Topic: Hearthstone: Blizzards digital TCG

[idolminds]

Goblins vs Gnomes!

Trailer makes me laugh.

New expansion. 120 cards, new Mech card type. Lots of fun random cards, like the goblin and gnomish engineering in WoW. It will be a new card pack type that costs the same as the regular card packs, so you can just choose which one you want to open. I'm going to start saving all my gold from now until that releases just so I can jump right in. Comes out in December.

[iPPi]

Lots of 'random' effects in the new cards.  Still, I'll play when they come out and see what's new.

[idolminds]

Yeah, lots of random. That will make them hard to use in constructed if you want to ladder climb, but they will be fun as shit in friendly games. Of course they might be showing off the "wackiest" cards. I'm sure there are a bunch that are more straight forward.

Also looking forward to spectator mode. You'll be able to watch your friends play live!

[idolminds]

I just had a crazy match. I was mage vs a warrior. Probably control warrior since the dude was able to just keep board control going and armor up the entire game. I'm doing what I can but just not making much headway at all. Then he plays...I forget which card, has charge and enrage so he hits it with another card that deals some damage and give it attack so now its a 10/x card and hits me with it along with the other two he has on board. Super, super bad. He made a mistake, though. He let my water elemental live.

Next turn I drop Kel'Thuzad, water elemental the 10/x, and let it go. His big dude was frozen so I would survive the turn...just barely. He hits face thinking it didnt matter, there was no way I could stop him. I had 2HP left, he was sitting on 23HP and roughly 20 armor. And thats when the party started by dropping 2 sludge belchers. My water elemental was keeping his heavy hitter frozen and just rezing at end of turn. Belchers were hitting his other dudes and if they died...oh well, they come back and leave the 1/2 taunts behind. Lucky for me he already used his main removal spells earlier in the match so he had no way to take out my Kel and no direct damage to hit my face with. Except for one card. Ragnaros.

I was worried when that hit the board. If it hits my face its game over. If he hits Kel then its game over in 2-3 turns as he churns through all my taunts. But lucky for me Rag hit a 1/2 and wasted its shot. I could just smash all my minions into it to kill it and they all come back yet again for more. After a couple turns I had him down to 16HP and he finally conceded.

[idolminds]

Botters being stripped of gold portraits.

They were responding to people that were saying gold portraits have become something people *don't* want because everyone will now assume you used bots to get it. So Blizzard it resetting the class wins on bot accounts, removing their golden portraits.

We’ve received a lot of feedback regarding the initial action we took against players who were using bots to automate gameplay. One of the major concerns that you expressed centered around whether the offenders would get to keep their golden hero portraits.

We’ve discussed the situation amongst the team, and we agree that those found to be botting should not get to keep their golden hero portraits. We’ve decided that the number of wins associated with each class on the offending accounts will be reset to 0, which will also remove any golden hero portraits that were obtained on those accounts. We know this issue is important to you, and your feedback is extremely important to us as we explore issues like this for the first time in Hearthstone.

As we demonstrated again recently, rest assured that we will remain vigilant and Hearthstone accounts found to be cheating will continue to face permanent closure.

[idolminds]

The latest update added the Goblins vs Gnomes content to the game, though right now it is limited mostly to Arena. They are giving everyone right now a free Arena ticket so you can create a deck and get to select some GvG cards. I did a run, picked up the spell that triggers minions deathrattles...then didnt get any more deathrattle minions. So yeah, THAT run went well...

Also I say "mostly" because cards like hunters Webspinner pulls from the full pool of cards, even in constructed. So some GvG cards can pop up in there because of it.

Note that Arena still gives the basic (now labeled Classic) card packs. Once GvG is out for real on the 8th then Arena will only give GvG packs.

Spectator mode is also in but I havent had a chance to check it out.

[Quemaqua]

Time to resurrect this thread. I said forever I wouldn't play this because I'm not that fond of Warcraft as an IP anymore (though sometimes I get nostalgic and really want some Warcraft), and because I had a feeling I'd like it. But I knew what it was and thought I could hold off. That was great, except people talked about it in IRC so much (I'm looking at you, idol), and Pyro and idol were talking about it so much lately I just felt compelled to try it. Turns out it's as great as everyone says, and the Warcraft-ness isn't bothersome at all. It's actually kind of fun. I think I like Warcraft better in this context even, heh.

Anyway. So yeah, now I'm playing this. And because Blizzard are masters of marketing, I also reinstalled Starcraft II.

Fuck.

[idolminds]

ONE OF US

[Quemaqua]

Watched the Americas championships, which were fantastic. And now I'm actually watching the qualifier matches. I've never felt compelled to do stuff like this for other games. I sort of don't know what's different about Hearthstone. I just love this damned game.

