Ostkaka and Powder Leave Alliance, Rethinking Their Hearthstone Involvement
Hearthstone pros Sebastian "Ostkaka" Engwall and Harald "Powder" Gimre are taking a break from the game and have left their team for the past year, Alliance. Both players are taking a break and are going to rethink their involvement in the game. Reasons cited for their breaks include the way the Hearthstone Championship Tour was structured and being unable to find the passion to grind. Good luck out there Ostkaka and Powder!
In what ways do you get tired of Hearthstone? What do you think Blizzard could do to improve fatigue?
You can view the press release here, or down below.
Quote from AllianceGothenburg, Sweden – December 18th, 2017 – Going into 2018 Alliance is sad to say farewell to two of our Hearthstone players, Sebastian “Ostkaka” Engwall and Harald “Powder” Gimre. Both Sebastian and Harald have decided to take a break from playing Hearthstone professionally for the near future.
After our venture into Hearthstone in 2016 with Jon “Orange” Westberg we followed it up by signing Sebastian and Harald at the end of that year. Subsequently all three of them competed together in ESL’s Trinity Series (don’t mention the murlocs please) as well as recently coming back from China after placing 4th in the Gold Club World Championship.
Alliance COO, Erik Barge had the following to say as Alliance parts with Sebastian and Harald: “We here at Alliance have thoroughly enjoyed having Sebastian and Harald on the team for the past year. Both of them are stellar competitors and I will definitely miss having them on the team. With that said I completely respect their decision to take a break and wish them the best of luck in the future, whether it is in Hearthstone or outside of it.”
Ostkaka:
“In the past few months I have taken a step back from the Hearthstone grind, I have not had the passion to stream or ladder for hours every day. I do still enjoy competing and I will see how I feel in 2018 with the new HCT tour but for now I am taking a break and re-evaluating. Alliance has been a great team to be a part of and I am thankful for their support during my time with them.”
Powder:
“It has been a great experience with Alliance over the past year, unfortunately with the way the HCT system was structured I could not really find the passion to grind and stream over the last few months. I have decided to focus more on my life outside of Hearthstone and I will be going back to studying. I hope all the best for Alliance in the future and as for what I will be doing with Hearthstone next year I am not sure, but I still love competing and I might try to get back to the grind when the new season starts.”
Alliance wish Sebastian and Harald best of luck in their future endeavours. Next up for Alliance Hearthstone will be in January where Jon is competing in the HCT World Championship in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Oh no, never had any idea there were additional classes that were released in the 10 years I've played WoW. My mistake.
Oh wait, the game says "Hearthstone" last I checked, they took off the "Heroes of Warcraft" tag off if you didn't notice.
If you avent identified the algorythm of match making yet and figured out it is rigged, make a few experiments and you will soon relalize that:
The system of match making is definitely rigged: it identifies cards in your deck and try to match you with an unfavorable match up. And if you are about to trash talk me in a comment stating that I don't know what i am talking about, first you don't know me, you don't know what I am doing for a living, and don't bother asking. I won't answer.
Math is clearly not your strong-suit. That could only ever work for 50% of the players. The other 50% would be getting a FAVORABLE matchup every time. Seriously - do you whiners even your conspiracy theories 2 seconds of actual thought?
I think your idea is great. But sadly I think it is too late for this. If they would implement such a mode now, the outcry of people who dusted their Wild collection to stay competitive in Standard would be huge. It also contradicts to make the game more accessible to new people by rotating out the old cards. So this mode would be only viable for long time players. And lets be honest: they allready got us. From a business point of view, it's better to add a new mode to get 2 more new Players than to keep 1 old player. If we would fix Wild up just like you suggested (what I would love), it would become a really cool mode, maybe the best mode. But the best mode should be more accessible than a mode where you need new cards (old ones for us) every month.
I think you haven't played wild at all. Where everything is imbalanced nothing is.
I eat Highlander priests there for breakfast with Zoolock and Recruit Paladin.
I think you have to be insane to play this RNG fiesta professionally. Pick a better game where skill matters more.
Why is CoC and CR popular on mobile? Because you can actually play it f2p and kinda manage to get up high every day. Meanwhile, Hearthstone involves a year of grind and still you don‘t really manage to get up since you have to „netdeck in order to get up“. They should make it possible to get 5 packs a day easy by playing and revisit the pricing structure because I left Hearthstone literally for CoC! (Just tune in from time to time but don‘t play it since 6 months)
Very sadly even when they lose half they're Player base they don't going change anything as long they earn MORE money the way they do. When i look my friendlist with players i added over the last 8 month not even 50% is active in Hearthstone anymore.
When I saw that you couldn't trade cards, that you could only mill duplicates for a pathetic fraction of their crafting cost I knew the game was a scam for paid customers.
The age old argument that trading cards aren't gambling because you always get something of value is predicated on you being able to turn the card in your hand into money if necessary through selling it to others.
That doesn't happen with online CCGs. You can only exchange them for more "house money" - further making it gambling because the value of getting a card you don't own and getting one you do is so stark, and the pack values so disparate.
This concept makes people uncomfortable. I've been gambling this whole time? Yes. Yes you have. You've been gambling for decades since you bought Magic and Pokemon cards too. I'm so sorry.
This is an ONLINE CCG. They have the opportunity to do things differently. Thinking that because that's how someone else does it a certain way means that's how it will always be for all time is beyond stupid.
A direct comparison to physical CCG is beyond stupid. I accept that CCGs are a form of gambling. That's not what HS has though. The main difference you seem to forget is that real gambling has a pay-off if you "win". You open a rare card, it has real money value that can exceed the cost of the pack you paid for. There is NO equivalent in HS. There's no sense of "winning" or hitting the "jackpot". Even if you opened 5 golden legendaries in one pack it will mean nothing in the end because you will never get anything out of that. If you're spending money on packs you will never get more than you put in.
They will be back when control hunter is tier 1.
I am not surprised people don't want to go through the slog of being a hearthstone professional. Its a time consuming, high risk low reward activity where you can easy put 40+ hours a week into the game and never see a penny out of it. Only the very top of the elite will ever see as much money as they would have made flipping burgers in a mcjob.