Yeah I couldn't imagine how dead the game would be if it were physical only. You might have strong card sales due to the insanity of the card market and getting things graded but I can't imagine it would be long-lived. The physical card market is gonna hit a breaking point at some point and I'm looking forward to it - I love collecting cards with great art and playing physical card games but both of those are very difficult right now.
Too right! Why would anyone even want to play Hearthstone with physical cards? The voice lines are one of the best aspects of the game. Animations are fun, too. Oh yeah, I can play any time, any where, without toting around boxes of decks and working around other people's schedules.
Nzoth, Dreams End - Probably most playable in priest because of Sol'etos, and the existing quest priest design is already a proven concept. The only issue here is that umbra already exist and is probably already the better card. Nzoth is more flexible because you can actively reduce its cost, it has somewhat anti-synergy with umbra, and the fact that nzoth can perfectly function as an AoE provided one other minion exist on board. But again, if youre building a deck thats tailored to take advantage of a specific deathrattle, go for umbra. Nzoth is only better if youre building an actual deathrattle-filled deck.
Y'shaarj, Titan Bane - Easily the best old god because it'll fit into just about any deck that plays a decent chunk of minions and is more or less guaranteed to be fully utilized in two turns, ensuring that either an untargetable minion destruction is required or you just suffer it for two turns.
C'thun, Eye of the Empire - Depending on how many side minions there are to trigger its abilities, its probably the most playable old god, simply because you actually get to use it earlier than the others via intermediaries. And if somehow you reach turn 10 having triggered them all, you get to blast 21 damage to your opponent's face.
Mastermind Yogg-Saron - The most baffling but thats by design. Its very nature ensures you will never have control over what yogg's abilities will do, nor what he will do to your hand. Playable? Probably not. He'll probably pyro your face, and I say that because though hearthstone's AI arent blockheads, team5 would probably code this to be 'extra' dumb for the memes alone.
Isiset - Im actually dumbstruck over its design. Unless breaking them out of ice means they can immediately attack, those two massive 10/10s are just gonna twiddle their thumbs while you get a punch to the face. And it also means youre essentially playing a 6 mana do nothing, which even in this power level of hearthstone likely will get you dead.
Uldir Quarantine - Theres likely another rainbow card that'll allow you to trigger this on 4. The problem is, not only are you playing a 3 mana do fuck all, even on curve this card is doing nothing special. Consider that beast tripwire does the same shit on turn 4, zero conditions, and its still only a decent card in a curated deck.
M.O.T.H.E.R - At some point of time it'll probably get nerfed. A mere 5 mana or less AoE spell in hand is all it takes to make this card completely nuts, ensuring that every deck that scales to the late game will play this because why not? Its just too much cost reduction to ignore, and if you safely play this first you probably just win the game. Good thing its a free card eh? Means it'll go through 4 different nerfs and you wont get any dust back.
Shadow Sculpt - Mug shaman bait. But its so good in that deck it'll probably single handedly bring the deck back into tier 2. Maybe.
So new expansion, and I cant pretend that Im not at least slightly hyped. Its old gods, and theres a decent-ish power level in the new cards, meaning theres a non-zero chance they'll see play. But Ive been fooled before. We shall see if the new cards hold any kind of water on release. Team5 might probably nerf cannon/dragon warrior at some point and it'll serve as a signal as to what we can expect.
Brief mention on the assemble keyword. It has strong potential. Complex, different and as the vid showcase have shown, it can actually get a bit insane sometimes. Perhaps for that reason, I feel it'll be more successful than the old gods themselves.
WARDOGS has been enjoyable. I've played a handful of matches and it's very well designed. The games are so long, not a bad thing, it just sucks that if you want to play more than 1 its a huge time commitment haha.
Asking for Hearthstone to be a physical card game is such a braindead question at this moment. The game is VERY CLEARLY designed with digital in mind. There are so many cards in the game that would never work, so many iconic cards, in a physical format. There would be way less infuriating RNG surely in a physical Hearthstone world, but that ain't gonna happen.
It's just comical to me that people would waste an important question on that. If the interviewer had any experience with the game, they should know there are better questions to ask them.
I agree, Monk did take a long time to come but also, does the game really even need it? They already can't balance the classes they have lmao. Maybe another in the clown fiesta will help. I expect patches every couple of days on launch to either make it playable to nerf it.
On the WoW subscription. All the WoW games are under 1 subscription and the price hasn't changed since WoW made its debut so, I'd argue, it's more affordable than ever. We used to talk about how WoW subscription was the cost of a movie ticket and popcorn. Now? You aren't getting popcorn with that price.
