Hall of Fame - Duplicate Protection - Returning Player and Priest Changes Today
Today, Thursday March 26th, is the day for many of the announced changes from our coverage from mid-March. A short summary of what is coming at some point today:
- Several cards will go to the Hall of Fame, including 6 Priest cards.
- All the Priest changes will go live, including the introduction of the new Basic and Classic cards.
- Duplicate Protection goes live some time today, meaning even old packs will no longer give duplicate cards until you have all cards of that rarity. Be sure to wait until it is officially live before opening packs!
- New and Returning players will get new (re-)introduction missions to the game.
- New and Returning players will get a FREE DECK starting today, as well as some card packs. To see which decks you can choose from see our post from Tuesday!
- Illidan Stormrage will enter the Battlegrounds as a new Hero!
Nerf Revisions
Last week Blizzard reverted some nerfed Wild cards back to their former glory. Today's patch will have a second round of revisions included. The following are the effected cards returning to their original form.
- Dr. Boom, Mad Genius - New: Cost 7 mana.
- Giggling Inventor - New: Cost 6 mana.
- Raiding Party - New: Cost 3 mana.
- Reckless Experimenter - New: Deathrattle minions you play cost (3) less, but die at end of turn.
Hall of Fame
Every year Blizzard sends some cards to the Hall of Fame, due to those cards limiting design space, breaking Class Design goals or just generally being used so much that it's time to make room so other cards can fill that design niche to change things up in the meta.
These are those Hall of Fame cards from the Neutral cards:
Priest changes
And these are the Hall of Fame cards from the Priest cards, again, mostly moved to the Hall of Fame because of conflicts of Class Design or not leaving enough design space for new cards:
Priest gets 6 NEW cards to replace the Hall of Fame line up and 7 more cards get mana or mechanics changes to better suit the Priest class to it's intended Class Design.
The 2 Basic set cards will automatically be added to your collection, but the other 4 are Classic set cards and will need to be opened from Classic packs or crafted. With the new Duplicate Protection system getting those cards from packs won't be too hard however.
These are the 6 replacement cards:
For a full breakdown of all the Hall of Fame and Priest class changes we will direct you to our post from mid-March with all the details. You can also find them by clicking the banner below!
Duplicate Protection
Starting at some point today, Thursday the 26th of March, you will get the introduction of increased coverage of the Duplicate Protection system that we already have for Legendaries. It will now cover ALL cards -- legendary, epic, rare and common. You can not get any duplicates anymore until you have every card of that rarity in the full set.
Not only will this new measure cover all card rarities, it also covers all expansions, new and old. Including card packs you already own.
There's a caveat here: once you receive a card, you'll have it marked for "collected" purposes. So if you disenchant a card you've received, it's still considered "owned." So you can't exploit the refund system that way. There's a great benefit to this though: If you don't like a particular card or class, you can disenchant them and not have to worry about getting them in future packs. This "collected" tag lasts forever once you have collected it.
New and Returning Players
If you return to play Hearthstone again starting at some point today, Thursday March 26th, you will be greeted by a brand new re-introduction campaign. This will not only bring you back up to speed with the game, but also reward you with your own competitive deck of the class of your choice, as well as some card packs.
When you log in after returning, you will first play through 3 quick catch up missions as Illidan...back in the time when he was a Mage! After this you will receive your rewards and can go out and play the game freely.
The new catch up missions also perfectly line up with the new Demon Hunter prologue that goes live April 2nd, where you continue the story of Illidan, this time as a Demon Hunter!
There are some limitations to this new provision though. The free deck is only available to players who have not logged into Hearthstone in the past 4 months beginning on March 17, 2020. Limit one per account.
If you want to know which decks you will be able to choose from, look no further than our post from Tuesday where we have all 9 decks listed.
For more indepth information about the Year of the Phoenix and upcoming changes we will direct you to our post from mid-March with all the details. You can also find them by clicking the banner below!
Illidan enters the Battlegrounds!
- Hero Power: Wingmen
- [Passive] Start of Combat: Your left and right-most minions attack immediately.
Is all rarities protected with thew new pack rule? common/rare etc or just rare?
All
can you not read?
nope
yeez take a joke
My friend created a new account just yesterday. Will they still be eligible for the free new player deck?
Any new player below rank 25 will be able to get 1 of the 9 decks, plus people who haven't logged in HS for 4 months, even if they are above rank 25
Starting March 26, new players and players who have not logged into Hearthstone in the past four months* will earn a free deck from a class of their choice–built with cards from Year of the Dragon–upon graduating from the New Player ranks!
damn, those poor players who finally made it to Rank24 without Legendaries :(
time?
You will be not prepared... even if they would tell you when.
So why do only new and returning players get a deck for free? I feel like I'm getting punished just because I play this game.
Not receiving a boost that other players need is not the same as getting punished. If you've spent some time playing this game, you most likely have a larger collection than any starter player would receive.
Now it's up to you to decide if it's more advantageous to create a new account and take a free deck, or keep building in your current collection.
By playing you get gold, which gives you packs and dust to spend however you please. New/ returning players would be way behind your collection, so this is a way to give them ONE deck to play. You aren't being punished, it is an incentive to bring players back without feeling like they have a spend hundreds to catch up and play a viable deck
I understand your dissapointment, but i think it is the right decision from blizzard because it serves the main purpose of bridging the gap that made new players/player that hadn't played in a while give up on the game. And as an old player, it is not that you can't reclaim that deck, but it is subject to that purpose. So, now you have a kind of unemployment insurance that if you haven't played in a while you can return and have a deck ready to play with.
Also, blizzard is making life much easier than before for regular players with the duplicate protection and new ranked rewards. So, i think there's nothing to complain about.
What is Xavius ? Is this a new card that hasn't been revealed ?
from what I understood so far it's going to be the same effect as Illidan, the only thing that will change is the name and the art
that seems to be the case!
What is point of replacing Illidan with Xavius ? Only becase new class is more considerable then ususal skin they need to remove illidan card? Blizzard could add a DH class and put Illidan skin for it into a bundle so the replacing of acard would be more understandable
I don't really understand it either. They have Maiev Shadowsong - the card, and the hero..... ?
the difference is that Illidan is a base hero