I love that Dean closed with “congrats on winning that Yugioh tournament.” I’m sure he did it because the other person actually won one, but it sounds so perfectly memey. I hope Hearthstone players start shutting down conversations by congratulating the other person on that Yu-Gi-Oh tournament.
Agreed. Anyone who wants to play this deck (and you should!) needs to check out VS’ recommended deck list. I don’t agree with it completely (especially their choice to cut Playmaker), but it’s a great starting point.
Damn it. All three of my daily quests could be cleared by playing three Priest games, and I was looking forward to doing it quickly in a Brawl. Instead, we get one where everyone has to play Rogue.
Remember, this is an invitational. The people in it didn’t win their place through pure skill. Blizzard chose them as part of a strategy to grow and guide the community. Those choices have unconsciously favored white men for years, and the cumulative effect is that people like Regis make a successful career while equally deserving women have not. The best way to address this is to make a point of giving women the chances that they previously missed.
Look, game development is hard. I’m going to be understanding if the release date slips or if the team doesn’t want to talk much about it. But in this case, the hype started up and THEN got dialed down to 0.
Worse, they didn’t say anything during that initial hype cycle to explain why I might enjoy the game. If I understand correctly, this will involve using and growing a small group of heroes, without the cards that you can combine to get interesting, emergent combos. Combining cards in interesting ways is the Hearthstone team’s core competency. A light tactical roguelike COULD still be fun, of course. But a dozen of those come out every week.
In summary, they attracted attention without really selling the game, THEN they gave the impression of struggling. I don’t know what is actually going on or how the game will be, but it’s not encouraging.
I hope the Braum emote is still used to say “hello” or “I’m playing Braum!” I agree that it’s fine if this new emote replaces the “I’m trying to tilt you” meme. Partly because this one is just so pitiful and weird that it’s hard to take anyone who plays it seriously.
My interpretation of the emote is that someone dressed up an old man in a Garen costume, stuck a gun to his head, and told him to act jolly. Obviously, he’s failing at it. Most games have some truly weird emotes that are more absurd than anything. This is LoR’s first like that.
They’re offering more optional things to buy if you want. The price is clear up front, as is the thing you are buying. If you don’t want it, the cost to simply play the game is the same or better than it was a year ago.
That’s less scammy than almost every store or contractor that I have to interact with.
Edit: I was looking forward to buying this for 1000 gold, but at 1500 I’ll pass. So I’m disappointed by the specifics of the offer as well. But that doesn’t mean I got ripped off. They offered something for sale, I said no, and life goes on.
Diamond cards feel weird to me, and part of the reason is that there are two per set. One of them is locked behind an expensive achievement that most people can’t even think about getting. The other is part of the battle pass, which is the no-brainer purchase you should get if you plan to spend any money in the game.
So which is it? Rare and special, or a tchotchke that half the players own? And is it special if so many people have the exact same card?
I’ve said it before: A key aspect of golden cards is that anything can be golden, so so ones you happen to get or choose to craft will be different than the ones I get. It feels like we’re building a collection. A Diamond card feels like we’re checking a box.
Strange. Rokara’s three pictures match the three hero portraits that you get in the battle pass. But the other two heroes in the battle pass only match pictures 1 and 3. Portrait #2 is different for Xyrella and Kurtrus.
I haven’t enjoyed Hearthstone’s single player games, but I’m cautiously optimistic about this. (So much so that I skipped the spoilers in this article.)
In my opinion, Warcraft lore is REALLY boring. I actually get less interested in cards and characters when I learn more about them. (In contrast, I love learning the lore behind Runeterra cards.) But when Hearthstone creates new characters or elevates really minor existing ones, that can be interesting. The League of EVIL and League of Explorers were both a lot of fun. I’m excited to see a year developing 10 new characters.
The most worrying thing is that there’s a class with a worse win rate than Priest. That’s how you know things are unbalanced. The Priest’s core identity is being challenged!
I can’t find the quotes right now, but I’ve heard the designers say that they do plan to add their own champions eventually. I think they just want to start each region with established champions. That makes sense to me - Hearthstone wasn’t making up much lore until it was older than Runeterra is now.