The 2030 for StarCraft Dominion was a surprise though. I really expected this to be further long in the pipeline. It looks like Blizzard might pull another Heroes of the Storm, announcing a game way too early. If this is just "StarCraft flavor of Helldivers", will people even care in 3-4 years? They were late to the moba party, they're probably going to be late to another party; And Heroes of the Storm had every Blizzard franchise under one roof, absolute titan beloved IPs, and even that didn't help it gain ground. StarCraft may be beloved, but it is not so forward in people's minds as it once was. I'll play anything StarCraft themed, but I just have many doubts about the staying power.
This is a new era of XBOX though and a new era of Blizzard no longer being under Activision, so I hope I'm wrong about it. It would be wonderful to see something big from them in the StarCraft realm.
Monk took a long time to come to Hearthstone; I'm not coming back to the game whatsoever,but I might peek at their cards to see what is going on.
Unless WoW Forever is Free 2 Play, I literally cannot care about it. Subscriptions are harder to afford than ever before, with the way the cost of living has gone up and up.
WC3 Forsaken Kingdom sounds cool; neat that they're surprise-dropping it today. I don't feel overly pressured to reinstall Battle.net specifically for that, though.
Has Diablo even been resurrected yet? Diablo IV was about Lilith and her father Mephisto, with some hinting that Malthael might be roaming around causing trouble too. Last I was aware there was no sign of Diablo himself, so...how has he already claimed Sanctuary in Diablo V?
2030 for a new Starcraft shooter game? Did they just start production today? By 2030 we could all be dead from a Trump-induced nuclear holocaust; I'm not drumming up excitement this far back.
They're definitely going to have some sort of focus on bounce. So many Pandaren cards are themed around cards being bounced. Just about every fan-created Monk class has some sort of Chi mechanic, so that's going to be present too.
Seriously cool stuff. I'm curious how all of this will feel. I love the classic world, and new content sounds great. I wonder if any makes it into the main game in the future and if this is something that could truly keep my attention. WoW Classic has kept my attention for short periods of time, nothing like what was once possible with the game. The modern version though does not hold my attention at all so it would be cool to have new stuff in an old world; The game I actually enjoy.
Don't go buying a new screen yet. Apparently developers need to implement the VRR for docked mode, so games that are already out would need to receive an update to support it.
I agree that this is likely to be a "bit of a stretch" with regard to the whole close collaboration continuation but it is a very welcome announcement. Sony's exclusivity nonsense and their unwillingness to do things on PC is annoying. I give Nintendo a pass because they have always been in their own little ecosystem and don't go around bullying people because they just make incredible first-party games; You know exactly what you're going to get when you're buying into the Nintendo ecosystem.
Sony on the other hand, they love to toss their weight around and then cry like a baby when XBOX buys Call of Duty. I'm not saying XBOX or Microsoft is some special case of being the holy light in gaming or anything, but Sony can seriously shove a rake up their-
I'm getting away from the topic at hand. I'm glad Kojima was able to push forward with the game. If Sony cut it loose, it must be really weird. Or they're trying to stop bleeding money after the Destiny & Bungie debacle lmao.
Nintendo over here making me want to buy an entirely new TV now for VRR lmao.
The data transfer one is a huge upgrade though and I suspect it may have something to do with that whole Switch 2 Zelda 40th Edition haha. I definitely didn't pre-order one... nope I didn't need it at all.
If you're wondering where Spyro ranks on that best-selling list, it is well known that Spyro was not quite as commercially successful as Crash, but still ranks up there very formidably.
The original game, Ripto's Rage/Gateway to Glimmer, and Year of the Dragon rank 18th, 26th, and 28th respectively on that list.
I thought Zelda was the only character who looked kinda weird.
The art style though, I'm a massive fan of what they've done. I was a little worried about it when we only had "bed link" to go off of but the entire game looks very cohesive and gameplay makes it work well. I'd love to see this running on the hardware though and not a compressed stream.
I too am chasing the console release. I'm also getting the amiibos, pro controller, and almost certainly will get the foil edition of the physical release no matter the cost.
The Ocarina they announced interests me. I have always wanted an Ocarina and remember in Nintendo Power when Songbird Ocarina would advertise in every issue. Makes sense to mayyybe chase down an official one from Nintendo now all these years later. We'll see though, I'm more interested in the game and hardware.
Does anyone know what happens if you play this after having played a minion of every single type? I've found this card super useful in Spells-only Mug Shaman, and I don't know how likely it is to actually play all minion types (I think there are 12?). Just curious.
Hearthstone Dev Interview Teases 2v2 Might Be Permanent
Yeah I couldn't imagine how dead the game would be if it were physical only. You might have strong card sales due to the insanity of the card market and getting things graded but I can't imagine it would be long-lived. The physical card market is gonna hit a breaking point at some point and I'm looking forward to it - I love collecting cards with great art and playing physical card games but both of those are very difficult right now.
