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.
yeaaaaaaaaah about that... in the good old days, you had ragnaros, harrison, cairne and stuff that you could put in ANY class deck. You could play more decks with less legendary cards. btw I am perfectly fine with this design choice, I got dust and gold. but you know... not every design choice evolves around "diversity". don't be so naive.
"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."
This is kinda silly, isn't it? There can only be Odd or Even cards. They introduced Genn and Baku knowing well enough that every single future card would potentially support one or the other. Keep avoiding good Even cards long enough, and new Odd decks will pop up. Maybe don't make a powerful Totem-synergy card with an Even cost anytime soon, but otherwise, I think they should not worry too much about that, or else it will backfire.
Besides, it is relatively easy to design around it. Murlocs, for example, have important Even and Odd cards, so to make a good Murloc deck, you can't make use of Genn or Baku. Just make sure you don't create themes where all the key cards mysteriously have the same property, and the mechanic won't matter too much anymore.
My guess is that in the future, Genn and Baku will have a similar fate as Reno Jackson anyway: Other win conditions will become so insanely strong or counters so brutally effective, that the benefits no longer justify the limitations. They simply become outdated. Maybe Genn and Baku have a bit more potential, since you have the benefit right from the start of the game, but I'm sure that sooner or later, the better hero power won't be enough to make up for deck limitations anymore.
Sidenote: I'm a bit shocked how many cool, interesting ideas they had in mind for Toki, and how lame the final design is. Wish they would be more adventurous and go with those crazy, unconventional designs. I mean "un-nerf your hand" of course is a bit ambiguous, when cards have seen multiple changes, and some were before the official release, but the idea of decreasing mana crystals, maybe as a start of game effect, sounds cool. Perhaps it would make for some very unfair decks, but it's certainly more interesting than "another kind of random".
"un-nerf your hand" could have referenced alternate realities for each card in your hand, wherein that card used to have a prior stronger version compared to its current "nerfed" form. But then Blizz would have had to come up with an "un-nerfed" version of every card, or done something blanket like cost minus 1.
Designers : We totally happy with the crap effect we gave toki ~!!
I personally like the 6/6 version of Tess here more than the one we now have. You can play cards whenever you want and you get the battlecry from minions as well. And as far as I see theres nothing random. For me a way better version. If the card would be designed like the 6/6, I would may play Tess in a deck. But in current version I don´t like, as long as they don´t print more usefull burglecards, f.e. with discovereffects.
Oh..... such sweet memories of good old 'Face Hunter'. HS was so innocent back then ... :p
og face collector looks crazy
It seems like they particularly had fun to tinker with Toki's effect. I can see why they decided to add time-themed cards to arena.
One suggested design for Toki was "Battlecry: Un-nerf all of the cards in your hand"
HorLukRos Blizzard employee confirmed! :D (Legend of the Warsong Commander)
I actually sorta like that old Gunspire design. With different stats, sure, but it's a cool concept to me.
A 12/12 "Can't Attack" is a giant silence target for surprise burst damage.
It's a lot like the tyrantus problem and emeriss problem, you are playing 10 mana to do nothing. Seems interestingly balanced to me
You can actually use the 2 from K&C and the 2 newer warlock class legendaries in a deck, and it works out amazingly.
So the 2 class legendaries per expansion thing is working out pretty sweet for warlock at least, not sure if any of the other classes can boast this.
"They like two legendaries per class in sets because it allows them to take classes in two different directions."
Does this mean The Glass Knight and Prince Liam will get support later?
It means, those two legs take a two different directions.
Odd and even?
lies.
that 4 mana tess , plus the 8 mana spawn queen and Paladin DK would be the perfect otk. I hope that there bring back that rush Toki but with all class spells, even if it a brawl card , would be sick if you cataclysm you own bored lmao.
isn't paladin dk odd cost ? also the toki says only mage spells
Wow I’m really glad they didn’t do these. These original cards look so bad, especially the original Toki.