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Seasonal Rebirth Reminder, Helltooth Pet Speed T10 WD
Standard Play Clarifications, Summons & Tribe Synergy in Standard, Important Cards Being Removed
New Rank 1 Matchmaking Rule, Th30xygen's Videos - Promane
Watch the Legion Dungeon Race Live This Tuesday!

No More Old Hearthstone Packs?

Yesterday's announcement about play mode being branched off into Standard and Wild took the community by storm. There have been countless threads discussing the good and bad sides of the new formats.

One important question among the pack is Why is Blizzard removing the ability to purchase old adventures and card packs? Removing these has a couple of very obvious issues.

• Hearthstone's little amount of PvE content is being siphoned out of the game.
• You'll no longer to obtain adventure-specific card backs from Heroic difficulty if you never owned the removed adventure.
• It becomes very expensive to complete a full collection, which is important for players of the Wild format.

Curse of Naxxramas / Adventures Removed

In the first iteration of Standard, we see the Curse of Naxxramas adventure removed. New players will not be able to enjoy this set of PvE content once the changes go live which takes away a certain charm-factor Hearthstone has. Does anyone else miss Kel'Thuzad's endless taunts already?

Thankfully, players who have purchased at least one wing of Naxx will retain the rights to purchase the remaining wings and everyone with wings of Naxx will be able to continue to play the adventure. Still, those new players? What happened to the new player experience?

Why not make adventures that are removed from Standard free-to-play for everyone, but if you haven't purchased it you just don't get the cards associated with it? Doesn't seem like a terrible trade-off.

Goblins vs Gnomes / Expansions Removed

Goblins vs Gnomes was the first Hearthstone expansion and it brought 120 new collectible cards to the table. For players of the Wild format that don't own many GvG cards, it's going to be next to impossible to complete an entire collection while retaining your sanity / wallet.

To craft a single common it costs 40 arcane dust, which would require you to disenchant an average pack of cards from any set. Ignoring everything above common, there's 39 cards that need to be crafted, and at two copies a piece that's a total of 3120 arcane dust, or disenchanting 4 legendaries. We don't even want to think about the 21 Legendarys in the set.

Since Wild format isn't going to be the primary format that people care about, why aren't the card packs simply discounted and along with it the disenchant and crafting values of all cards in the set? You could pickup a collection of GvG for quite cheap then and you won't run into the problem of players buying old sets of cards simply to disenchant. Although that does open up the flood gates to mass disenchanting your old cards before they go down in value.

What do YOU Think?

Let us know in the comments how you feel about the ability to purchase old content being removed once Standard arrives, and also, vote in our poll!

There's definitely a better answer, and this one doesn't require a scroll bar.

New Format Blue Responses

To recap the following wall of blue text:

• Standard and Wild are both going to be balanced. The developers care about both.
• It took a lot of discussion and debate to arrive at a course of action that will set Hearthstone on the right course for the future.
• Crafting is good for Wild because it is more likely players will only want a few cards to add to an existing deck.
• The Grand Tournament, Blackrock Mountain, The League of Explorers will all cycle out when the first expansion is released in 2017.
• In response to people very recently buying Naxxramas due to wanting to be competitive:
  • If your friend is serious about competitive gaming, he should be happy with the addition of standard mode. Standard won't force the acquisition of older cards to be competitive.

Quote from Blizzard

You know that Wild mode will not have balance patchs, right? cuz it WACKY WILD!
We will monitor the balance of both Standard and Wild formats once they arrive. We want players to choose the format(s) that fit how they want to play the game and will continue to ensure that all modes of play are an enjoyable experience. (Source)

Hey, while you are here. Can you answer why they chose not to tell their players about this new format till now? With all the UI work needed for it, must have been in the works for a very long time.
Sure. The devs knew that this was a vital, but pretty huge step to take. It took a lot of discussion and debate to arrive at a course of action that will set Hearthstone on the right course for the future.

It wasn't fully fleshed out enough to reasonably reveal until now, and experience teaches that it's not very useful to talk about things that might change in potentially dramatic ways in their final implementation. When you talk about a complicated feature before it's firm enough to provide any reasonable detail about, it can end up leading to a lot of unnecessary frustration.

