Together, in the Year of the Phoenix, we drove back the rusted legion in Ashes of Outland, graduated with top honors from Scholomance Academy, and conquered our fears of carnival rides (and ancient horrors of unspeakable evil) when Madness at the Darkmoon Faire set in.
We kicked off the year by overhauling our Ranked system, updating card packs to include duplicate protection, and introducing Hearthstone’s first new class since launch—the Demon Hunter.
Throughout the year we hosted several in-game events, including the Felfire Festival and Masquerade Ball. We released over a dozen balance updates between our major releases, and completely revamped our progression and rewards systems.
We brought Pirates, Elementals, and the Old Gods to Battlegrounds—along with multiplayer parties and Darkmoon Prizes! We told the origin stories for Jaina, Rexxar, Garrosh, Uther, and Anduin in Hearthstone Book of Heroes. We released Hearthstone’s first Mini-Set, the Darkmoon Races, and launched Duels, a new game mode for Dungeon Run fun against other players. Finally, we hosted four community Inn-vitationals and crowned a new world champion, Kenta “glory” Sato, on the Hearthstone Masters Tour!
It’s been a journey unlike any other. In a time when we’re a little more spread out than usual, seeing Hearthstone continue to bring people together online around the world has warmed our hearts in a way we never expected. Thank you for spending the Year of the Phoenix with us!
Learn What’s Next at BlizzConline – February 19
The great Hearthstone clock in the sky shifts forward yet again! Tune-in for BlizzConline on February 19-20 to learn about our plans for the next Hearthstone year. We’ll have more info on the Core Set, the Classic Format, our next expansion, the new game mode we’ve been working on, and more!
But that’s not all! Hang around for a Streamer Showdown, a Battlegrounds exhibition, a Q&A with the devs, impressions of the innkeeper submitted by Hearthstone creators, and an art lesson on drawing Reno Jackson from Senior Concept Artist Rafael Zanchetin! Oh yeah, and Bartender Bob will be making an appearance as well!
You’ll be able to watch the entirety of the show completely free through the BlizzCon website, and on the official Hearthstone Twitch and YouTube channels. We’ll see you there!
If I remember correctly, the number of 70 million was referring to players total, including those who dropped the game again, which is not the same as "active" players.
It's possible that the active user numbers have been higher as well, though I don't think by that much.
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Posted Feb 12, 2021 (Darkmoon Races)this is not coincidence they are quiet about Ranked stats
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Posted Feb 12, 2021 (Darkmoon Races)Thanks to the battleground and maybe, maybe duel and duel class and a bit demon hunter?
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Posted Feb 11, 2021 (Darkmoon Races)"13 balance updates" almost all of them are Demon Hunter nerfs KEKW
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Posted Feb 11, 2021 (Darkmoon Races)Thanks to the new reward system, we got 20M new bots in the last year.
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Posted Feb 11, 2021 (Darkmoon Races)It’s not like there was a virus forcing everyone home.
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Posted Feb 11, 2021 (Darkmoon Races)Oh wow, 20 million people playing, I guess everyone ceaselessly posting about how the game was dying was wrong, who knew?
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Posted Feb 11, 2021 (Darkmoon Races)I believe it used to be 70 million 2016-2017..The mighty have fallen.
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Posted Feb 11, 2021 (Darkmoon Races)If I remember correctly, the number of 70 million was referring to players total, including those who dropped the game again, which is not the same as "active" players.
It's possible that the active user numbers have been higher as well, though I don't think by that much.
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Posted Feb 12, 2021 (Darkmoon Races)Active players is the same thing - anyone that has logged in and played a game during this time period.
They specifically did not include daily active users - the actually important metric everyone cares about.
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Posted Feb 11, 2021 (Darkmoon Races)Does this mean Skull of Gul'dan was the most played standard card? Huh, I guess people really liked Demon Hunter.
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Posted Feb 12, 2021 (Darkmoon Races)Apparently it was played once every 3 DH matches
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Posted Feb 13, 2021 (Darkmoon Races)Which is why DH is getting all of the nerfs.
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Posted Feb 11, 2021 (Darkmoon Races)More than 20 million people evidently didn't learn their lesson.
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Posted Feb 11, 2021 (Darkmoon Races)negative nancy
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Posted Feb 11, 2021 (Darkmoon Races)Interesting do we have such infographic for previous years. But 23 milion active player of course is very good.