Hearthpwn

Quote from TummyTime >>

I see everyone rushing to defend Blizzard - good for the game, you don't own pixels, using "limiting design space" to add pretend expertise to their posts etc. What people miss however, are some very concerning facts:

Removing content from the store is a pure greed move, especially for adventures. An adventure costs 3500 f2p gold = 35 packs. With the new "blessing" of being able to disenchant/craft adventure cards, the cost of fully creating Naxx is 15040 dust, or 150 packs. Essentially Blizzard increased the cost of old adventures five times, while also removing PvE content, interesting boss fights etc. and they get praise for that!

Making Standard the official format is important not because everyone is rushing for Top 100 Legend, but because it concerns people in long term perspective. When Standard hits, there will be a lot of cards nerfed, because the severely limited card pool will favour some classes over others - Druid being the prime example of not concerned, while Priest is destroyed back to T3. However in Wild Priest still has his full arsenal, while Druid gets much weaker, or depending on the new expansion - unplayable. 

I don't see myself playing Hearthstone long term, or at least not uninterrupted. That is probably true for most. The new players wouldn't even stand a chance in Wild, and old players would quit HS because of IRL reasons. And if they would return after a long break, they would find themselves having nobody to play against in Wild, and having no adequate collection to run Standard. 

Quote from moloch519 >>

Quote from caketality >>

In regards to golden crafted cards, golden crafted adventure cards are basically the epitome of what golden cards are; cosmetic upgrades to cards we would like shiny versions of. Blizzard has never forced our hand on crafting them, nor have I ever seen any comments from them that would ever have indicated that all cards were going to be used in all game modes forever; if there's a blue post out there that specifically says something along those lines then obviously I'll eat crow on that, but the most I can recall was when they said that they were aware the amount of cards available was going to get unwieldy at some point and they would eventually need to implement a solution. 

 Well nobody ever Forces you to buy anything but does that mean that they can or should do as they wish afterwards without considering the wishes of the customer? It is true that they never promised eternal availability for all Cards but they did not say anything to the contrary either.

Maybe I am just speaking for myself but when I am buying something and nobody specificly Limits the usefull lifetime of that item or specifies future limitations, I will assume that there is neither the one or the other. In Hearthstone I accept and anticipate that Card might Change in the future. I have not accepted the possibilty though that I might not be able to use the Card anymore.

Even if they loose some Money I think it would be a very fair move of them to offer some sort of dust refund, since a lot of Cards were bought in the past under the Impression that they were there to stay in the available modes. In the future, when everyone is Aware of the new constraints and makes informed purchase decisions, this arguement will become invalid and therefore no refunds will be necessary.

Quote from TheDraconicLord >>

@Caketality - Thank you, yours has been one of the best posts in all this thread. It sums up my thoughts perfectly. 

The thing is, we are keeping the cards and will be able to use them in other modes: Wild, casual games with friends, and they are still worth the same amount of dust as they always have. 

Maybe my opinion is biased because I have played MtG for many years, among other TCGs I tried (many of which are already dead), but what they said they doing sounds reasonable, and more important, exciting and good for the game.

EXCEPT, the whole removal from the store thing (is this really happening for GvG? I only remember this info concerning adventures). Why? Because Naxx is really fun and all players should listen to Kel'Thuzad's lines :) 

So I'll be upfront and admit, I did not read all 30 pages so maybe this wasn't the gist of the thread (I'm basing my perception of the thread on the OP and the last few pages); but I can't say I see a lot of reason for Blizzard to offer full refunds, even from a non-monetary perspective.

In regards to golden crafted cards, golden crafted adventure cards are basically the epitome of what golden cards are; cosmetic upgrades to cards we would like shiny versions of. Blizzard has never forced our hand on crafting them, nor have I ever seen any comments from them that would ever have indicated that all cards were going to be used in all game modes forever; if there's a blue post out there that specifically says something along those lines then obviously I'll eat crow on that, but the most I can recall was when they said that they were aware the amount of cards available was going to get unwieldy at some point and they would eventually need to implement a solution. 

In regards to the implementation of Standard/Wild, there was honestly never going to be a best time for them to announce it; announcing it a couple of months ahead of time when we're still technically playing Standard seems like a good enough time to me, and I could see how it's something they wanted to give people time to digest. Removing entire swaths of content, even if it's two years old, is a big deal. As far as Wild not being "competitive", how many people complaining about this are actually vying for top 100 Legend? I think it was pointed out as a logical fallacy to bring that up as an argument, but that was what you would have needed to do to be able to get into the Winter Preliminaries (I saw a Top 50 finish was required, but Top 100 was the most lenient). Anything before that - in both formats - you have a ladder where you compete, and where you can hit legend. Short of Top 100 you weren't getting any HWC points, so short of Top 100 the benefits of competing in both is exactly the same; and if you're competing at that level in a TCG/CCG, you should already be aware that working within the confines of a format is something you just have to do.

