What Happened in Hearthstone? Taking a Look Back at September 17 - 23
It was a very interesting week! Days of the Frozen Throne was a mini event with rewards, we saw a huge post from Blizzard that included 4 new Classic cards and details on more things coming soon.
Hearthstone News
- Days of the Frozen Throne came and left. Hopefully you got your 600 gold and Happy Ghoul!
- On the topic of Days of the Frozen Throne, Blizzard gave us some developer insights into it.
- Twitch and Blizzard partnered up to bring a special cheer event to Twitch for the Global Games.
- The cheer event has a special card back reward if you spend just under $35 USD.
- Tournament mode has been put on hold.
Blizzard announced a TON of new stuff coming to Hearthstone in the future, including:
- Four new cards are being added to the Classic set!
- Dual Class Arena returns in October with Hallow's End.
- Paladins are getting an annoying new hero. "Sir Annoy-o" is his name.
HearthPwn News
- We went over the five most overhyped Boomsday Project cards so far.
Hearthstone Decks
- Blizzard posted three off-meta decks that are doing awesome at Legend.
- We posted the top and most popular decks of the week.
Hearthstone Esports
- The Fall Championship concluded for the Americas region which means we know the top 16 going to the Fall Championship!
- The Hearthstone Global Games week took place. Don't forget about team cheering.
Thoughts On Last Week
Personal opinion, move on if that bothers you. This is the part where we give last week a review and not just a recap.
It's a shame we're getting yet another Paladin hero and that it's once again tied to another in-game purchase. The way to obtain Sir Annoy-o hasn't officially been announced but there was a press image that showed him beside 20 Witchwood packs which makes it seem like that's the bundle. Buying old packs isn't very exciting, but at least the hero has some meme potential whether that ends up backfiring towards Blizzard or becomes something amazing for the community has yet to been determined.
It's good to see they're at least willing to bring back the dual class arena format that an overwhelmingly vocal number of people appreciated last year. If Blizzard can keep bringing back stuff that people like, and sprinkle it throughout expansions by trying to do something interested at least monthly, it should help player fatigue and maybe, just maybe give some people who've put the game on the back burner a reason to logon. Artifact is coming and lots of the Hearthstone streamers are very interested in playing it, they're going to need all the help they can get.
Regarding tournament mode, it isn't exactly a surprise at this point it's being put on hold and it would have been nicer to know that it was canned sooner to prevent a lot of "wtfs" from everyone when they didn't meet their summer target. Blizzard has been not the best at community messaging in the past and it's an unfortunate trend to see continue. Their large post that showcased many things coming to Hearthstone should have been broken up across a few weeks to make things feel less stale. We're now going to go through another drought of content until BlizzCon announces the next expansion.
On timing - why, at the very least, didn't the welcome bundle make a return earlier? There's at least three things people are going to be putting money towards now for October (Twitch Cheering, Welcome Bundle, Sir Annoy-o) and it's annoying. They must have data that shows people love to spend cash on old cards before an upcoming expansion.
Don't worry though, they're at least adding in 25 new ranks for all those new players the game is attracting! /s
Days of the Frozen Throne was an awesome, small thing for them to do though - More stuff like this, please! It's a great way to bring back some old, still relevant for now, content. When is the Un'Goro jungle going to takeover Hearthstone for a week for another flash back?
Community Videos
Check out popular community videos below! Be sure to also share some of your favourite videos from the past week in the comments.
Value Town #185
Omni/Stone #64
Frost Lich Jaina Brawl
Funny & Lucky Moments #395
Cheated out of 12 Wins?
Intro to Artifact
Yes, but this is Wizard Poker we're talkin' about here, bud. Wizards have it hard, donchaknow? The struggle is real.
Nothing good happened...
Nothing happens, people complain that there aren't enough events, give us more gold, give us more packs
Blizz gives away 600 gold for free, complaints
Discounted packs.... complaints
I think some people should really reevaluate if they actually like the game and why are they playing it
Also the Twitch cheer event is actually pretty cool as it lets the teams earn a little bit more money and to people saying that Blizz is taking a cut guess what, they're a company and any company's main goal(unless you're a charity) is to make money, nothing else, I would love to see all those people moaning that blizzard is not giving away more free stuff in their FREE game start their own business and how eager they would be to give anything for free
Y’all expecting an awful lot of content for a random week between expansion cycles. We’ll probably have an expansion announcement by the end of October.
BlizzCon takes place November 2-3. The next expansion will be announced on November 2, and its very likely to happen during the opening ceremony with additional information coming during a dedicated panel on the same day.
Sounds about right, although the teaser to the pre-announcement announcement of the announcement will be late October. ;)
Legitimate concern. Just a few days ago I went back to some old account and played from 25 with 0 starsa to 23, where I eventually gave up. I have seen few actual new players, and lots of veterans who just don't care about ladder. Maybe 1 in 4 was using basic cards, the rest was stuff like Odd Paladin, Tempo Mage, Secret Hunter, Taunt Druid etc., some of them with a few weak or odd cards, but most of it was pretty much what you expect the decks to be. And the card backs where mostly from 2016 and older.
