Hearthpwn

Top 5 Plays of the Week

GiantKiller of 2pPressStart published a new episode of Hearthstone, Top 5 Plays of the Week. This week's plays come from Ponkie, TheRobb, Teldo, Shirkuh, and Iain. Congratulations guys on some great plays!

Hearthstone Day Q&A Recap

Friday's Google Hangout of the Q&A event was cancelled, but Zeriyah, Eric Dodds, and Jason Chayes switched over to TwitchTV last minute to answer questions from the community. We've got a summary of the chat below, and if you'd like to watch it yourself, it can be found here.

Quote from Blizzard

 Non PC/Mac Releases

• The iPad client is very close to launching, most likely within the next few weeks.
• Phone versions of the game are in very early stages. Release targeted for the second half of this year for phones.
• Your account will be the same across all devices. Same collection, same friends, same wins and losses, same arena run.

Competitive Scene

• We will see spectator mode "relatively quick", but they do not have a set time. The community really wants to see this, so they developers want to make it happen.
• There are some discussions about tournament structures, but everything is still in the early stages.

Game Systems

• The design decision behind which Heroes get added to the game is first by looking for the most iconic characters, and then figuring out which class they can represent. Tyrande could fit Hunter and Priest.
• The decision to change secrets in the latest patch to only trigger on your opponents turn was to let the developers create more fun secrets without having to worry about players triggering their own secrets. It was not done to solve any current balance issues.
• The new card backs for ranked seasons are earned by getting to rank 20. Getting to rank 20 isn't very hard since you can't downrank at the early levels, which keeps them open to everyone provided they play. The card backs are animated!
• There will be additional methods to obtaining card backs outside of ranked play. These will be rolled out within the next month or two.
• Adventure mode will contain bosses which when defeated will give you new cards. Details are still being worked on.

Mechanics that didn't make the cut

• Discard mechanics never made the cut because they give people a negative feeling.
• Critical Strike - When you attack a minion, it has a chance of doing double damage. The team felt they were pushing the RNG too far with it.
• There was a card which would deal 1 damage to you if you hovered over it with your mouse. Ben Brode has been attributed to its creation.
• There was an idea floating around for a card which would flip the gameboard.