blizzard further in the direction of profit over quality? im not stupid, im fully aware that their intention with this game is to milk money out of their IP by expanding it to the platform easiest to exploit consumers on, but why are we acting like this is an okay thing to do? why are we talking about them pushing a mobile game very obviously based off an already popular and profitable mobile game like theres nothing wrong with that and that its not indicative of activision pushing the company to make more decisions based off profitability as opposed to whether or not its actually a good decision?
they were obviously asking what the point of blizzard releasing a new game entirely on mobile is, especially when said game looks considerably worse than blizzards other mobile game and blizzard fans have made it adamantly clear that they do not want mobile only games.
whats the point of pretending that there's no negative criticism to be had?
yikes
...didnt they just ban switcheroo in wild?
as someone who has played a ton of ignite mage (including post-nerf) i would argue it was a significantly more difficult deck to counter that took less skill (albeit more than most people give it credit for) to pilot than kael'thas. furthermore, at high legend full send kael'thas decks have been dropping in winrate as more people learn how to deal with it and tech against it, with a lot of kael players switching to a kazakusan variant.
based and giantpilled
wasnt a mistake tho, theres plenty of disruption to beat kael'thas and switcheroo needs to be nerfed, not banned. theres no point in killing darkglare priest when the 20/20 boars are the problem
how long do you think blizzard will let switcheroo priest destroy the game before they do something about it? like, at least kael'thas druid can be really easily disrupted with dirty rat/okani/hand transformation spells like savory delight + takes high apm and a bit of practice to execute consistently; switcheroo priest is somehow even easier and even more broken than questline hunter AND this time blizzard had all the time in the world to fix the darkness combo pre-release and didnt.
damn you cant even joke about jade druid without getting downvoted. that was like hearthstones 9/11
dk if i agree with your altruis take but GOD i would kill for cube in the core set. i hadnt even thought of how sick that would be
can we not just get disruption that doesnt instantaneously put the combo player in an unwinnable position like dirty rat? okani was a step in the right direction (even though hes completely broken in wild where shaman can bounce him back infinitely and lock you out of the game), dirty rat is just putting a card back into standard that completely invalidates an entire category of deck a lot of the time. theres counterplay to okani, theres no counterplay to getting unlucky and drawing your combo pieces too early only to get ratted and lose the game out of no fault of your own.
inb4 disliked purely for defending combo decks
if you play questline warrior in wild i genuinely hope your computer dies and takes every component with it so you're forced to stop ruining every single game you play against someone with your low-skill overpowered dogshit that blizzard refuses to nerf in an actually meaningful way. i said the pirate warrior nerfs wouldnt do shit in wild when they happened and people doubted me, i said the questline hunter nerfs wouldnt do shit in wild and everyone doubted me. LOOK WHOS RIGHT NOW BITCHES
edit: shoutouts to the one dumbfuck that downvoted this as if im not 100 percent right and posting in the fucking salt thread, literally just play wild and you will see the shitshow that blizzard has cultivated in my favorite format. reno shaman ruining games and spamming okani so you literally cant play, pirate warriors and questline hunters that can breeze through games off pure rng, unbeatable combo priest games where they drop a nerubian on 2 and win the game by 5-6, blizzard is literally doing everything in their power to kill this format.
as the local combo mage stan i feel obligated to mention that mozaki mage is still putting up consistent results in legend, so is it really a meme? good article as always tho <3
i like that blizz is printing more multi-targeted cards as opposed to random target cards, but also, what happened to moving away from face hunter? this feels like an easy include in both face and questline hunter (another high skill and fair deck people love to play against).
oh i cannot wait to see the baddies malding over this
oh jesus mary and joseph what in the hell is this
oh christ alive anyone but the guy on the team thats been pushing secret mage for years.