Last Tuesday the Hearthstone team took to reddit to answer a whole bunch of questions from the community. We covered a few of the bigger responses at the time: Standard and Wild nerfs, which were soon confirmed; the team's thoughts on Class Identity and card draw; Hadidjah and their enthusiasm for the Hearthstone animations.

However, there were a lot of questions asked and answered in the AMA. We've compiled the most interesting of them here - thanks to Noxious for scouring the thread for them!

We've only included the most interesting quotes in full here, in order to try and keep the article somewhat of a reasonable length. You can click through the Sources to find more information.

Working From Home

We got some fantastic insight into how the team has been coping with working from home during the lockdown. Production Director Nathan Lyons-Smith detailed how they moved to working from home early in March, and some of the challenges that you face that don't happen when you're working in an office together.

Hadidjah provided their perspective as both an artist and manager of other artists. (Source)

HearthstoneTeamAMA was an account used by a variety of team members during the AMA, including Nathan here.

Quote From HearthstoneTeamAMA

Nathan Lyons-Smith - Production Director

Hi Hearthstone Community!

Thank you for the question u/dadozer  - this has definitely been a challenge. 🙂

I am immensely proud of the team for preparing and launching Hearthstone's biggest-ever release, while simultaneously shifting to working from home 100% of the time. We transitioned almost the entire team to WFH in the second week of March. Blizzard's IT team did an absolutely phenomenal job providing the right hardware and software solutions, and helping us through the transition.

Our most significant technical challenge was figuring out how to develop and test new iOS and Android builds. Our prior development process relied on Blizzard's trusted wifi and shared devices across the team. In early March we audited WFH gaps and realized mobile would be a major problem. We ended up shifting priorities to develop a remote solution, learning new remote device testing software, and purchasing additional phones. We were able to get ahead of this in early March, and validate solutions just as we shifted to WFH.

There are a handful of challenges we continue to face that are common across other remote development teams I have spoken with.

(1) All communication feels formal - We previously relied on a lot of casual conversations and dynamic collaboration to riff on ideas and deliver the fun of Hearthstone. It is _much_ harder to do that remotely when all discussions feel more formal because you can't just turn your chair around. Today we are testing having an 'open video call' for anyone to join to see if we can recreate some of this experience. If you're reading this answer and have solved this challenge for your teams, please share! 🙂

(2) Burnout - When you're working from home, it's important to segment work time from home time. We have asked the team to not have meetings before 9am, after 6pm, or between 12-1pm. We want everyone to have a healthy balance.

(3) Morale – Hearthstone is fun because our team has fun making it together. We are finding new and creative ways to have fun together remotely. We are playing more games together, more frequently. We’ve done trivia, party games, and we just started an internal Hearthstone team Overwatch league. The other directors and I are on a team together and I hope we're able to get a win…

(4) Social Isolation - We know that it's important that we keep connecting as humans. Our leads are spending extra time connecting with individuals, understanding their challenges, being there for them, and helping where they can.

The team is tackling these challenges with enthusiasm, and I continue to be impressed with our ability to develop remotely.

I'll end with a plug - Hearthstone is still hiring! Come work (from home?) with us - https://careers.blizzard.com/en-us/openings/all/hearthstone/all/all/1

Upcoming Heroes

We got a few interesting details about future hero skins!

The next Druid hero hasn't been chosen yet, but Hadidjah says they brought up how much of a fan-favourite Hamuul Runetotem is the last time a list was made. (Source)

The next hero in line will apparently be somebody's sibling - it's unclear yet what class they're for. (Source)

While the next Rogue hero won't be coming as soon as some would like, we have confirmation that they've picked who it will be! Apparently, they're Legendary.

Quote From HearthstoneTeamAMA

No details on dates and it likely won't be as soon as you want, sorry for that. But we've locked down who is the next Rogue hero and we think players will be happy with this Legendary character. - Ben

The Core Set

The Core set received a lot of focus in the AMA after the recent changes to Priest. We got a lot of great information about the team's thoughts on the Classic and Basic set, as well as how it could change in the future.

On a lighter note to start with, Hadidjah has said that they enjoy updating old Legendaries with new animations when they can. While there isn't a specific plan in place, the fact that the team has grown since they first started updating them (Deathwing and Bloodmage Thalnos were their first projects) means that each member should have more time for passion projects like that. (Source)

Celestalon (Chadd Nervig) reiterated that Demon Hunter would receive a Classic set in the future, although the details of it are up in the air at the moment - they'll likely pull some cards from the Initiate and Year of the Phoenix sets to comprise it, though they may receive some changes, along with some entirely new cards. (Source)

Celestalon also let us know that while Priest was in need of an overhaul the most in the eyes of the team, they are open to changing up other classes if the changes are well-received. (Source) In addition to this, he expanded upon why they made the changes they did to Priest - why some cards were buffed while others were rotated. (Source)

Ben Lee also confirmed that they're taking a more in-depth look at Classic and Basic as a whole, confirming that there's more work to be done, both for Priest and in general. He also called out cards like The Beast specifically as ones that might be looked at in the future.

Quote From HearthstoneTeamAMA

The Basic and Classic changes we made this year felt necessary. We are taking a longer, more in-depth look at Basic and Classic internally. We've nothing specific to announce on this front yet, but there is more work to be done on Priest, and on other things. - Ben (Source)

Some of the most iconic Legendary cards around are from the Classic set and many of them have seen play consistently throughout the years: Alexstrasza, Malygos, Harrison Jones, and Edwin VanCleef all come to mind. But there are certainly a few that haven't aged well, such as “The Beast."