Great balance changes! I agree with everyone who thinks these are coming too infrequently, but I’m very happy with the decisions made here.
The Lab of Legends changes are also great, though I feel like this is just the first of several needed improvements. If nothing else, we really need more variety of enemies. But the mode is still new, so getting any improvements this quickly is a good sign. I look forward to seeing this evolve.
I completed enough quests last night to get me to 10,000 gold. 100 free packs on launch day! (But I accidentally completed 5 Ranked Wins with that last game, so I’m actually close to 102.)
Thanks. I’ve been assuming they had some plan in place - when they announced the system of new “sets” every 6 months and “expansions” every 2 months, they even said they this terminology would be important for future changes in the game. That sounded like they had something concrete in mind at the time. I can’t tell where they actually are now in these plans.
Thank you for putting this article together. It’s great!
I’m very concerned about the how the game will work with (or without) rotations. I agree that it’s a tricky issue, and any option will have pros and cons. Specific regions and champions mean so much to players that it’s hard to take them out, and because the regions are not evenly distributed over expansions, a typical rotation would feel very unbalanced.
On the other hand, the number of powerful potential combinations keeps rising, and I don’t think it’s sustainable to keep growing the pool of cards without taking some out.
I’m open to creative solutions for this, but if the team doesn’t even have a plan yet then I’m worried that the game is heading toward a bad place in a year or two.
Paladin Secrets have received a whole other purpose with card cycling
This makes perfect sense. Despite their bad reputation, Paladin cards have always been very strong for their cost. The problem is that you can’t build a strategy around “cards that are strong for 1 mana”. Even the most aggro decks rely on 2-, 3-, and 4-drops so that they don’t burn out right away.
Shadowjeweler Hanar showed how strong Paladin Secrets can be. With continuous card generation, the 1-drops were generally the most popular Secrets. It’s situational, of course, but 3 Paladin Secrets are usually better than 1 Mage Secret.
So this archetype CAN work. But Paladin needs strong card draw/generation in order to focus on Secrets. This set MAY finally be finding the right approach.
Cithria’s leveled up again!!
I love that Dean closed with “congrats on winning that Yugioh tournament.” I’m sure he did it because the other person actually won one, but it sounds so perfectly memey. I hope Hearthstone players start shutting down conversations by congratulating the other person on that Yu-Gi-Oh tournament.
Agreed. Anyone who wants to play this deck (and you should!) needs to check out VS’ recommended deck list. I don’t agree with it completely (especially their choice to cut Playmaker), but it’s a great starting point.
Damn it. All three of my daily quests could be cleared by playing three Priest games, and I was looking forward to doing it quickly in a Brawl. Instead, we get one where everyone has to play Rogue.
Remember, this is an invitational. The people in it didn’t win their place through pure skill. Blizzard chose them as part of a strategy to grow and guide the community. Those choices have unconsciously favored white men for years, and the cumulative effect is that people like Regis make a successful career while equally deserving women have not. The best way to address this is to make a point of giving women the chances that they previously missed.
I came here to say the same thing.
Look, game development is hard. I’m going to be understanding if the release date slips or if the team doesn’t want to talk much about it. But in this case, the hype started up and THEN got dialed down to 0.
Worse, they didn’t say anything during that initial hype cycle to explain why I might enjoy the game. If I understand correctly, this will involve using and growing a small group of heroes, without the cards that you can combine to get interesting, emergent combos. Combining cards in interesting ways is the Hearthstone team’s core competency. A light tactical roguelike COULD still be fun, of course. But a dozen of those come out every week.
In summary, they attracted attention without really selling the game, THEN they gave the impression of struggling. I don’t know what is actually going on or how the game will be, but it’s not encouraging.
I hope the Braum emote is still used to say “hello” or “I’m playing Braum!” I agree that it’s fine if this new emote replaces the “I’m trying to tilt you” meme. Partly because this one is just so pitiful and weird that it’s hard to take anyone who plays it seriously.
My interpretation of the emote is that someone dressed up an old man in a Garen costume, stuck a gun to his head, and told him to act jolly. Obviously, he’s failing at it. Most games have some truly weird emotes that are more absurd than anything. This is LoR’s first like that.