And in reference to what I'm seeing on wanting refunds for reasons like "this is the first time they've done this, it would be fair", the cards being rotated out of Standard are still completely usable in basically every other format. They're not deleting them, and they're not changing them (obviously cards that get changed get hit with the dusting policy anyway); whatever you invested in is still legitimately going to be playable, even if you don't like the format. I've played a lot of cards games, and when you buy a pack of cards you're not guaranteed the game is even going to survive let alone that your cards are going to be tournament-legal forever. The onus is really not on Blizzard to give us full value back on something that's been out for a long time and that we've gotten a ton of use out of.

There are some things I'd like to see of course; Wild rank being able to be toggled on (if you're big on playing Wild it would just be nice to show where you're sinking your time), Classic/Basic sets being suitably overhauled to function as the core sets they want them to be, balancing in Standard being brought up to something less glacial while also keeping an eye on Wild if at all possible. But I'm in the camp that thinks this is overall a perfectly fine implementation that at most needs some tweaks, and that for those of us who have spent hundreds on sets getting deprecated from Standard that we've certainly gotten our money's worth.

I've been giving this one some thought as well since Dragon Priest has been one of those decks that I've tinkered with on and off after BRM came out, and while I think it has a lot of potential to be strong (the TGT dragons pretty much shored up all of the holes BRM left) we are losing a few of the tools I personally think have been very strong in the deck (Dark Cultist, Shrinkmeister, Velen's Chosen, Vol'jin, and Lightbomb). Granted, any and all theory crafting needs to be tempered with the fact that when we lose existing cards we'll be gaining an expansion-sized chunk of cards which may give us even more tools. :)

Honestly Dark Cultist is going to be perfectly fine to replace with Technician, and Lightbomb was already awkward in a board-centric deck; however Shrinkmeister is 2 drop that doesn't hurt to drop for tempo while being a swiss army knife, Velen's Chosen has been a a card that's provided a ton of value for proactive Priest plays, and Vol'jin is generally a solid tempo swing in a deck that wants to play the board. Your experiences and preferences may be different, but those are my main concerns and the slots I've been evaluating. Curator (I think that's what you mean by Archivist) is a low-tempo 2-drop so it makes me nervous to play it in place of Shrinkmeisters, but it's a strong card and being able to choose a minion that's good for the matchup may just make it all worth the tempo loss.

Technicians for Cultists is an easy transition, and I think Brann could be a solid replacement for one of the copies of Velen's Chosen; maybe it's worth playing with something like Shadowfiend in the place of the second Velen's? Lightbane/Darkbane would be good for pure statelines, but we'd be swapping her in for 2 of our buffs, which means that you're relying on Power Word: Shield for your sole means of getting value out of her.

Honestly Excavated Evil sounds like a poor replacement for Lightbomb since it damages our board as well as giving them a chance to further damage our board after they draw the card, one of the reasons I don't like playing the card currently even in a Control Priest list; without boards being as sticky though we might see Holy Nova being as much as we need with the fact Dragon Priest is going to have absurdly statted minions. We might get another board clear, but I think at the point you need another one Chillmaw may move up in importance for being able to clear boards in the least destructive way possible. We also still have Sylvanas which can make for awkward board trades.

I'm personally on the plan to wait and see what the new set brings, if they add more Dragons for instance then we may see an even bigger shift in the list and those will all need testing and evaluating. On a side note, what makes you concerned for Ysera? I think out of the cards they're looking at she hasn't come up very often as one people think will see a nerf (she's powerful but not a staple in a lot of decks nowadays, which I think is their main drive for adjusting cards in the basic/classic set; to eliminate a lot of auto-include cards like Druid Combo, Leper Gnome in aggro, etc.).

Could I get my username changed to Tze please? I'm another one of those people that created an account that didn't match their battletag and it's always bothered me :P

I was searching around for a solid Priest list and this one is great; one thing I noticed on your stream though is that at one point you were running an Acolyte (I'm guessing in place of a Cultist), would you say that was better or worse for climbing at the lower ranks where aggro decks are more rampant? 

Also, just wanted to say I love your stream! If anyone wants a good priest resource, that's definitely one I will recommend.