Even though it's been announced more than half a year ago, we still know little to nothing about Mercenaries, Hearthstone's upcoming game mode. Fortunately for us, social managers at the Blizzard HQs might have clicked a wrong button, and listed the Mercenaries trailer as public on YouTube. While it was obviously changed as private in no time, people were quick enough to snag a few important details.
First of all, u/BoaPharaoh was able to record the entire trailer: while it does not contain any gameplay highlights, it is still relevant for us!
But that's not all: we have the video's description too! In fact, u/Pealover was quick enough to take a screenshot, which contains a couple of juicy information:
- Hearthstone Mercenaries will launch on October 12, around a month and a half from now.
- Mercenaries will be and RPG-based and roguelike game mode, which corresponds to what we already know.
Finally, we have a new art, showcasing a handful of well-known characters:
- Varian, King of Stormwind, Cariel Roame and possibly Jaina Proudmoore are shown at the bottom, surrounded by light.
- Lady Prestor and Kazakus are shown above them, in front of a two-headed dragon.
- The background is made of many characters' silhouette - while not all of them are recognizable, the one above the dragon's right head seems to be King Krush. Are they the Mercenaries we will be able to play in the future?
As far as we know, most of Team 5 has been incessantly working on Mercenaries for the last few months: based on Iksar's words, it's going to be a very large game mode, hence all the work needed to get it ready.
Comments
I do not understand how a card game can have a game mode that does not utilize cards. I will not be investing that much time playing Mercenaries and will definitely not be investing any money on it. I started playing HS cause I liked the card game. That is where the fun is for me. Other modes are a cool way to showcase the lore and characters of Warcraft.
Do we know whether HS users can just jump right in to Mercenaries? I vaguely recall that all you had to do to try Battlegrounds was to complete the tutorial, but for Tavern Brawls you had to level somebody up to 20.
I know Mercs doesn't rely on your collection, but my spouse does enjoy a good roguelike, and I'm hoping not to share my account!
Its gonna be a Gottcha Game/hero collector mode to suck up even more of your money. STart on level one and make your characters stronger, pay to win or free to play and slowly grind for years. IT WILL BE A GOTTCHA TYPE GAME!! If you have ever played games like AFKarena you'll know how its an endless money pit.
FWIW they're actually called gacha games.
Even if it is, which I don't think it's going to be since Blizzard actually wants to get more people onto the Hearthstone platform, we can all pretty easily avoid it and keep playing Constructed or Battlegrounds.
First wait, then judge. Blizzard always put (a) heavily unique spin(s) on existing genres.
This is going to be the first single player content I will play since the start of the summer. I am really excited for this.
I wouldn't really call it "leaked" since it's blizzard who made it public.
Also, it seems they have a tendency of "leaking" stuff to the public at certain points in time, which likely means they planned it.
It's Blizz who made it public, but it was definitely not intended.
It's not the first time it's happening. Something is definitely strange (i bet it's all marketing crap).
Why don't they just release the data now since it has become known(if it was leaked indeed)?
They put a lot of effort into this trailer, unlike the Stormwind one, which was cheap trash in comparison. I guess we know where their priorities lie.
It makes me wonder how shocking the Mercs monetization will be. I don't think Blizzard would spend resources to hype something that wasn't expected to bring in a lot of cash right out of the gate.
The downvotes just make it all the sweeter when I come back in October and say I told you so.
Battlegrounds has monetization only around cosmetics (and number of heroes you can choose from), yet it it what basically saved HS from going down.
Don't want to sound too harsh, but you seem to be too much of a Doomsayer when we know little to nothing about Mercs.
Battlegrounds and Duels are both still in beta. Do you think it's because they haven't worked out the tech yet?
No, it's because they haven't figured out how to monetize them without pissing everyone off. I don't think they'll make that mistake a third time. They'll have a money-making plan from the very start with Mercs.
You probably don't want to hear this, but the modes are still in beta because they are still planning to change fundamental aspects of it. Think about the permanent 25% Darkmoon Prizes chance in BG, the complete tribe overhauls or how synergistic the offers during a Duels run are.
That's what beta means from a developer standpoint.
Those are the kinds of things they change on a regular basis after a game goes live. They aren't fundamental at all.
The nature of a beta test has changed a lot over the years. For a company like Blizzard, it is all about marketing. It is certainly not a platform for ongoing development.
(And LOL @ "you probably don't want to hear this" as if your typing it in an internet comment makes it true.)
How did Battlegrounds save HS? I tried googling it but couldn't find anything
BG kept Hearthstone's popularity high in a moment where the game was slowly losing it.
King Krush was already confirmed to be a Mercenary
We are aware of that.
It is not a two headed dragon, but Prestor (Onyxia) and Kazakus in their dragon forms. You can see the dragon on the left is Onyxia and the dragon on the right has tusks.