Can't wait to see what the next expansion is going to be.

[idolminds]

Heads up to the casual players in here. This weeks Tavern Brawl is actually a co-op experience. a 2/95 taunted Mechazod is on the board and switches sides each turn. You must worth together with your opponent to kill him which triggers the win. Mechazod has a set of abilities he will pull off at the end of every turn, from executing minions, randomly dealing his damage to other characters, to increasing his own attack. He will not attack with his body and you can't use him to attack with either (he sorta floats above the board, obviously different from your other minions).

Decks are premade, priest and paladin so even if you don't have much of a card collection you can just hop in and play. You earn a card pack win or lose your first game. I joined up with a random player and I played priest and somehow we managed to win the game on my first go. It was awesome.

[idolminds]

Hearthstone is getting a big change very soon with the addition of Standard format.

Ben Brode explains

There will be two formats.

Wild is what we've been playing up until now. Every card ever made is allowed in your deck.

Standard is a new format which allows Basic+Classic cards plus the last 2 calendar years of expansions. So when this update releases you will not be able to use Naxxramas or Goblins vs Gnomes cards in Standard format. That means deck staples like Mad Scientist, Sludge Belcher, Loatheb, Piloted Shredder, Dr. Boom, etc will not be playable in this new format.

You can complete quests and ladder in both modes, though they are separate rankings. End of season rewards will be based on the highest rank you've achieved in EITHER mode. They are also expanding the number of deck slots available from 9 to 18, and this all coincides with a new card expansion that will be hitting this spring and will be usable in Standard and Wild.

There is one wrinkle to all this which makes me not super excited but I'll give my thoughts in a moment. Once this update releases, and expansions or card pack not allowed in standard will be removed from the store entirely. That means you will no longer be able to buy the Naxxramus adventure or GvG card packs in the shop. These cards will still be craftable with arcane dust, including the Naxx cards (which is actually a new feature since they were previously uncraftable).

Ok, so I've been reading a bunch about this today and have had some time to think about it. I think this is ultimately a positive change for the game. The thing I don't like is the stuff being removed from the store. If I want to fill in my GvG cards then I'll have to craft them with dust, which you dont often get much of. And new players won't be able to play the singleplayer of Naxx anymore, and thats a real shame. Those fights are really fun.

On the other hand, this is good for new players or returning players. Naxx has some truly staple cards to the point where it was almost a required purchase when playing Hearthstone. As more expansions released this problem was getting worse and worse and becomes a huge barrier for new players. Now that they can play standard they only really have to think about their Classic set and the last few expansions. This also makes filling in your Classic set more valuable since they are "eternal" cards that will always be usable.

For experienced and pro players this will help shake things up a lot. Piloted Shredder was the best 4 drop in the game. With it out of the picture what do you put in its place? Sludge Belcher is gone so you need to look at the other taunts available to you. This makes the game more interesting because other cards will see play and how people adapt to dealing with them.

I'm sitting on 2000g in Hearthstone. I could splurge and buy a bunch of GvG packs right now and hope for some good stuff to fill in my collection. But that will only be good when playing Wild. I think I will save it and spend it all on packs for the spring expansion and play Standard mode. I also like the solo expansions and buy them as they come out so I'll still get access to them. Just a bummer new players won't get to play them.

[Quemaqua]

My two cents ... it's all great except the removal of the expansions. That's fucking idiotic and will never be anything else. I hope they realize how dumb that is and go back on it.

[idolminds]

 I say they should still make that solo content available even if it doesn't unlock cards. Just make it cheap, like $5 or something. You could still enjoy beating the bosses and unlocking the card backs. Or maybe make it free and it serves as a "demo" for the other expansions. This is what solo content is like, isn't it cool? You should buy the recent ones!

[PyroMenace]

It's just the reality of a trading card game. You can't expect an unlimited number of cards releasing over years and years to not just eventually break the game in some way. If you stop releasing cards the game will stagnate with the players, so theme expansions are released to keep the game fresh and old ones removed so balancing doesn't become so overwhelming and problematic.

[Quemaqua]

Totally. That part is just fine. But they shouldn't remove the single player expansion content. That's just dumb. Those have inherent value in that they're fun to play, they shouldn't just be consigned to oblivion. Change the card model all you want, but those expansions should still be available for people to enjoy.

[idolminds]

The new expansion will be released on Tuesday the 26th! The other day they announced which Basic/Classic cards are getting nerfed. Some good changes in there. Today they announced something good for players. Free packs! Lots of them! When you log in you will get 3 free packs, one of which is guaranteed to have one of the old gods and 2 buff minions. You will also get a quest to win 2 matches in Standard mode to receive 5 free packs, and another quest to win 7 Standard matches for another 5 packs! That's 13 free packs total! Woo! Exclamation points!