We recently made some changes to the Priest Basic and Classic sets and are waiting to see how those play out. If players enjoy these changes and we feel they’re better for the game, we're certainly open to making more changes to the Basic and Classic sets. - Ben (Source)

Upcoming Features

There was a lot of discussion about potential features coming in the future - some of them quite soon!

Deck slots were asked about, and Ben said that they're taking the request for them seriously. He also confirmed that the ability to rearrange decks is coming in this expansion phase! (Source)

Spectating a friend during an Arena draft has been talked about internally, and is on the list of features they want to get to. (Source) Also on this list are upgrading cards to Golden, (Source) cards retaining their owner's card backs (Source) and a Clan/Guild system. (Source) While none of these should be expected any time soon (especially the last one), it's good to have confirmation that they're thinking about them.

The upcoming game mode was teased to allow players to use their full collections; there will also be achievements tied into past content. (Source)

Celestalon also confirmed a few features in a single post. A large update to the Collection Manager is planned for the long-term (the specific question was about the option to only see golden/non-golden cards if you have both) though nothing short-term. Demon Hunters will be receiving some new voice lines for attacking, to tone down the need for VENGEANCE! The ability to see Quest Progress in-game was soft-confirmed to be something they'll look at, though he was concerned about UI clutter.

Auto-squelch was denied as a net negative.

Quote From Celestalon

Hearthstone's clean and intuitive UI is a huge part of its charm and success, and so we're very careful when it comes to UI complexity. "Options" can just turn into "messy and confusing" quickly, if we're not careful.

1) We have some long-term goals of revisiting the Collection Manager, especially on mobile, and I think this sort of thing would likely fall under that. Nothing planned in the short-term though.

2) We hear the request for auto-squelch, but still think it would be a net negative for the game. Emotes are implicitly good-natured, and we want to support them as such. Manually squelching can be used for the extremely rare outlier of toxicity.

3) One of the great things about Demon Hunters is that they attack a LOT. It's super fun! However, that has the downside of sounding repetitive, hearing that voice line over and over. In the next major patch, we'll be adding some alternative exertion lines for Illidan attacking, to reduce the repetition. Not TOO much though, what would Lord Illidan be without his VENGEANCE? ;)

4) We'll keep this idea in mind. In general, there's risk of clutter; when you're in a game, we want you focused on playing that game. But, maybe there's something here we can do, in the rare case that you're wondering "have I played enough Pirates for my Pirate quest yet?"

Battlegrounds

Not a lot was said about Battlegrounds this time around, but there were a couple of nuggets of info from Connor Kou.

Tirion may return to Battlegrounds in the future; if he does, it'll be with a new Hero Power. (Source)

They toyed with the idea of hand mechanics in Battlegrounds for Dragons, but found that the gameplay it encouraged wasn't what they wanted. This eventually evolved into the mechanic of caring about other Dragons, such as on Red Whelp and Razorgore, the Untamed. (Source)

Future Balance Changes

The team discussed a few potential avenues for future card changes, including their policy on buffs.

Res Priest has been discussed a lot internally; they recognise that a lot of people dislike playing against it, but are sympathetic to those who enjoy the deck. (Source)

Ben acknowledged Madame Lazul, Nozdormu the Timeless and Valdris Felgorge as cards he'd like to see played more. While this was in response to a question about cards the team would like to see buffed, no concrete promises were made that they'd be buffed in the future. (Source)

The team are open to reverting more card nerfs in the future (when the cards rotate to Wild, or for cards that are already Wild). (Source)

While there are no plans for a Rise of the Mechs style event in the near future, the team are open to individual buffs now and then for recent cards they see as underperforming (as recently shown with Libram of Justice).

Quote From HearthstoneTeamAMA

We don't have any current plans for something exactly like the Rise of the Mechs event from last year. In general, if cards we release aren't achieving our aims, then we're open minded about making changes. Don't be surprised if you do see the odd buff alongside other card changes we make throughout the year. - Ben

Miscellaneous Trivia

The team also gave us some fun insight into unused ideas, potential for the future and team trivia.

Fury was a mechanic tested for Demon Hunter, but was ultimately discarded in favour of Outcast, which felt more fun and flavourful. (Source)

Minion type based strategies are something they like to see ebb and flow with time, along with archetypes based around things like Treants or Silver Hand Recruits. They don't seem to have any plan to specifically tie these to a minion type - Waste Warden is given as an example of a fringe benefit. (Source)

There was a fun design based around the 'Titan's Grip' ability which has yet to make the game due to design challenges. It involves equipping a minion as a weapon, using its stats for the weapon's stats, but issues came with asking how the minion's abilities would affect the resulting weapon. (Source)

There are a little over 100 people on the HS Team now. (Source)

Dual-class Arena will return for Halloween Hallow's End. (Source)

Cats will feature in an upcoming archetype somehow. (Source, Source) This exciting clue was also given - Wheeeee! (Source)

Finally, Hadidjah gave us some of their favourite behind-the-scenes goofs, jokes and mess-ups. I won't quote it here to save space, but I highly recommend reading it for a good laugh. (Source)