Second time I'm trying to make this. I accidentally hit a macro that went back a page...after writing ~5 paragraphs. Not happy.
So, I figured I'd give my views on the censored art situation. And then probably never use this site again since this pushed me over the edge and made me uninstall.
The worst of which (aside from muh waifus) are, in my opinon, Eviscerate, which now looks like the undead is recoiling in shock at the Rogue's yelling. And Headcrack, which looks more like a Magic the Gathering card than a Hearthstone card, not to give the new art smack, I think it's really comical and funny...but the old art is so, so much better.
I'd like to start by clarifying, this isn't because of social justice warrior libtards or third-wave feminists. This censorship was done to appeal to the People's Republic of China and Communist Party of China's censorship laws. China is a country known for their censorship, and I'm not going to tell a government how to run their country. Save the anti-communist shilling for later, plenty of countries have weird censorship laws. My country of Australia has banned plenty of games although that has decreased following the R18+ rating's introduction (it's the sole reason We Happy Few got released here), Germany removes/removed (I'm not sure if they still do) swastikas and references to Hitler from their games, Saudi Arabia banned the Pokémon trading card game because the normal energy symbol looked like the Star of David (and if there's one thing the Saudi government doesn't like, it's Jewish symbolism...and Judaism, and Israel, and Jews). This isn't something synonymous with "Chinese tyranny", it is how the Hearthstone team handled it that makes it really bad. Censorship is bad, I get it. But unless you want to go to Xi Jinping and get yourself arrested, there isn't much you can do.
This is not a new thing for Blizzard games. World of Warcraft is also famously censored in China to remove skeletons, bones, skulls. The Forsaken's model is censored, etc. The difference is, World of Warcraft's Chinese censorship extends only to Chinese servers. My Forsaken isn't censored in my Australian servers (Well...if I ever played Forsaken). That's their culture and their laws, and sure, they can do them. Hearthstone has decided to institute this to every server instead of just Chinese ones. That is why it really sucks.
I'd like to point your attention towards the censorship policy of another huge company, one notorious for their censorship, and one I never thought I'd be praising. Konami and it's Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise (which, by the way, is far better than Hearthstone...provided you don't play Salamangreats). Yu-Gi-Oh! cards (and the anime, but that's a far different story and infinitely more complex) are censored outside of the OCG.
To give an explanation, Yu-Gi-Oh! is divided into two regions, the OCG, which covers Japan, Hong Kong (though they haven't had new releases since 2016), South Korea (I'll explain it later), Malaysia, and some other places. And the TCG, which is everywhere else.
The OCG receives the uncensored card art, except for South Korea, which uses the censored TCG art and also receives TCG products and even some unique Korean exclusive cards (The Entity series were Korean exclusive at first), likely due to the...really bad Korean-Japanese relations and South Korean laws on Japanese products. It's a complicated mess, but South Korea is basically a fusion of the OCG and TCG.
The TCG receives the censored art, which no one in the TCG likes! Except for Monster Reborn, which was so popular and well liked the Japanese players begged for a Japanese release with the censored TCG art.
This also extends to Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links, where unless you use the Japanese mobile version (which if you're outside of Japan, requires a proxy and a GPS faker...and you have to be able to read Japanese because you can't change the text without removing the art) or an art patch on Steam, you'll get the censored TCG art.
When I'm praising Yu-Gi-Oh! and Konami for their superior censorship, you know something is wrong.
To conclude, Hearthstone should have followed the likes of World of Warcraft and Konami to cater to Chinese laws. But they didn't, they decided to ruin waifus for everyone. There are many possible reasons, it could have been too hard, or they could just be lazy. It sucks, and it's the straw that broke the camel's back for me. This will not be the final wave of censorship.
One final thing, please refrain from the racism. This is a strictly governmental/business problem, I'm sure the average Chinese citizen doesn't give half a flying shit about this law. It's not their fault this happened.
Anyway, I'm probably going to never use this site again since I'm not playing Hearthstone anymore. So go ahead and flame me if I said something dumb, I'll never see it! Bye everybody!
Second time I'm trying to make this. I accidentally hit a macro that went back a page...after writing ~5 paragraphs. Not happy.
So, I figured I'd give my views on the censored art situation. And then probably never use this site again since this pushed me over the edge and made me uninstall.