I keep having the feeling that the game is dying out. Ranks 25-20 should be self regulatory if there are enough new players so they would mostly play against each other, while better players move quickly and inevitably to 20. But as it seems, you have a handfull of new players that struggle against lots of people who have been playing for years. The new 50-26 ranks create a save environment, but isn't it just treating the symptoms, not the disease? And what good are 25 ranks when you keep seeing the same players over and over again? And isn't it counter-intuitive? I mean, most new players probably will rather go for Casual than ranked. They wouldn't know that rank 50-25 is MUCH safer than Casual.
The new ladder makes it easier to get into the game, but in the end, you'll have the same problems as right now. Progress still happens at snails pace with Daily Quests and Tavern Brawls; nowhere near enough to actually get you started, and without financial backup not enough to keep up with how much the game grows per expansion. Catching up is still borderline impossible and even with pre-orders, you have to play for a year to profit from rotation and not be at a constant disadvantage on the sets you don't have any cards from. Decks still tend to get more expensive and more ridiculous in power level, while the core sets Basic and Classic worsened a lot over the years, again to the disadvantage of new players. The only good news on that end is, that the Year of the Raven so far has been much less insane than the Year of the Mammoth or MSG. But we still have one more set this year, which will likely be the most powerful again, so that's not settled yet.
The game has to be inviting and rewarding enough for people to try out the game in the first place. It needs to have a good reputation for being fun, fair in progressing, balanced, easy to learn but also challenging to master. Right now, most of that is missing, and letting players go to some "pre-ladder" to grind their way into the "real" game just lets some time pass before they get to realize this.
With Gwent, the developers agreed that the last year has changed the game for the worse and moved away from the original vision, so they want to redesign and rebalance he game completely for the upcoming patch "Homecoming". I'm not saying Hearthstone should do exactly that as well, but I'd appreciate it if the developers took more drastic steps to help the problems that have been lingering for years now, instead of making baby steps here and there without ever fully fixing anything. Instead, they do expansions and patches pretty much like "business as usual", while the aforementioned trends continue.
savj is cute
I'd throttle him harder than you're comfortable with knowing. ULTRA-KAPPA
Summary: nothing happend
-Frozen Throne event - wow, such an awesome event. Play few games and gain 600 golds. That's all. It's nothing interesting there.
-Twitch Cheers Drop - Cool. Pay to get another cardback and few packs with cards.
-"Big changes coming to HS" - You mean cancelled tournament mode for a long time, 4 new cards, which they have been created in the same way " add random spell/demon etc."
-New portrait - Wow, just 4th hero skin for paladin and of course available with $$ only
Well, just cause it isnt interesting for you or not what you hoped for, doesnt mean "nothing happened" :p
Yeah.
Nothing happened.
what happened over the last week?
tournament mode did not happen!
because something not happening is something that happened over the last week.
What Happened in Hearthstone?
1- After 4 years, no tournament mode is now official;
2- "Off-meta" decks that are doing great on legend rank 9836+
3- New shitty paladin hero that players need to shit money for;
4- Help your favorite team through team cheering... but most of your money goes for Blizzard instead for some reason;
5- Trade your soul for 600 gold by completing "Days of Frost Lich Jaina" event quests
There, fixed your topic.
Except for at least #4 you are factually incorrect.
There are three ways the bits revenue is being split.
Twitch appears to be getting just the usual added fees when buying bits. The cut that Blizzard and the Teams get is equal. Whether you think that is fair or not doesn't matter to me, but you need to represent it fairly.
And because this can be very easily sourced, here you go.
https://www.hearthpwn.com/news/5959-a-special-new-card-back-coming-alongside-twitch
Assume someone cheers for 2 teams (A and B).
25% goes for team A;
25% goes for team B;
50% goes for Blizzard.
50% revenue across all teams is just so so so greedy. Even poker houses do not charge that much.
And dota 2 compendium is giving to teams 25%... They are organizer, they choose the rule. And to be honest World championship prize pool of 1 000 000 $ to bunch of 20 years old kids, which are just playing childish cards game is not that bad. They have prize pool for HGG as well. It is not only cheers. And players are not even going anywhere and doing anything. They are just playing from home. But why don't you make a HS tournament and provide a better prize pool if you think that blizzard not giving players enough money?
And it is good that people don't know difference between ON hold and cancelled. Blizzard never stated that tournament mode is canceled, but only that they will take more time to find a better approach, because they doubt that it will be useful for players as it is. And actually they don't think that a lot of players will really use it (except of course every single one in heartpwn forum....).
It is your choice to reach nothing in your life and complaining that world is the reason that you are bad. And you have hope for yourself? Sad, sad. But again, you can go to play artifact or whatever you want, no one is keeping you here.
And actually I said to you (I dont think that your brain can process information, but lets try to do this), that if they decided that this is the share which they should do, maybe it is good enough. You can try to make your tournament, to popularize it, advertise it and than to donate all of money to teams and to see how profitable is it. Oh wait, you think that organizing all of this is free?
It's good they at least inform us what do they think about current state of the game and show some of their plans
That topic and state of HS today, especially the last brawl reminded me that old quote. Sad days for HS tbh. Not like SAD sad, but not the best for sure