They’re offering more optional things to buy if you want. The price is clear up front, as is the thing you are buying. If you don’t want it, the cost to simply play the game is the same or better than it was a year ago.
That’s less scammy than almost every store or contractor that I have to interact with.
Edit: I was looking forward to buying this for 1000 gold, but at 1500 I’ll pass. So I’m disappointed by the specifics of the offer as well. But that doesn’t mean I got ripped off. They offered something for sale, I said no, and life goes on.
But what if...you DID have to buy 20 Witchwood packs to get this skin? Wouldn’t that be wonderfully annoying?
Diamond cards feel weird to me, and part of the reason is that there are two per set. One of them is locked behind an expensive achievement that most people can’t even think about getting. The other is part of the battle pass, which is the no-brainer purchase you should get if you plan to spend any money in the game.
So which is it? Rare and special, or a tchotchke that half the players own? And is it special if so many people have the exact same card?
I’ve said it before: A key aspect of golden cards is that anything can be golden, so so ones you happen to get or choose to craft will be different than the ones I get. It feels like we’re building a collection. A Diamond card feels like we’re checking a box.
Strange. Rokara’s three pictures match the three hero portraits that you get in the battle pass. But the other two heroes in the battle pass only match pictures 1 and 3. Portrait #2 is different for Xyrella and Kurtrus.
I haven’t enjoyed Hearthstone’s single player games, but I’m cautiously optimistic about this. (So much so that I skipped the spoilers in this article.)
In my opinion, Warcraft lore is REALLY boring. I actually get less interested in cards and characters when I learn more about them. (In contrast, I love learning the lore behind Runeterra cards.) But when Hearthstone creates new characters or elevates really minor existing ones, that can be interesting. The League of EVIL and League of Explorers were both a lot of fun. I’m excited to see a year developing 10 new characters.
The most worrying thing is that there’s a class with a worse win rate than Priest. That’s how you know things are unbalanced. The Priest’s core identity is being challenged!
I can’t find the quotes right now, but I’ve heard the designers say that they do plan to add their own champions eventually. I think they just want to start each region with established champions. That makes sense to me - Hearthstone wasn’t making up much lore until it was older than Runeterra is now.
Great balance changes! I agree with everyone who thinks these are coming too infrequently, but I’m very happy with the decisions made here.
The Lab of Legends changes are also great, though I feel like this is just the first of several needed improvements. If nothing else, we really need more variety of enemies. But the mode is still new, so getting any improvements this quickly is a good sign. I look forward to seeing this evolve.
Yes, me too. My minions are surviving damage while I’m a Warrior... even though I’m not a Warrior.
I completed enough quests last night to get me to 10,000 gold. 100 free packs on launch day! (But I accidentally completed 5 Ranked Wins with that last game, so I’m actually close to 102.)
Thanks. I’ve been assuming they had some plan in place - when they announced the system of new “sets” every 6 months and “expansions” every 2 months, they even said they this terminology would be important for future changes in the game. That sounded like they had something concrete in mind at the time. I can’t tell where they actually are now in these plans.
Thank you for putting this article together. It’s great!
I’m very concerned about the how the game will work with (or without) rotations. I agree that it’s a tricky issue, and any option will have pros and cons. Specific regions and champions mean so much to players that it’s hard to take them out, and because the regions are not evenly distributed over expansions, a typical rotation would feel very unbalanced.
On the other hand, the number of powerful potential combinations keeps rising, and I don’t think it’s sustainable to keep growing the pool of cards without taking some out.
I’m open to creative solutions for this, but if the team doesn’t even have a plan yet then I’m worried that the game is heading toward a bad place in a year or two.
This makes perfect sense. Despite their bad reputation, Paladin cards have always been very strong for their cost. The problem is that you can’t build a strategy around “cards that are strong for 1 mana”. Even the most aggro decks rely on 2-, 3-, and 4-drops so that they don’t burn out right away.
Shadowjeweler Hanar showed how strong Paladin Secrets can be. With continuous card generation, the 1-drops were generally the most popular Secrets. It’s situational, of course, but 3 Paladin Secrets are usually better than 1 Mage Secret.
So this archetype CAN work. But Paladin needs strong card draw/generation in order to focus on Secrets. This set MAY finally be finding the right approach.