For context. Hearthstone has done their second round of censorship (the first round covered up Jaina's cleavage). The following cards were hit by it: Succubus (now Felstalker), Mistress of Pain (now Queen of Pain), Eviscerate, Secretkeeper, Windfury Harpy, Bite, Deadly Shot and Headcrack.
The worst of which (aside from muh waifus) are, in my opinon, Eviscerate, which now looks like the undead is recoiling in shock at the Rogue's yelling. And Headcrack, which looks more like a Magic the Gathering card than a Hearthstone card, not to give the new art smack, I think it's really comical and funny...but the old art is so, so much better.
I'd like to start by clarifying, this isn't because of social justice warrior libtards or third-wave feminists. This censorship was done to appeal to the People's Republic of China and Communist Party of China's censorship laws. China is a country known for their censorship, and I'm not going to tell a government how to run their country. Save the anti-communist shilling for later, plenty of countries have weird censorship laws. My country of Australia has banned plenty of games although that has decreased following the R18+ rating's introduction (it's the sole reason We Happy Few got released here), Germany removes/removed (I'm not sure if they still do) swastikas and references to Hitler from their games, Saudi Arabia banned the Pokémon trading card game because the normal energy symbol looked like the Star of David (and if there's one thing the Saudi government doesn't like, it's Jewish symbolism...and Judaism, and Israel, and Jews). This isn't something synonymous with "Chinese tyranny", it is how the Hearthstone team handled it that makes it really bad. Censorship is bad, I get it. But unless you want to go to Xi Jinping and get yourself arrested, there isn't much you can do.
This is not a new thing for Blizzard games. World of Warcraft is also famously censored in China to remove skeletons, bones, skulls. The Forsaken's model is censored, etc. The difference is, World of Warcraft's Chinese censorship extends only to Chinese servers. My Forsaken isn't censored in my Australian servers (Well...if I ever played Forsaken). That's their culture and their laws, and sure, they can do them. Hearthstone has decided to institute this to every server instead of just Chinese ones. That is why it really sucks.
I'd like to point your attention towards the censorship policy of another huge company, one notorious for their censorship, and one I never thought I'd be praising. Konami and it's Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise (which, by the way, is far better than Hearthstone...provided you don't play Salamangreats). Yu-Gi-Oh! cards (and the anime, but that's a far different story and infinitely more complex) are censored outside of the OCG.
To give an explanation, Yu-Gi-Oh! is divided into two regions, the OCG, which covers Japan, Hong Kong (though they haven't had new releases since 2016), South Korea (I'll explain it later), Malaysia, and some other places. And the TCG, which is everywhere else.
The OCG receives the uncensored card art, except for South Korea, which uses the censored TCG art and also receives TCG products and even some unique Korean exclusive cards (The Entity series were Korean exclusive at first), likely due to the...really bad Korean-Japanese relations and South Korean laws on Japanese products. It's a complicated mess, but South Korea is basically a fusion of the OCG and TCG.
The TCG receives the censored art, which no one in the TCG likes! Except for Monster Reborn, which was so popular and well liked the Japanese players begged for a Japanese release with the censored TCG art.
This also extends to Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links, where unless you use the Japanese mobile version (which if you're outside of Japan, requires a proxy and a GPS faker...and you have to be able to read Japanese because you can't change the text without removing the art) or an art patch on Steam, you'll get the censored TCG art.
When I'm praising Yu-Gi-Oh! and Konami for their superior censorship, you know something is wrong.
To conclude, Hearthstone should have followed the likes of World of Warcraft and Konami to cater to Chinese laws. But they didn't, they decided to ruin waifus for everyone. There are many possible reasons, it could have been too hard, or they could just be lazy. It sucks, and it's the straw that broke the camel's back for me. This will not be the final wave of censorship.
One final thing, please refrain from the racism. This is a strictly governmental/business problem, I'm sure the average Chinese citizen doesn't give half a flying shit about this law. It's not their fault this happened.
Anyway, I'm probably going to never use this site again since I'm not playing Hearthstone anymore. So go ahead and flame me if I said something dumb, I'll never see it! Bye everybody!
(V) (;,,;) (V)
Since you have stated yourself that you will not see any replies to this thread and therefore have no intention of furthering the conversation, it seems like this thread is somewhat defunct - any posts from others would be pointless if the OP is unwilling to engage in conversation.
There is also alread a thread devoted to discussing the art changes that can be joined here:
https://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/general-discussion/235022-exclusive-new-nerfs-eviscerate-secretkeetper-bite
So, thank you for your thoughts and we wish you well.
Locked.