Hearthstone Dev Interview Teases 2v2 Might Be Permanent
Too right! Why would anyone even want to play Hearthstone with physical cards? The voice lines are one of the best aspects of the game. Animations are fun, too. Oh yeah, I can play any time, any where, without toting around boxes of decks and working around other people's schedules.
12 New Cards Leaked From New "Reign of the Black Empire" Hearthstone Expansion, New Old God Keyword
Nzoth, Dreams End - Probably most playable in priest because of Sol'etos, and the existing quest priest design is already a proven concept. The only issue here is that umbra already exist and is probably already the better card. Nzoth is more flexible because you can actively reduce its cost, it has somewhat anti-synergy with umbra, and the fact that nzoth can perfectly function as an AoE provided one other minion exist on board. But again, if youre building a deck thats tailored to take advantage of a specific deathrattle, go for umbra. Nzoth is only better if youre building an actual deathrattle-filled deck.
Y'shaarj, Titan Bane - Easily the best old god because it'll fit into just about any deck that plays a decent chunk of minions and is more or less guaranteed to be fully utilized in two turns, ensuring that either an untargetable minion destruction is required or you just suffer it for two turns.
C'thun, Eye of the Empire - Depending on how many side minions there are to trigger its abilities, its probably the most playable old god, simply because you actually get to use it earlier than the others via intermediaries. And if somehow you reach turn 10 having triggered them all, you get to blast 21 damage to your opponent's face.
Mastermind Yogg-Saron - The most baffling but thats by design. Its very nature ensures you will never have control over what yogg's abilities will do, nor what he will do to your hand. Playable? Probably not. He'll probably pyro your face, and I say that because though hearthstone's AI arent blockheads, team5 would probably code this to be 'extra' dumb for the memes alone.
Isiset - Im actually dumbstruck over its design. Unless breaking them out of ice means they can immediately attack, those two massive 10/10s are just gonna twiddle their thumbs while you get a punch to the face. And it also means youre essentially playing a 6 mana do nothing, which even in this power level of hearthstone likely will get you dead.
Uldir Quarantine - Theres likely another rainbow card that'll allow you to trigger this on 4. The problem is, not only are you playing a 3 mana do fuck all, even on curve this card is doing nothing special. Consider that beast tripwire does the same shit on turn 4, zero conditions, and its still only a decent card in a curated deck.
M.O.T.H.E.R - At some point of time it'll probably get nerfed. A mere 5 mana or less AoE spell in hand is all it takes to make this card completely nuts, ensuring that every deck that scales to the late game will play this because why not? Its just too much cost reduction to ignore, and if you safely play this first you probably just win the game. Good thing its a free card eh? Means it'll go through 4 different nerfs and you wont get any dust back.
Shadow Sculpt - Mug shaman bait. But its so good in that deck it'll probably single handedly bring the deck back into tier 2. Maybe.
So new expansion, and I cant pretend that Im not at least slightly hyped. Its old gods, and theres a decent-ish power level in the new cards, meaning theres a non-zero chance they'll see play. But Ive been fooled before. We shall see if the new cards hold any kind of water on release. Team5 might probably nerf cannon/dragon warrior at some point and it'll serve as a signal as to what we can expect.
Brief mention on the assemble keyword. It has strong potential. Complex, different and as the vid showcase have shown, it can actually get a bit insane sometimes. Perhaps for that reason, I feel it'll be more successful than the old gods themselves.
What Are You Playing? - Stellar September 2026
WARDOGS has been enjoyable. I've played a handful of matches and it's very well designed. The games are so long, not a bad thing, it just sucks that if you want to play more than 1 its a huge time commitment haha.
Hearthstone Dev Interview Teases 2v2 Might Be Permanent
Asking for Hearthstone to be a physical card game is such a braindead question at this moment. The game is VERY CLEARLY designed with digital in mind. There are so many cards in the game that would never work, so many iconic cards, in a physical format. There would be way less infuriating RNG surely in a physical Hearthstone world, but that ain't gonna happen.
It's just comical to me that people would waste an important question on that. If the interviewer had any experience with the game, they should know there are better questions to ask them.
Everything Announced at BlizzCon's Opening Ceremony [ENDED]
I agree, Monk did take a long time to come but also, does the game really even need it? They already can't balance the classes they have lmao. Maybe another in the clown fiesta will help. I expect patches every couple of days on launch to either make it playable to nerf it.
On the WoW subscription. All the WoW games are under 1 subscription and the price hasn't changed since WoW made its debut so, I'd argue, it's more affordable than ever. We used to talk about how WoW subscription was the cost of a movie ticket and popcorn. Now? You aren't getting popcorn with that price.
