Hearthstone Live Q&A Recap - Nine New Arena Cards, Player Stats, Random Card Backs, Dungeon Runs
The BlizzCon 2017 Live Q&A has now concluded. Below you will find our recap which includes summarized answers from the Q&A portion of the panel and the nine new cards being added to the arena for a limited time. Be sure to join us on the forums to talk about the new arena cards. We've also got screenshots of the panel if that's your thing!
Present during this panel were Hearthstone's Ben Brode, Mike Donais, Peter Whalen ,and Yong Woo.
Quote from HearthPwnArena Cards
- The Dev Team has 27 cards for us to look at and vote on for inclusion in the arena.
- There are 3 cards per class with 1 card per class being added to the arena.
- The arena event will be a temporary thing, not permanent.
- The cards are not collectible.
Player Stats
- Doing player stats is something they want to do and recently they've been building infrastructure for it.
Druids
- They definitely want to add another Druid hero to the game.
- Finding the right hero to contrast with Malfurion is important. They liked how Nemsy was very different than Gul'dan.
- Druid and Ultimate Infestation are being watched. Statistically speaking though it's not a huge swing card, it just feels that way emotionally.
Random Card Backs
- They've been talking about card back randomization.
- The card back has been painted for the option, they just need to write the code.
Dungeon Runs
- Dungeon Runs should be fun for a long time due to all the different permutations available.
- They should learn a lot from Dungeon runs in how players consume that type of content.
- They've considered releasing more bosses to runs mid-expansion, but nothing concrete yet.
- They don't want to force people to play Dungeon Runs so there aren't any rewards.
- The only reward for Dungeon Runs is the card back for defeating the run with all 9 classes.
Fireside Gatherings
- Fireside Gatherings could be used to build a different type of drafting for arena.
- The Lich King event at Gamescom and Fireside Gatherings was really popular. They will definitely do similar stuff in the future.
Misc
- Morgl may be 10001 years old.
- They may rotate more cards to the Hall of Fame during the next Standard year. No announcements yet.
- Titan's Grip is Mike's favourite card that wasn't added to the game. He won't tell us what it does.
- In World of Warcraft, Titan's Grip allows a Warrior to dual-wield weapons.
- Peter keeps successfully denying the card in each set.
- Destroy a 4 attack minion is Ben's favourite Priest fantasy.
- They would like to add a replay feature at some point.
Winning Arena Cards
These cards will be added to the arena in a future patch. We've got a dedicated discussion thread up on our Arena Forums.
Panel Screenshots
Expansion Guide
Our expansion guide is up and running for Kobolds and Catacombs!
Get More out of BlizzCon and HearthPwn
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One thing I really don't get about dungeon runs is that the whole expansion is themed around exploring dungeons and finding loot, but then there's no loot. Or is the idea that the cards and stuff you find along the way for the run is the loot... does that mean, thematically speaking, that we never get out of there alive with the loot? Every dungeon run the adventurer is doomed to fail :'(
Couldn't agree more. Actually made a forum thread on that topic !
http://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/general-discussion/206199-making-dungeon-run-worthwile-playing?page=2#c37
I was really excited to hear about solid single player content. But for all that time invested searching for treasure in a dungeon and you literally get no loot? That seems a bit backwards. I'll play through just to get the card back but it'll sit there unpayed after that.
Boon of Elune, the next card everyone will complain about.
Priest and warlock cards suck
We'll see how quickly Brode and the team change their tune on the Dungeon Run reward structure when they notice that ~10% of players are playing it after launch. If players have literally no incentive at all to play a mode they won't. How often have the players replayed Adventure content after obtaining all it's rewards? The thing is, Team 5 was making it sound like they really want dungeon runs to be a seperate mode that they'll continually update, hell it even sounded like they wanted it to replace Adventure content for expansions. If there is no reward structure at all they're gonna learn pretty quickly that's just not gonna fly, because Hearthstone players are always gonna be forced to work on grinding out cards for their collection.
I'm fine with them not giving rewards, it's a free thing after all.
But what I absolutely can not understand is how they keep throwing out these completely bullshit arguments over and over again and expect that we won't be able to see through them.
What's the deal with "forcing"? Blizzard, shouldn't we have options for earning gold and dust?
I sure hope we can at least do our quests in Dungeon Runs. If not, then it literally feels like Blizz doesn't even encourage us to play it for more than a cardback.
Blizzcon audience really hates Priest and Warlock apparently.
there's a key difference between incentivizing and forcing. This is just a BS explanation as to why they don't want to hurt their pockets by having us continue to buy packs.
Completely agreed.
Are you even slightly surprised, though?
Completely agreed ! even made a thread on that particular topic :
http://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/general-discussion/206199-making-dungeon-run-worthwile-playing?page=2#c37
What a shitty community this is if people are crying for not getting rewards in a completely free, new, single player mode.