The Enrage Keyword is Being Removed From Hearthstone
But don't worry, the effect is staying! The goal is to clean up card text since the keyword wasn't being used much. As of today, there are nine collectible cards in the game with Enrage. Peter Whalen explains below.
Update: Mike Donais has confirmed the Enrage quest (Play 10 Minions with Enrage) is being removed too. (Source)
Quote from Peter WhalenFirst things first: we’re removing the Enrage keyword from Hearthstone. All the Enrage cards will keep their effects; we’re just rewording them without the keyword. For example, Angry Chicken will read “Has +5 Attack while damaged.”
Our goal with this change is to clean up the game a little by removing a keyword we weren’t using much, but we also wanted to take the opportunity to share some of our general philosophy on keywords.
Keywords in Hearthstone are the bolded words in the card text – they’re words that have a special meaning in the context of the game. We use them a lot; most of our sets have introduced at least one keyword and the Basic and Classic sets have a bunch. Why are keywords helpful?
- Keywords can make learning cards easier. Once you know a keyword, it can boil down a complex idea and help you understand a new card more quickly.
- Keywords are flavorful. They tell a story – Discover, Recruit, Taunt; these all help the game come alive.
- Keywords condense card text. This leads to more readable cards that fit better in the frame.
- Keywords give us mechanical hooks. So we can make cards like “Give your Taunt minions +2/+2.”
So why not make lots and lots of keywords? In the extreme, we could keyword everything – the “Kel’Thuzading” keyword would mean “At the end of each turn, summon all friendly minions that died this turn” and the Doomsaying keyword would mean “At the start of your turn, destroy ALL minions.” That feels a bit silly – because it is! Keywords aren’t all upside, so it’s worth taking a look at which keywords are worth keeping.
Ultimately, we have keywords to make cards easier to understand. The best keywords appear a lot, are flavorful, and give us useful mechanical hooks. In the last year, we added two examples that we expect to be permanent: Poisonous and Lifesteal. These are great abilities that make minions a bit more interesting – they alter combat math, change which minions you prioritize, and spice up gameplay. The full text for both of these abilities is also fairly long – without a keyword, it’d be hard to pair them with much else.
So let’s take a look at Enrage. Enrage means “While damaged, this minion has a new power.” It’s on nine cards: six from the Basic and Classic sets, two from Whispers of the Old Gods, and one from Goblins vs. Gnomes. Part of the reason we haven’t used it much is that it’s a difficult keyword to design for: minions in Hearthstone don’t survive very long, especially once they’ve been damaged. Instead, we’ve favored cards with triggered abilities that encourage you to damage them multiple times, like Acolyte of Pain and Rotface. These lead to more interesting gameplay as you try to maximize the number of times they get damaged.
How well, then, is Enrage serving us as a keyword? First, it’s not clear that Enrage is actually any easier to understand than “while damaged”. It is certainly flavorful though, and does shrink the card text a little. On the other hand, we haven’t made any cards that key off of Enrage minions and aren’t likely to in the future. Overall, Enrage isn’t doing very much work for us, we haven’t used it in a while, and it isn’t on very many cards, so we’re cleaning up the game a little bit and removing it.
I feel they should just leave it as is
and... make more enrage cards
Yes, i love the design of raging worgen for example. Why not make MORE enrage cards. The explanation that minions don´t live long is a bs excuse.
Like counter is used in a lot of cards
Power overwhelming
Bad move, now they need to rename "Raging Worgen" to "Enhanced When Damaged Worgen" - how will that fit?
There is/was an enrage quest? I don't recall ever seeing that quest.
I definitely recall trying to re-roll "The Meek Shall Inherit" many times, but I don't remember an enrage quest.
Are we getting a full dust refund for this??!!! This change kills all the cards that work off of the Enrage mechanic and I crafted Grom specifically for the enrage daily quest which I'm assuming is being removed as well.
Huh? What cards "work off of the Enrage mechanic" and how does this change affect them at all, let alone "kill" them?
They aren't removing or changing the cards only the keyword enrage. So I doubt you'll get any kind of refund as nothing is being changed aside from the wording.
Also it says right in the article the quest is being removed. Good job reading the article before making demands.
Good job understanding jokes.
So is the quest gonna be removed also
Really, really? It's in the 3rd line after title. Try reading the article properly before asking stupid questions.
You can't ask too much of him, he's such a young boy. 1 Silver trophy, 6 bronze. lol
One less annoying quest. Me like!
I love that quest. I just have to put all the enrage minions in a deck + card draw. Then in 1 or 2 games it's done (in casual)