We do appreciate your feedback, and we know this is all a lot to absorb. Formats are still a decent amount of time out and I'm pretty sure that we're all still processing what it means. Still, I suspect that the reality of how it will actually feel to play in formats will be less dramatic than it seems when looking at it from here. (Source)

The only issue im seeing is that because of standard balance, they will have to nerf some staple basic and classic cards, rendering them unplayable in wild (effectively removing them from the game)
That's a realistic concern, and I think we can agree that it's not ideal. It’s part of why we don’t like changing cards and try to avoid it at all. Nonetheless, just as with any other card change, different cards will generally fill the gaps and the new paradigm sets in. (Source)

This is very important. I can't play Wild Mode properly because there's no packs to buy for it. How the hell are we supposed to have any competition in a mode that is completely locked out from the shop?
There's the obvious response that you can craft cards that you need, and it's fairly likely that you won't have to craft the entirety of a deck to play in Wild. It's more likely that players will just want a few cards to add to an existing deck. And yes, this makes the cards you’ve already collected and the decks you’ve assembled more valuable in Wild, precisely because of the reasons you’ve mentioned.

As time goes on, new decks will be added to the Wild meta as the card pool grows. It's also worth mentioning that Standard decks can queue straight into Wild, so that will happen too. It'll be an interesting environment. (Source)

Notice me sempai D:
Keeping the classic, gvg, and tgt packs in the store is also more possible revenue. Especially since my gf and her sis just graduated college (bachelors, masters). I also like to spoil them :x I bought most of their adventures
Just for clarity, only the Naxxramas adventure and Goblins vs Gnomes packs are leaving the shop when formats arrive. If you already own the first wing of Naxx, you'll be able to unlock the remaining wings with in-game gold at your own pace, too.

Classic will always be part of Standard format, so those packs will always be available.

The Grand Tournament, along with Blackrock Mountain and League of Explorers won't cycle out of Standard format until the first new expansion is released in 2017. (Source)

Me: No seriously man I think you should get into HS. The game has done nothing but grow, its got a great future in competitive gaming
Him: ahhhhhhhh ok lets do it. (buys naxx / BRM / LoE)
Me: ....
Him: ....................................................................
He isn't much of a forum poster so instead he is standing behind me being angry. Angry doesn't even begin to explain the feels.

If your friend is serious about competitive gaming, he should be happy with the addition of standard mode.

Standard won't force the acquisition of older cards to be competitive. Creative and innovative deck-builders will have a chance to shine in a meta that changes more often.

Ranked Play skill can still be tested through Wild Ranked Play. New cards added with each content release will shake up Wild as well as Standard, but the barrier of entry will be a bit lower with Standard.

His collection is still very much valid. Unless he is actively shooting for HCT points where Standard will be dominant, both modes will prove to be challenging and competitive. - Zeriyah (Source)

Red Bull Team Brawl Roster Change

With Firebat recently leaving Team Archon, Red Bull has announced there's been a roster swap!

• Team Archon will now be playing with Amnesiac over the recently parted Firebat.
• Tempo Storm will now be playing with Firebat, replacing Reynad.

Holding Hands - Card Design Voting

Our fourth card design competition of season 3 is now in the voting phase! Help us determine a winner by heading on over to the voting thread to check out all the finalists and vote for your favourites! The winner will be getting a sweet forum avatar border and will be featured on the front page tomorrow! Good luck finalists!

Stay tuned for a lovely announcement tomorrow regarding our card design competition. You won't want to miss it.

Innkeeper Alpha Testing

We've got a large update coming to Innkeeper soon and we're looking for some testers for a private build of our Hearthstone companion app. This build is PC only (like Innkeeper at the moment), and in order to test we require that you:

• Already use the current version of Innkeeper,
• Will report bugs to us,
• Be willing to jump in Skype for text chat,
• Help us debug issues you might encounter.

Interested in helping us test? Click here or the banner below to reply to our thread to let us know of your interest. We won't be able to choose everyone, but do thank you for your desire to help!

Overwatch Beta Returns February 9th

The Overwatch team announced the beta will be returning on February 9th. Check out our friends over at OverPwn for all the details!