Mike Donais and Peter Whalen Talk About Designing Un'Goro Legendaries
IGN's Cam Shea had a chance to sit down with Mike Donais and Peter Whalen and they talked about how the designs came to be for some of Un'Goro's legendary cards.
Lyra the Sunshard
- Lyra the Sunshard came into being when they decided Priest needed to be "one of those trickier classes".
- Lyra was a 4 mana 3/5 initially, but proved to be too good in play-testing.
Sherazin, Corpse Flower
- Sherazin, Corpse Flower changed quite a bit during dev. Lower cost at one point, another time more stats, different numbers of cards required for the effect.
- At one point Sherazin required 3 cards and it was increased to 4 so you might have to build a deck around him.
- They're happy Sherazin ended up working out as playable and not just crazy.
- They didn't know how it would actually work from a UI perspective. One idea was to have the seed sit near your Hero Power.
Elise the Trailblazer
- Elise the Trailblazer had a lot of design iteration. One version of her saw "Discover a Quest".
- Once the Quest was discovered, you'd also get a package of helper cards in your deck to help complete it.
- The effect made Quests overall feel "less cool".
- Elise's Un'Goro Pack was originally destined for the Priest Quest Reward but it didn't feel good enough.
Hemet, Jungle Hunter
- Hemet, Jungle Hunter required a lot of play-testing in many different decks to see if he was reasonable.
- Hemet's effect surprisingly never changed, 3 was the perfect number.
Curious Glimmerroot
- Curious Glimmerroot was originally an idea for a Rogue legendary but ended up going to Priest as an epic. "It made more sense in Priest".
Shadow Visions
- Shadow Visions was originally 1 mana.
Priest Quests
- At one point, the Priest Quest was 'Start your turn with no cards in your hand. Reward: Un'Goro Pack'.
- Later on, they changed the reward to draw 5 cards instead, but that wasn't cool enough for quests.
Excited Lookout
- One of the removed cards from the expansion was Excited Lookout.
- It was a 2 mana card which shuffled the highest mana card in your hand back into your deck in order to draw a card.
- The card never made it to live because they were worried about the interaction between Hemet, Holy Wrath, and Molten Giant.
- It was removed around week 2 in the final design process.
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Posted May 18, 2017 (Un'Goro Launch)Would love to see feedback on more unsuccessful cards, like the Warlock and druid quests, instead of random cards id like to see a post mortem of their worst cards in the meta and see how they felt the cards would fit in, or help.
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Posted May 16, 2017 (Un'Goro Launch)yeah, question, wtf weer you guys thinking when you designed the druid class legendary
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Posted May 16, 2017 (Un'Goro Launch)one thing.
How the FFFF did the rogue quest pass play-testing???
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Posted May 16, 2017 (Un'Goro Launch)because it's not broken
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Posted May 16, 2017 (Un'Goro Launch)it is broken compare to 8 other quests.
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Posted May 16, 2017 (Un'Goro Launch)is not broken, compare with other quest cards is a bad idea you need compare the quest rogue deck with the other tier decks..
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Posted May 16, 2017 (Un'Goro Launch)It's not a "broken" card it's a poorly designed card because it has polar opposite value based entirely on your starting hand and first card drawn. I personally feels it's an entirely reasonable card but only if effected Rogue cards and not neutral for its effect.
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Posted May 16, 2017 (Un'Goro Launch)the issue is not it being broken. it's how unfun it is to play against.
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Posted May 16, 2017 (Un'Goro Launch)They never talk about them until they're basically finished and ready to launch, because otherwise people badger them endlessly. Blame the toxicity of the community on not getting more speculative, early info on game modes.
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Posted May 16, 2017 (Un'Goro Launch)-
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Posted May 16, 2017 (Un'Goro Launch)Curious Glimmerroot was originally an idea for a Rogue legendary but ended up going to Priest as an epic. "It made more sense in Priest"
this is interesting statement. so rogue legendary is now priests epic, dope :D it makes more sense now
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Posted May 16, 2017 (Un'Goro Launch)It would've had to be a pretty different design to be worth Legendary status.
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Posted May 16, 2017 (Un'Goro Launch)This article seems interesting but more interesting would be to see what the designers have to say about testing cards like patches.At least I believe they are doing some things good but I'm pretty sure that they can do much better than that(and also fix their mistakes on time..)
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Posted May 16, 2017 (Un'Goro Launch)I'm sorry to say...but patches is one of the best designed most healthy, most neccessary cards in the game
Cough cough jade druid cough cough quest rogue cough cough exodia mage
well maybe they overdone it a little bit with the pirates and those weapon buffs but its a great card for early control...even renolock played it sometimes with the weapon remove pirate guy
I actually think that patches is better for druid than for pirates but that might be wrong, let me know what you think! And dont be salty, be serious!
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Posted May 16, 2017 (Un'Goro Launch)Look for me it's not that patches is op right now but when introduced to us in pirate package there wasn't any golakka crawler as a counter to it..At that time sure it was much of a must have card..The reason is that you play any pirate which cost 1 or 2 mana and you gain one more with 1/1 charge in your board,plus it takes one card out of your deck..It's like mad scientist power.You must have it in a deck with secrets cause you earn the possibility of gaining advantage in one turn where your opponent has to deal with a 2/2 minion on board plus an unknown secret at the same turn..So for patches you gain 1 mana,one minion with charge and one less card which favor your next topdeck..(in case you don't have it in your hand).If there was a counter to this play everything would be alright but I was too angry where on turn 2 I had to deal with 3 minions on board where in game actually there are so little removals which cost 2 mana...I hope you understand me..And also I still agree with you for quest rogue and jade druid.Exodia mage though it's not that broken imo cause it needs more strategy than the others you mentioned...
Peace!
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Posted May 17, 2017 (Un'Goro Launch)-
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Posted May 16, 2017 (Un'Goro Launch)I think the decks like Quest rogue, Pirate Warrior... will always exist on Hearthstone! it's what makes the game appealing to casual players and phone players, and from the fact that Blizzard is pushing such types of decks, we can assume the casuals are also bringing big money and must not be neglected! The thing we should worry about as a hardcore hearthstoner is "Is the meta healthy enough to be played or not? Is every deck has a counter to it?
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Posted May 16, 2017 (Un'Goro Launch)I find it sad how Blizzard always gets these massive complaints on how they've done something wrong in testing, but when they actually do something right, nobody talks about it.
Maybe that's just me.
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Posted May 16, 2017 (Un'Goro Launch)You are right, you can seenthis when looking at gadgetzan when they released jades AND patches.
un'goro is a really realy good,fun expansion with so many coll cards
sherazin <3<3<3
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Posted May 16, 2017 (Un'Goro Launch)Kek