Mike Donais and Peter Whalen Talk About Designing Un'Goro Legendaries
IGN's Cam Shea had a chance to sit down with Mike Donais and Peter Whalen and they talked about how the designs came to be for some of Un'Goro's legendary cards.
Lyra the Sunshard
- Lyra the Sunshard came into being when they decided Priest needed to be "one of those trickier classes".
- Lyra was a 4 mana 3/5 initially, but proved to be too good in play-testing.
Sherazin, Corpse Flower
- Sherazin, Corpse Flower changed quite a bit during dev. Lower cost at one point, another time more stats, different numbers of cards required for the effect.
- At one point Sherazin required 3 cards and it was increased to 4 so you might have to build a deck around him.
- They're happy Sherazin ended up working out as playable and not just crazy.
- They didn't know how it would actually work from a UI perspective. One idea was to have the seed sit near your Hero Power.
Elise the Trailblazer
- Elise the Trailblazer had a lot of design iteration. One version of her saw "Discover a Quest".
- Once the Quest was discovered, you'd also get a package of helper cards in your deck to help complete it.
- The effect made Quests overall feel "less cool".
- Elise's Un'Goro Pack was originally destined for the Priest Quest Reward but it didn't feel good enough.
Hemet, Jungle Hunter
- Hemet, Jungle Hunter required a lot of play-testing in many different decks to see if he was reasonable.
- Hemet's effect surprisingly never changed, 3 was the perfect number.
Curious Glimmerroot
- Curious Glimmerroot was originally an idea for a Rogue legendary but ended up going to Priest as an epic. "It made more sense in Priest".
Shadow Visions
- Shadow Visions was originally 1 mana.
Priest Quests
- At one point, the Priest Quest was 'Start your turn with no cards in your hand. Reward: Un'Goro Pack'.
- Later on, they changed the reward to draw 5 cards instead, but that wasn't cool enough for quests.
Excited Lookout
- One of the removed cards from the expansion was Excited Lookout.
- It was a 2 mana card which shuffled the highest mana card in your hand back into your deck in order to draw a card.
- The card never made it to live because they were worried about the interaction between Hemet, Holy Wrath, and Molten Giant.
- It was removed around week 2 in the final design process.
Ungoro has done a good job compared to other recent releases with a lot more variety on ladder than normal hope this mixed ladder continues to develop with the next expansion introduction!
meta is just too much of "add", "discover" and now "adapt" Bull*hit!!! Blizzzard overused of League o Explorers idea!! make the game less strategic!!
although i dont rly know about league of explorers i agree. The ladder (especially constructed) is such a pure RNG bullshit with all those mages and rogues.
Ive again stopped playing cause every game i lose is because of swashburglar, cabalist tome and babbling book. I cant get over this bullshit.
Elise the Trailblazer with "Discover a Quest" would have been great!
no sir, it would suck big time, happy their changed their mind. elise is super awesome.
Maybe Excited Lookout could have just been a Druid card. Works kinda well with ramp idea of not wanting your huge minions too early. Plus, Druid needs draw, and it wouldn't interact with Holy Wrath this way.
I imagine they had all Druid cards designed by this point and no space for it in any non-Paladin class, but it does seem like a cool card, I'd like to see it come back maybe in Druid or Hunter, to help with a control deck possibility for Hunter.
They clearly had room for some good Druid cards, as the ones they included mostly suck. They were obviously trying to enable the quest but failed epically. Five of the ten Druid cards were designed to aide the quest, and none see play. Neither does the quest itself, or Tyrantus, which was supposed to be part of the "reward" for completing it. Of the three other cards, two see play (Earthen Scales and Living Mana), and the other does not (Evolving Spores). Hunter is pretty much in the same boat, with only two playable cards and a sucky quest. However, I can envision the Hunter quest becoming good with the right support cards - a couple more solid one drops or cards that generate/draw/recycle them could make the quest playable, and the reward can be explosive. In contrast, I don't see how the Druid quest will ever be salvaged. There just isn't much room to create good 5-attack minions that can be played before five mana, implying that the Druid quest is unlikely to ever be consistently completeable until turn ten or later. It's slowness, combined with its slow reward that requires the right draws and cards in hand to take advantage of, renders it pretty much unplayable. Plus the reward can be Dirty Ratted, which sucks.
Still no comments regarding the lack in number of free packs for helping players actually get the cards they designed. What's the point of balancing or designing new cards if no one can even acquire them anyway???
"Then we played that a bunch and it turns out just opening a pack isn’t that great in the context of a game – you were getting so many commons and lower rarity cards that it just wasn’t that interesting within the context of a game"
IKR?
When I first saw Lyra I thought she would be useless and just an overpriced Fandral. But the card ended up playing Auctioneer and drawing tons of spells.
And recently, Ostkaka got rank 1 legend with purify priest, and the China vs EU winner Xhope won with control priest.
Lyra would have been scary at 4 mana and forums would beg for a nerf. Remember when Auctioneer was 5 mana? Dark times.
The Druid quest is worse. I haven't seen it outside the tavern brawl since the first week. I've never seen Barnabus hit the board outside the brawl. I've at least seen the Warlock quest a few times in the last month, and even lost to it a couple times.
OP Priest Legendary? In your dreams.
TBH Lyra at 4 mana wouldn't be any better than what Fandral Staghelm currently is (MidRange auto-include). Depends on class, but still, Blizzard, get real.
Right now, Lyra and Fandral are both super good. If Lyra cost 1 less mana, it would be overpowered. I don't know what are you talking about.
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
I liked the idea of that original Elise, being able to do a quest in the middle of the game.
Changing Curious Glimmerroot from a Legendary to a Priest Epic was also a great change. The card is so enjoyable to use and it's a good 3 drop for Priests.
And I'm ESPECIALLY GLAD that Shadow Visions was changed to 2 mana. The exploit would've been even more cancer if it was 1 mana, as it would've been easier to pull off.
How does Glimmerroot make sense in Priest? Rogue would be a better class flavor wise imo
Assumedly the draw phase is after the start of your turn.