We're only a few days away from Scholomance Academy launching on August 6. With that in mind, I thought it'd be interesting to take a look at cards that were tremendously hyped up during release, but for some reason or another, didn't perform quite as well as people initially thought they'd be.
For the most part, I won't be going too far into why they were misjudged as being better than they actually were. Now there are many cards during every reveal season that are hyped up as being good but end up not performing as well as expected, but I'll be pointing out what I consider to be the most noteworthy examples in the game's history.
To many long-time players, Troggzor the Earthinator is the most classic example of a card that was hyped up into oblivion, but ended up not seeing much play and eventually fell into relative obscurity, with people only really remembering it because of the initial hype.
Stopping your opponent's spells and getting growing minions surely has to be good, right? Well, it wasn't that hard for people to clear it with only 1 spell if they really needed to use one at all. The Strong Bad reference will surely give this card brownie points to some though.
Anduin's father. Significant lore character. Okay card.
During the reveal season for The Grand Tournament, Varian Wrynn was hyped up as being one of the strongest cards ever made. It basically made number 1 on the list of nearly every person ever.
In practice however, he ended up flopping, leaving him without much play. Cheating out Grommash Hellscream or Sylvanas Windrunner is definitely amazing, but it's inconsistent and back then, harder to build your deck around. It was only in Whispers of the Old Gods did he finally start seeing some competitive play in Tempo Warrior.
I originally had Hallazeal the Ascended at this spot, as he was an extremely cool card that many people (myself included) thought would be really good, but from personal experience, I can tell you that I definitely had some problems getting him to work.
But in the end, I decided to go with Cho'gall. Cho'gall was basically hyped as being "the next Dr. Boom". His Battlecry would be really strong with Siphon Soul and ... no other Warlock spell at the time. This was basically his problem. He only had one good target, and it was one that not everyone would run. So he quickly fell out of favor. Team 5 effectively indirectly took note of his shortcomings when they made Bloodbloom in Journey to Un'Goro which was a much better card.
The card that single-handedly made Lifecoach quit Hearthstone in favor of Gwent, as soon as the card was revealed. Not even released yet at that point.
The Marsh Queen was quickly hyped up to be the best Quest in Journey to Un'Goro. It didn't really work though. Perhaps because having to play and draw so many 1-drops is bad when you want to draw bigger cards (and in a class which struggles with card draw), or the Reward simply wasn't that powerful? I can't say for sure.
Chameleos is another card that's really cool, and I feel bad about putting it in this article. But let's be real. We can all admit we were wrong on this one.
Chameleos has since been used as an example that people tend to overvalue information of your opponent's hand/deck. This isn't to say that isn't good. It is good, but it's nowhere near as good as people believe it to be. In theory, Chameleos is effectively a Mind Vision that just sits in your hand until you get the perfect card and your opponent doesn't even know that you're holding it. This however requires you to hold it in your hand for multiple turns hoping in vain that you get the card you want which may or may not even be in your opponent's hand.
As much as I love Chameleos for how cool of a card he is, he just simply isn't good enough in a competitive format.
Finally, our first non-Legendary card of the article. Upon being revealed, Revenge of the Wild was considered an amazing Hunter card in a sea of mostly amazing Hunter cards. It actually received the highest community voting score out of every card in the entire expansion.
Needless to say, it didn't really plan out the way we had envisioned. It requires a specific board state of a lot of killable Beasts that are powerful enough that you want to bring them back to life.
Ah, who could forget about Madame Lazul? She appeared in the trailer for Whispers of the Old Gods, and she was the one who banded the League of EVIL together. She also appeared as a card (and a hero) in Rise of Shadows. Just, not as good as we all thought it would be.
Madame Lazul is in a similar boat with Chameleos. We (myself included admittedly) overvalued information of the opponent's hand and thought this card was going to be great. It's even faster than Chameleos since you just play it and see 3 cards in your opponent's hand. She's not that bad, but she's definitely nowhere near as good as the consensus believed she would be.
Next time we see a new card that gives you information on your opponent's hand, be careful not to overjudge how good that effect is.
Feast of Souls is a card that is very interesting to think about why it's here. It was commonly believed that it would be immensely broken. After all, with Coordinated Strike or Command the Illidari, you could draw several cards and deal lots of "pinging" damage. This however proved to be too impractical as other card draw options ended up being better and more consistent. In retrospect, perhaps it would've been extremely hard to accurately judge an entire new class being added to the game?
