HearthPwn Turns Five!
Oh what a long, strange trip it has been. Today marks the fifth anniversary of HearthPwn, your favourite Hearthstone community site!
Back in 2013, HearthPwn launched with the only complete Hearthstone card database in existence! Prior to the launch of the site, all known cards were scraped out of videos, interviews, and promotional images Blizzard put out into the community. The art was cropped poorly, everything was low resolution, and we didn't even know half of the cards. That all changed on May 23, 2013 when the first ever datamined Hearthstone client was put out into the wild through the site.
Whether you've been here since the beginning or today, thank you for being with us these past five years. We're hoping Hearthstone is still around for another five so we can continue keeping you up to date with the latest news, decks, and discussions for Blizzard's indie cash cow. May the meta grow healthy and may rng always be in your favour. Praise Yogg!
Words From Flux
Absolutely incredible. Those are the two words that I use to describe this past half decade. We've certainly had some tough moments over the years, but we always end up coming out better for them. If you asked me just over five years ago what I'd be doing today, heading an indie game community website would not be one of them. Though I still play WoW so I would have been partially right. Every week brings forth some kind of new challenge which has made working for HearthPwn an exciting time of my life and I'm quite thankful the opportunity to hang out with everyone here was given to me. If only we didn't need to deal with so many trolls.
I look forward to what the future holds for myself, the site, and the overall Hearthstone community. I hope we can try to keep things more positive overall, because we surely need it, though we'll definitely need some help from Blizzard with that. The severe lack of communication over the years, when compared to other game titles, is truly a shame and I can only hope that it picks up. I also find an incredible disconnect from the community when they decide to post four non-time-sensitive blog posts in a 3 hour period on a Thursday instead of intelligently spacing them out throughout the week.
People have clearly demonstrated they want more communication, so why do you only try to engage in bursts that can be easily ignored? I hope we get to see more developer insights into Hearthstone, quicker reactions to balance problems (even if that's only to tell us how the devs feel about certain cards), and more content between sets so everyone continues to play the game.
Anyway, enough of that nonsense, let's go for positivity! These are some of my favourite articles from the past five years.
- Every single time a card was revealed out of China and we named it Fluffy something. I wish I had a list. Still waiting for a real fluffy-named card.
- Xaril's card reveal - The first time Blizzard gave us a card reveal, back when Blizzard gave us card reveals.
- That time Blizzard revealed every single card in League of Explorers during BlizzCon 2015. That was a wild ride!
- That one time we caught Blizzard putting up a Hearthstone Test Realm. It still hasn't been used for the public =(
- Our first expansion compendium, which was for Whispers of the Old Gods.
- My first news post on the site.
- Hackily building a Zombeast simulator shortly after Deathstalker Rexxar was revealed.
- That time Blizzard screwed up and leaked the names of voting cards during the Goblins vs Gnomes reveal period, which we were quickly asked to delete. They recently did it again with Witchwood.
Finally, thank you to everyone who has been a part of our site staff, both old and current. I couldn't do half of what I do without you and I hope we'll continue to be together for the foreseeable future. It's a largely thankless job, in fact, I think we all receive more grief than praise, but it's important to remember that you're all amazing and loved dearly.
Cheers to the staff and community!
Once I recover from whatever plague I'm currently inflicted with, I'm considering doing some kind of a HearthPwn community night, a streamed event where we can get some community members together and play some Hearthstone. Is this something people would be interested in watching? Potentially could do this when the new tournament system comes out. Let me know in the comments below!
Yo!
Tell us about your favourite HearthPwn memory down below. It could be a great interaction you had on the site, new friends you've found to play with, a top news article, or anything else!
Still can't believe it's 5 years old, both this site and Hearthstone. Still I do have a good few memories:
I've entered the Weekly Card Competition a good number of times. Though I remember my first good idea which was 'Shipwrecked Shack'. It was just about to enter into the Finals but because I was rushing, I messed the upload and removed the image, which made all the votes for my entry worthless... I was kicking myself because of that mistake.
There was once a topic about what players want to see on their wish list for 2017. I made a suggestion which got people up-voting my thought and though I did enjoy the votes, I liked that I said something which so many others wanted in the game. The suggestion was for players to have a reward for playing for over a period of time.
I also remember creating this image for a laugh. It appears that a good number of people have a sense of humour (Image in spoiler).
But the greatest memory was when I saw this image in a comment on a news article (again in the spoiler below)... even when the meta can be very bad, there will always be someone who can see the funny side of it. And that's why I keep coming back.
Thanks for everything, got an epic in my free pack !!!!!!
Congratulations
Happy Birthday Hearthpwn
You brought me the most convenient way of browsing fun decks <3 thank you
The cake is a lie!! happy b-day!!
happy bday
Still in alpha state...
Happy Birthday. Kepp up the good work. I mean you are the main source of information regarding news ang changes to Hearthstone. Even your patch notes are more complete than the official one.
Annoy-o-Tron wishes more and more success
Happy Birthday!
Hmm, Hearthpwn is 5 and Hearthstone is Team 5. Coincidence????? Yes.
Thanks for being my first Hearthstone content feed!
Really helpful content, great community, nice tools, ...
Happy Birthday ! :)
Happy birthday!
And please, make shot glass version of Leeroy and make it a merch, asap.
The big glass version could be the "wonderful poison" Xaril always mentions :D
I like pouring shots and drinks <.<
At least I have... tequila?
That cake is a lie, though.
5 years? happy birthday!
the best time for giveaway some packs between hearthpwn members are now:))))
Happy birthday to Hearthpwn and to all of you :)
Happy Birthday and a hearty congratulations to the team running this website, you are doing an excellent job.
For me, some of my favorite memories of this site are the reveal periods (a.k.a. spoiler season) because everyone is hyped and has such wild &crazy theories/predictions for cards. I feel it really brings the community together, even those that don't visit the site on a regular basis. Everyone just shares in the hype and makes things really fun overall.
Keep up the good work guys.
Happy Birthday Hearthpwn!