Peter Whalen & Dean Ayala Showcase Old Witchwood Card Designs
IGN's Cam Shea had a chance to sit down with Peter Whalen and Dean Ayala to talk about designing The Witchwood expansion. We've recapped the interview below!
Interview Highlights
- They like two legendaries per class in sets because it allows them to take classes in two different directions.
- Creating powerful cards like Drakonid Operative right before a set rotates is okay if the power level of the card in Standard will decrease.
- The first set of a new year is where they want to experiment the most with a lot of archetypes.
- There aren't currently any plans to create more cards that require Odd or Even deckbuilding.
- There is a mailing list at Blizzard for other people within the company to pitch card design ideas. Toki, Time-Tinker's effect came from this list.
Interview Misc
- Neutral legendaries tend to be either very strong or weak so less of those makes for easier design.
- Thematically, the goal for class legendaries this time around was to give everyone a monster and a member of the town.
- If Genn and Baku didn't perform as well as they did, they could have added additional even/odd cost interactions in the future to help them shine.
- It's dangerous when a class has powerful Even and Odd deck archetypes since they don't have a lot of options to give them amazing cards. If they only had a strong even archetype, they could make better odd-cost cards.
- Genn Greymane was originally in the Old Gods expansion. They recorded voiceovers when the Heroes of the Storm team was working on adding him to their game.
- It was "pretty cool" to see some old cards come back briefly - Amani Berserker, Raid Leader, Stormwind Champion.
- Nightmare Amalgam was originally pitched during One Night in Karazhan. It was a 5-cost 5/6.
Card Designs That Didn't Make The Cut
- Hagatha the Witch at one point gave minions +1/+1 or another design gave odd minions +2/+2.
- The original designs of Hagatha predated Baku and Genn.
- Back in Old Gods, Genn worked very similarly to the Worgen mechanic. Whalen thinks he changed between a Taunt and Charge minion each turn.
- Szikei the Serpent was to be a Hero card like Hagatha with a Hero Power that gave your minions in deck +1/+1.
- Blink Fox originally gained "various different keywords" when you played Burgle-style cards.
- One suggested design for Toki was "Battlecry: Un-nerf all of the cards in your hand"
- Another Toki design that was suggested was "Battlecry: for the rest of the game, mana crystals go backwards, so every turn, you lose a mana crystal."
- Toki again! "Battlecry: your next spell costs 0, you pay for it next turn."
- Toki: "Battlecry: discover a card from the future". The cards could be based on themes they think they may have added in the future.
- There was a Worgen mechanic where once you played a couple of human-form Worgen, the rest of your Worgen would transform.
- Witching Hour originally worked with that Worgen design, allowing you to transform earlier.
Here are some images featuring glorious temporary art that are some original designs for cards we have in the game.
I love how "Developer Interviews" on the main page, has a picture of Ben Brode.
Tess Greymane the murloc LOL
Moat Lurker. You're welcome.
It's so interesting to see Blizzard's thought process with these cards
Interesting stuff.
I like that Ben brode is still in the "developer interview" tag... just lurking in the corner there
I like your last point. So hard for them to admit when they're wrong.
yeah but the idea is kind of stupid. because whether it's human and monster or whatever they decide to come up, the effect still suck
Which legendary pair is not two different directions game-play wise?
Warrior: one rush/tempo and one combo
Shaman: One value and one combo
Mage: One zoo and one value.
Hunter: One tempo and one combo
Priest: One control/steal and one value/big minion
Warlock: One control and one combo/value
Paladin: Divine Shield synergy and value
Rogue: Burgle and value
Druid: value/combo and one strange piece of crap
It certainly looks like 2 different directions for each class.
usual blizzard hearthstone bullcrap.
Simple try to make an expansion with no RNG and then players will be more happy.
Netual being weak or strong is just lazy talk this is why I play
(I still play to complete quest and mess around. )
https://shadowverse.com/
Players stop the RNG, Hearthstone : NO WE NEED MORE RNG~!!
4 dislikes over hating on Blizzard on something they did . really now children,
oh boy, salty immature children ....no wonder ever time i play hearthstone , there someone just not moving..
You guys sure love crappy games.
Is that you, Koichi?
Hi , there , no i am a cat as you can see.
You didn't get it
Really? Didn't catch that. Never mind my comment then.
Wow, I really like Blackhowl Gunspire in this form! It goes very well with the Rush archetype. Too bad they decided not to release him in this format, although current version is also pretty fun! :)
Two directions:
- for Druid, Mage, Paladin, Rogue, Priest both legendaries are actually useless/meme
- for Warrior, Hunter, Warlock one legendary is more or less playable and only one is totally garbage ( Blackhowl Gunspire ??)
- for Shaman we actually have both of the legendaries working ( Shudderwock is actually way overperforming)
This two direction is actually fine, but then make interesting legendaries, that actually working and are not in the game for those "LuL moments" in some Trolden video. What's the pont of 2 legendary / expansion, when out of 18 classlegend there are 3 good, 2 playable and the rest is 400 dust.
I assume you realise that the names of the cards don't come pre-designed with what they do? It's pretty easy for them to decide on two different ways to play a class (steal opponents cards vs Inner Fire for Priests, for example) and then to put whatever character on top of that. As you can see here, Face Collector originally did a bunch of different things... So clearly what the card does, and whether it's a monster or a town member are completely unrelated.
But hey, don't let me steal your tinfoil hat
"They like two legendaries per class in sets because it allows them to take classes in two different directions."
Yeah, right. When that's two different directions gameplay-wise (quests, Death Knights, weapons) I can understand that, but two different directions lore-wise? "A monster and a member of the town"? Come on. Just admit you were greedy and ran out of ideas.
Instead of adding one of those effects for Toki that listed here, they decided to make her unplayable. Sigh
Yes. A bit sad that they didn't make her more viable (as well as the grim knowledge that once she rotates to Wild she'll be even less valuable). *sigh*