In a surprise turn at the start of the new year, Blizzard announces that the Duels game mode will be removed from the client in April. Read on for the details!
Quote from BlizzardAs we think about the future of Hearthstone and where the team can best focus their efforts, we’ve made the difficult decision to discontinue support for the Duels Mode. We do not have plans for any further scheduled updates for Duels, and the Mode itself is scheduled to be removed from the Hearthstone client in April 2024.
This change will allow us to shift our resources to where we feel they will have the most impact, including Traditional Hearthstone, Battlegrounds, and more. To that end, Battlegrounds Duos is scheduled for an upcoming Battlegrounds patch, and we’re trying out some Duels Treasures in our next Arena season—more details soon.
We want to thank all our passionate Duels fans for every pile of loot, treasure, and hard-fought victory you’ve collected along the way. It’s been a heroic run, and we couldn’t have done it without you.
Blizzard Comments
duels requires a LOT of maintenance - it's not a sealed pool. we release new cards all the time that impact the balance of the mode, make new buckets, and have to change interactions between old treasures and new cards. mercs is static.
— Ridiculous Hat (@RidiculousHat) January 4, 2024
A real shame that they couldn't just freeze the card pool and leave it as a minor game mode...
This is so sad. I know it was, with good luck and dedication, a free-pack mode with a strong net-decking component, but it was such a distraction from the traditional Hearthstone sometimes, still with the deck-building part of it. Despite my disappointment, I wouldn't mind too much about this changes (or at least, I would accept them) if they will actually add more variety to Hearthstone traditional mode. Consistent archetypes, the faculty to actually choose your hero power while creating a deck, more dual-class cards, something that could revive the concept of creating a deck, and Twist mode didn't actually spark that fire on me... I really hope they're taking this seriously, as they knew that Duels was MORE fun than Mercenaries, and actually played by a part of the community.
Just straight up deleting a game that a good amount of people must have spent tens if not hundreds of dollars on even though you're a billion dollar company with plenty of resources to keep it running. This shit would have been un-imaginable 20 years ago.
I can't believe they did that. Duels is the only mode that I play for pure fun. I craft cards and buy legendary bundles mostly because I wanna try more duels classes/decks. TBH for ladder I spend less, usually one or two deck can get me to at least diamond 5 every season.
This is the first blue post of the new year? Inauspicious.
I have not played duels for a while, but I don't understand the need to remove it. They could just stop maintaining it if they don't want to put time into it, maybe warn players that this mode is not maintained with a popup.
Me: Just wanted to pop in and say "Casual Duel" is fun to play and free too
blizzard: Don't steal BG players, we will remove that mode soon
It makes sense to me that BG is probably the main reason the game is alive because most people buy the battle pass
good for them, if they cant keep maintaining balance and no more fresh content for duels, might as well delete the mode since they are always sucks for anything anyway
Kind of disheartening that "the future of Hearthstone" has repeatedly been the preamble for layoffs, discontinuing modes, cutting content and making the game even more of the same.
"Traditional Hearthstone, Battlegrounds, and more" - not even feeling like mentioning Twist (or is that traditional?), or Tavern Brawl, or Arena, or solo content. Frankly, is there anything in the "more" besides monetization efforts?
I'm not a Doomsayer. I have no immediate plans to see myself and all my friends (read: an empty board) out unless ActiBlizzSoft plays something awesome that renders me speechless and makes me stick around for another turn. I still enjoy Battlegrounds (when it is enjoyable), I still play Standard every now and then. I still look forward to new expansions. But I start to wonder how much longer the lights stay on; if we are about to see Hearthstone 2, or the servers shutting down within a year or two.
noo my free pack mode
YEEEEEEEESSSSSS
Fuck. This.
I love duels. It’s such a great twist that keeps the game interesting. Meanwhile they want to keep this nonsensical twist mode and classic as available options? Absurd
Duels casual was the only thing I've played for maybe a year and a half.
This one hurts.
Every damn time I like a card or mode it gets nerfed or canceled.
I'm sad duels never took off, it was a much more satisfying mode than standard IMHO.
I can't imagine it takes more than one employee to maintain. I hope they reconsider.
As if they were working on it lmao. They just switch expansions once in a while like arena and change a couple class treasures and that was about it. They coulda just left it untouched for a year and probably 90% of people wouldn't even notice lol
I'm getting pretty bloody sick of this.
I'm more than a ^&*^%& wallet, Blizzard. Loyalty needs to go both ways to be sustainable.
"This change will allow us to shift our resources to where we feel they will have the most impact" This resource is literally one person. The support for duels is just one developer ... It got support or a patch every other other other patch and hasn't had added content for what like a year? Might as well just lay this person off as this isn't any meaningful resource allocation.
Thats rough, ending another mode just like that. I expect Twist is next on the chopping block.
Not a good start of the year for the game.
Good riddance. Remove mercenaries at the same time and call it a day.
Uhm, if you could refrain from posting a full screen's worth of salt, that'd be great. You are pushing other folks to page 2 prematurely with this behavior.
Spend money in this game has no future. Today duels, tomorrow maybe ur virtual cards.