And that would be it for this article. Stay tuned because next time, we'll be taking a look at the opposite end of the spectrum and talk about cards that were predicted to not be very good, but turned out being a lot better than we initially thought.
![All The Great Dark Beyond Card Reveals for October 12 - Day 2 [Finished]](dark-beyond-reveals-day-2-thumb.webp)
Comments
Funny you should say that...
*zips lips nervously*
In the dungeon I go deeper...
In card reveals I was a sleeper...
I definitely think Lady in White should be on the list, people were losing their shit over that card.
"Casting Inner Fire on your WHOLE deck, wtf were Blizzard thinking!!!!"
As it turns out the card was so exceptionally slow that it was utterly worthless. Even when you played it on curve it was rubbish and if you didn't draw it till late all you had were high health/low damage minions.
Actually, i seen a lot of people loosing their shits for Priests legs, my best example, i remembered days when everyone on hp saying to me Volazj is a good card even great or nearly broken, not like other WotOG top legs, but he was hyped, idk why people overreacting in Priests cards.
I don’t remember specifically when but I had a meme Priest deck that used a few resurrection cards, cheap copy cards, and Herald Volazj to make 4 Ragnaros the Firelords and just let them rain down fire! It was never very good, but around the second Fire Festival I remade it using Big Priest’s shell to not only make 3-4 Rags, but also drop a Drakkari Enchanter to double up on the fun! No Volajz used in the new version though.
"The card that single-handedly made Lifecoach quit Hearthstone in favor of Gwent"
Yeah, I'm sure that was the reason, not the fact that he could not keep up, and his viewers were starting to realize that he was mediocre.
He hasn't even done anything nowadays hasn't he? He does all that big hype and drama of quitting Hearthstone for Gwent, and then he wusses out cuz he got heavily outskilled in that game, then he does more big hype of quitting Gwent for Artifact, and then that game tanked the fuck out and he hasn't been heard since, or seen.
Turns out his only real skill was roping in Hearthstone :^)
people overhyping Void Contract
and Rebuke.
Void Contract was the worst card I ever seen and yet it had 40% meta defining votes.. how does a 8 mana DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING and also is symmetrical for some reason, and guess who got 4 copies of this card?
Rebuke while it was an interesting card and had it uses it's really hard to really pinpoint when it would be used and in the end it was hard to slot in even in.. EVEN paladin which was the rage back then.
I predict Glide is overhyped this expansion, not gonna be a bad card but not a "control killer" not more than Divine Favor was..
to be fair, Rebuke was justified because of Loatheb, a historically powerful card, being the only frame of reference.
I don't remember Void Contract being hyped as anything but a combo killer, which didn't happen because we never had a meta where it would pay off.
Even then, it's 8 mana and Demon project already barely saw play.. And is 2 mana..
And even more it could also not help vs combo.. Or worse help them..
But it would have been a better option for Control Warlock (which I also don't remember really existing at that time anymore) because Project could just miss while Contract was far more likely to hit an essential combo piece.
Either way it was way too slow and useless in most other matchups
Glide isn't a control killer - it's a combo killer. It's annoying against control, sure, but it severely postpones combo decks in a much more profound way.
Demon hunter in general is a combo killer, so it won't matter in that way.
Glide is a control killer because it punishes decks that play for value against demon Hunter, or just any deck that builds card advantage.
Glide is going to be problematic as long as it's a playable card because it invalidates the basics of Hearthstone for your opponent. Glide will only be balanced if it's nerfed to be a strict combo disruptor (aka at a mana cost of at least 6)
Now you mention that.. It might be good enough vs druid just to ruin their Kael'thas shenanigans.
It is but there arent any good combo decks in standard. There are a few in wild, but odd demon hunter is significantly stronger than any other demon hunter deck so I dont think it would be worth playing.
From the looks of this expansion, especially with Lightning Bloom and the Druid legendary that refreshes your mana crystals, it seems like combo decks are quite possibly not going to be fringe for the near future.
Chameleos and Lady in White were so overhyped and they didn't see any play whatsoever. Surprisingly, they were not the worst cards of the expansion as Duskfallen Aviana took the crown of worst legendary ever and keeps it to this day. I also remember people freaking out about Frizz Kindleroost but none of the dragon decks needed her mana discount to be playable.
Madame Lazul is a staple in each priest deck right now. Not broken but very good card.