Blizzard has announced that Duels is being removed from Hearthstone. Goodbye Beta tag...
The removal of the mode will take place during a client update in April 2024, which should align with the release of the next expansion. They will be trying out some Duels treasures in Arena in an upcoming patch, which should be an interesting turn of events for the Arena mode.
Duels made its original debut during the Scholomance Academy era of Hearthstone with the mode launching on November 17, 2020. Featuring the beloved dungeon run-style mechanics where players build a deck and add new cards to it throughout their runs, and those oh-so-powerful heroes and hero powers, the mode gave Hearthstone players a different way to play with their cards. The largest issue Blizzard ran into the mode was a lack of ways to monetize it, which is likely a big reason behind development of the mode being previously halted.
This is Hearthstone's third mode to be discontinued, after Classic's recent removal following the addition of Twist, and the support for Mercenaries ending almost a year ago. Here's what Blizzard had to say about the sunsetting of Duels.
Quote From Blizzard As we think about the future of Hearthstone and where the team can best focus their efforts, we’ve made the difficult decision to discontinue support for the Duels Mode. We do not have plans for any further scheduled updates for Duels, and the Mode itself is scheduled to be removed from the Hearthstone client in April 2024.
This change will allow us to shift our resources to where we feel they will have the most impact, including Traditional Hearthstone, Battlegrounds, and more. To that end, Battlegrounds Duos is scheduled for an upcoming Battlegrounds patch, and we’re trying out some Duels Treasures in our next Arena season—more details soon.
We want to thank all our passionate Duels fans for every pile of loot, treasure, and hard-fought victory you’ve collected along the way. It’s been a heroic run, and we couldn’t have done it without you.
Rest in peace, Duels. Your fate was undeserved. Allow us to mourn the death of the mode with the cinematic trailer that marked its release.
What About the Achievements?
Quote From Ridiculous Hat It might be an odd question @RidiculousHat but do you know what will happen to the duels achievements? I've been trying to get them all. Is it a case any I don't get will remain as not done in the client forever (so I should try and get the last 12-0 before apirl)
i don't know but will ask
Could Twist be Next?
Quote From Ridiculous Hat If twist doesn't perform better in the future is this something people are going to have to worry about there too? Seems super risky to even bother investing into those bundles and packs when the play rate is equally low.
tbh i have no idea what i could say in response to this that wouldn't be overanalyzed. there are some plans for twist, but also we definitely understand there's going to be a hit to player trust today. i don't think i can reasonably counteract that in a tweet or two
our goal with this move is to make sure we can give better support to the modes that are currently in the client. i hope we can accomplish that goal, but i wouldn't expect you to feel great about this answer today. does that make sense?
Comments
I'm seeing a parallel to streaming vs theaters, where all these similar modes cannibalize each other for attention. Battlegrounds is lame for me, but at least it's different.
Why should I play Duels and care about treasures when there's tons of dumb bullshit in Standard/Wild/Twist anyway? I can use my collection there.
I personally am saddened by the news. I use to play Duels a lot, even it´s mainly for the XP achievements, I enjoy it a lot. It´s a great way to try the new cards and complete the achievements even you don´t own required cards by finding it in Duels buckets. You don´t have to risk losing your rank on Ranked by playing wacky decks or pay a fee to play Arena, where you have only a slightly chance to get the cards you would need for the achievements. I understand why would they abandon the mode since it wasn´t very popular lately, but why to remove it completely, while Mercenaries can still go on? Money, I know... Sad, sad panda :/
Same.
My stats tell me that I have 3600+ wins in Duels and till date I am still busy trying to complete the related achievements which are at 75% now. Will Team 5 get rid of these achievements as well perhaps?
Really seems like they are actively axing all game modes which do not generate enough revenue. Where does it stop though, I wonder?
Long time no see by the way, welcome back ☺️
Currently I´m 15 wins away from 4000 wins in Duels (my Ranked wins are around 5k), but my achievement count is only at 45% done, since I play the mode for XP achievements, not competitively. Your numbers are very impressive tho, I wonder what they would do with the mode achievements, if they keep them forever or just simply erase them for good..
Sad to see this. Not because of Duels leaving, I haven't played that mode in ages. But why does it leaving have to affect Arena?
Leave my boy be! I don't want that overpowered stuff in the chill cardpicker mode.
Duels had a lot of untapped potential. Yes it has issues but nothing that can’t be fixed by a dedicated team.
like if the number of cards was the issue, why couldn’t just do a set rotation? Or a hero/treasure rotation ? Why did they have to switch to set-based buckets? Didnt they have a maching learning algorithm to fix the drop rate of individual cards in synergy-based buckets ?
but yeah, kotick’s new yacht aint gonna pay itself I guess
back to dalaran heist it is
FWIW Kotick left Activision Blizzard.
That doesn't invalidate anything you've said, just wanted to clear that up for anyone that missed the message.
And I'm glad his legacy will be remembered as the epitome of corporate greed.
