Hearthpwn

Might be a dumb question, I recently came back to the game, im kinda having fun but seeing all the people complain makes me wonder, how long the game has been on a downfall and has it anymore time left?

Without seeing number of active players (only Blizzard know them), it's difficult to say. I have been thinking Hearthstone has a close to impossible entry barrier for new players, since about 2018. But somehow HS has had staying power and will for year.

Now, the big thing is them killing esports by removing open cups a few years ago. That was a major red flag. And now the tournaments are fewer, and you can only qualify for them by no-lifing ladder. So esports is dead.

However, it does seem like there will always be quite a few people playing hearthstone just because it's one of the best multiplayer card games out there. So as long as they think pumping expansions keeps them on a plus, they will probably keep doing it.

Playing since closed beta. I can confirm that there was no year in this game"s history without people complaining.

Every single year people complain and every single year these people log in and play every day. HS is fine. You can clearly tell because there was no campaign over the Christmas period with regard to the shop. 

is this the best year they’ve ever done. No. Is the game boring? Hell no, everything is still fun and all the cards are great. Heck, even the wild meta has seen good times over the last year. 

HS is alive and well. Don’t listen to the likes of Zeddy, Clark etc. their views and numbers are determined by constant negativity. We all need to be more positive and look forward to this year. 

Any game that is losing users instead of growing their base is technically “dying”, so in that sense… probably.  It is almost 11 years old.  But is it completely dead or heading towards death soon?  I don’t think so.  The few places I have been able to find user numbers (which may or may not be reliable figures) the number of DAUs seems to have dropped significantly from the peak, but also has been steady over the last couple years with slight up and down fluctuations, which likely depend on the set/meta.

yes

I assume more people drop this game than those who play it for the first time in the same year. A lot of games drop off. They all do in their own way. If they didnt make a new COD and just keep adding to it you would see those numbers go down. Games usually don't keep consistent numbers. How many of us are playing Donkey Kong daily? Compared to when it came out?

Been on a downfall since 2014

Also they are hiring people on perma contracts for non essential roles, they ran zero revenue increase campaigns over Christmas. Where I work we are doing well for revenue yet we did two and not only did it massively bump up our revenue it also massively boosted average rating. HS is fine guys relax l

Reading the same every year, but yes, this year feels bad for hs. 

Hope Microsoft make hs great again

Quote from HastyKnight >>

Might be a dumb question, I recently came back to the game, im kinda having fun but seeing all the people complain makes me wonder, how long the game has been on a downfall and has it anymore time left?

 In certain spaces, the complaining folks are more prevalent than elsewhere. The general issue with social media is that you can easily end up with a distorted view of what the majority thinks because the local majority might well be a global minority. The more polarized the plattform, the bigger this issue becomes. Never forget that the loudest voices aren't necessarily right. And if online negativity impacts your own enjoyment of the game, stay away from it.

As others said before me, there have always been people complaining, every expansion somehow produces "the worst meta ever". But that's not to say the game is flawless or in its best state either.

As for the question how much longer the game is going to continue: Hard to say. The devs are confident enough to have spoiled the entirety of this year's expansions in advance, and have talked a lot about "the next 10 years". I personally am more skeptical, but for the time being it doesn't seem like the lights are about to go out.

Enjoy the game, hang out with folks who are not permanently miserable, and don't worry too much about the servers shutting down anytime soon.

People who are happy with a game don't often post that it's fine. Those who dislike it do.

They are not the majority, but a vocal minority.

That being said, the game is old and with a lot of competition. People will leave to try something fresh, and even though a lot of those will return, some won't. On top of that, because Acti-Bliz has nuked any chance of having a proper community, it is difficult to approach new people.

All in all, i don't think Hearthstone is dying, but it IS shrinking.

Quote from BlueM00N >>

Playing since closed beta. I can confirm that there was no year in this game"s history without people complaining.

 This is the correct answer. Every single new meta is the "worst meta ever"

if they announce that they're rotating zilliax (and marin, but that's doubtful) early, then the game will be saved when the next year starts. Festival of Legends was a great time and great expac, but when titans and badlands rotate, the game will get PHENOMINALLY BETTER. 

It seems to be dying...

People need to remember there’s a difference between not being as big as it was and dying. People said this about WoW and I’m pretty sure it started mid Cata. Shock horror… 

Not sure where this data comes from, but according to this page, HS has actually grown in the last 3-4 years in terms of monthly active players.  It does mention that all their info is estimated, but not sure how/where they get their estimations.

https://activeplayer.io/hearthstone/

This goes along with my earlier post on this thread.  I've consistently seen around 3-4 mil active monthly users as an estimate for the last several years.  However, this is still down significantly from the average estimates of about 10 mil active users each month back in 2018-2019.  What could have caused the drop around that time?  Well in 2020 we had the messy launch of Demon Hunter, which may have pushed some people away.  But there seemed to be an overall creeping of the power levels around that time after they tried to pull back on power for a few years, a shift in card design to try and make all cards playable instead of some filler cards, there were pro scene changes that annoyed the competitive community at large, and other factors like popular streamers dropping the game, influencing some of their viewers to drop it too.  All these and more (like the game just being old and some people getting bored with it) may have caused a large part of the community to leave.

But again, the "hardcore fans" such as myself seem stuck in for the long haul, and could carry this game another 10 years as long as they work to keep the remaining 4-5 million players happy, and keep getting money off those who buy pre-release bundles and such.