He personally killed many Blizzard games, especially OW2. Many devs spoke publicly after his departure. All summed up in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnvWJIQK9rc
this is the most soul crushing news blizzard has dropped on me in years. i absolutely adore duels with every fiber of my being and i cannot fathom why they would remove it entirely instead of just letting it be like mercenaries. even if it slowly becomes more outdated and shitty and only gets one update a year that would be better than putting the entire mode in the trash bin. i cant even begin to comprehend what hearthstone looks like without duels. am i gonna have to spend gold on arena, a mode ive played probably like 20 times in the past 8 years, if i want to try and make my gold back?
i am unimaginably disappointed and deeply concerned for the future of this game
At least they are honest in their communication; it's a matter of limited resources and where to put the few that they have.
Very sad to see Blizzard are completely removing the mode from the client. Not sure why they can't treat it the same as Mercenaries but the client is getting quite cumbersome I guess. The mode wasn't making money for Blizzard and the Firestone stats show it's abysmal player count so I can understand the reasoning to remove it, just can't accept it 😭💔
Ah man, I play so much Duels. Finally hitting that spell heavy run with the orb making things cheap feels so satisfying. Back in the day, I had a broken DH run with Double Time and a bag of coins that did 40 damage by turn 2 - first 12 and 0 run I ever had.
Not sure where Blizz will put the resources but Duels did become a hassle on the backend as they kept adding in every set for some evil combinations. Oh well, guess I will never get that 12 win Diablo run…
Perhaps unsurprising. Duels have been in the rut for quite a time now, perhaps since they practically killed the bucket system and every game progressively gets greedier to the point that post 7 wins is almost always a value matchup.
Judging by the queue times, its likely that the mode doesnt really see much attention at all. I pretty much drop duels the moment they changed the bucket system and havent looked back. But once a while I drop in (usually to complete quests etc.) and find myself waiting minutes to get a match and even one loss puts me further down the waiting time queue. Got to the point that I just didnt want to bother.
As to why they decided to remove the mode entirely? If I have to speculate its very likely because unlike mercs and classic mode, you cant realistically keep it static. It'll have to have at least some form of attention even if its nothing more than merely switching the expansions around every 4 months.
Duel treasures in arena could be fun, if the entry fee wasn't still 150 gold. No one will go and play that anymore than they do now, very well it might result in the opposite if it makes Arena even more lopsided. I don't know why they haven't made any attempts to alter the entry fee over the years. I guess so they can claim that there is too few Arena players to be worth putting money into developing that game mode. Would track with them shutting down all these other game modes, so Arena is just surviving cause it is being ignored. Ironic.
RIP Duels.
At least we still have Twist, and that mode has a lot of potential. It's just not up right now unfortunately.
Is there a reason to hope this will be replaced for a new mode of some sort? They've cut Mercs, Duels and Twist seems too quiet for what they had planned (I know that the team was supposed to be moved to other games).
I don't really know how I feel about Duels, never really liked the format. I suck at arena, but at least the draft makes me feel like I have some sort of randomnes
Furious about this announcement. Dungeon runs were one of the best creations (in my eyes) for this game. Being able to do that in a PvP mode in Duels has been the one thing that's kept me consistently going expansion after expansion. Been playing since the Beta and Duels is the one thing that keeps me engaged and interested in progressively interesting matches once I grow tired of Standard.
That they stopped supporting the mode is nothing new sadly, however I'm shocked that they are outright removing it. It made sense for classic, since the population of that mode was a lot lower and because they reused the assets/UI for twist, but for Duels? My best guess is that they want to combat the splitting playerbases by combining Arena (which is getting more attention lately) and Duels. Though I was never a Arena guy, so I guess my Tavern Tickets that I used for heroic duels runs are going to gather dust again.
I mean, even Mercenaries (as much as I love this mode) is still in the client. Are they going to keep it because of pve and are going to disable pvp there too in the future?
Though the timing is somewhat interesting. The April patch they are describing is surely going to be the one that starts of the next HS Year with the next Expansion. They also did hint at Hearthstones 10. Anniversary during Blizzcon and a upcoming steam release is already confirmed per datamined strings and graphics. I wonder if they are going to market it as some kind of soft re-launch with a more defined gameplay (Traditional, Battlegrounds, Arena). No more "Hearthstone is a platform for card games" I guess.
What's going to happen with the live service team btw? As far as I remember they are responsible for Tavern Brawls, Solo Adventures, Arena and Duels. Are they solely focusing on Arena now, is there something new coming up ("and more") or were the 10 people they lost in the recent internal restructering the entire/most of the live service team? I have so many questions right now that are hopefully getting answered with the announcement of the next Hearthstone year.
Mercs cannot be removed from the client because people paid money for their Mercs collections, which cannot be used without the Mercs client. In contrast, any cards used in Duels are from Hearthstone proper and are therefore still usable without Duels.
(Technically, I'm sure the EULA says they are within their rights to remove Mercs, but they won't do it because it would generate too much ill will.)