The 2030 for StarCraft Dominion was a surprise though. I really expected this to be further long in the pipeline. It looks like Blizzard might pull another Heroes of the Storm, announcing a game way too early. If this is just "StarCraft flavor of Helldivers", will people even care in 3-4 years? They were late to the moba party, they're probably going to be late to another party; And Heroes of the Storm had every Blizzard franchise under one roof, absolute titan beloved IPs, and even that didn't help it gain ground. StarCraft may be beloved, but it is not so forward in people's minds as it once was. I'll play anything StarCraft themed, but I just have many doubts about the staying power.
This is a new era of XBOX though and a new era of Blizzard no longer being under Activision, so I hope I'm wrong about it. It would be wonderful to see something big from them in the StarCraft realm.
Everything Announced at BlizzCon's Opening Ceremony [ENDED]
Monk took a long time to come to Hearthstone; I'm not coming back to the game whatsoever,but I might peek at their cards to see what is going on.
Unless WoW Forever is Free 2 Play, I literally cannot care about it. Subscriptions are harder to afford than ever before, with the way the cost of living has gone up and up.
WC3 Forsaken Kingdom sounds cool; neat that they're surprise-dropping it today. I don't feel overly pressured to reinstall Battle.net specifically for that, though.
Has Diablo even been resurrected yet? Diablo IV was about Lilith and her father Mephisto, with some hinting that Malthael might be roaming around causing trouble too. Last I was aware there was no sign of Diablo himself, so...how has he already claimed Sanctuary in Diablo V?
2030 for a new Starcraft shooter game? Did they just start production today? By 2030 we could all be dead from a Trump-induced nuclear holocaust; I'm not drumming up excitement this far back.
Monk Is Finally Coming to Hearthstone in 2027
They're definitely going to have some sort of focus on bounce. So many Pandaren cards are themed around cards being bounced. Just about every fan-created Monk class has some sort of Chi mechanic, so that's going to be present too.
World of Warcraft: Forever What's Next at BlizzCon 2026 [ENDED]
Seriously cool stuff. I'm curious how all of this will feel. I love the classic world, and new content sounds great. I wonder if any makes it into the main game in the future and if this is something that could truly keep my attention. WoW Classic has kept my attention for short periods of time, nothing like what was once possible with the game. The modern version though does not hold my attention at all so it would be cool to have new stuff in an old world; The game I actually enjoy.
Everything Announced at BlizzCon's Opening Ceremony [ENDED]
That was a pretty wild opening ceremony! Lots of announcements, too many almost.
[Updated] Special Limited-Time Rattlegore Event for Hearthstone Mercenaries Has Ended Earlier Than Previously Announced, Solution Being Worked On
Hopefully the next patch makes Rattlegore coins easier to obtain. Until then, would you rather grind bounties or relax with Drift Boss?
Epic Games Store Freebies This Week - Astral Ascent, and More
Astral Ascent is a pretty good platformer, can recommend ;-)
Nintendo Switch Consoles Updated to Version 23.0.0, Adds VRR While Docked
Don't go buying a new screen yet. Apparently developers need to implement the VRR for docked mode, so games that are already out would need to receive an update to support it.
Kojima Production Moves PHYSINT Over to Xbox, After Playstation Wanted to Cancel the Game
I agree that this is likely to be a "bit of a stretch" with regard to the whole close collaboration continuation but it is a very welcome announcement. Sony's exclusivity nonsense and their unwillingness to do things on PC is annoying. I give Nintendo a pass because they have always been in their own little ecosystem and don't go around bullying people because they just make incredible first-party games; You know exactly what you're going to get when you're buying into the Nintendo ecosystem.
Sony on the other hand, they love to toss their weight around and then cry like a baby when XBOX buys Call of Duty. I'm not saying XBOX or Microsoft is some special case of being the holy light in gaming or anything, but Sony can seriously shove a rake up their-
I'm getting away from the topic at hand. I'm glad Kojima was able to push forward with the game. If Sony cut it loose, it must be really weird. Or they're trying to stop bleeding money after the Destiny & Bungie debacle lmao.
Nintendo Switch Consoles Updated to Version 23.0.0, Adds VRR While Docked
Nintendo over here making me want to buy an entirely new TV now for VRR lmao.
The data transfer one is a huge upgrade though and I suspect it may have something to do with that whole Switch 2 Zelda 40th Edition haha. I definitely didn't pre-order one... nope I didn't need it at all.
Metorid: Ravenous Launches January 28th, 2027
Looks awesome; I should probably get around to opening my Metroid Dread case at some point...
Crash Bandicoot Turns 30 Years Old Today - Crash and Spyro Games on Sale to Celebrate
If you're wondering where Spyro ranks on that best-selling list, it is well known that Spyro was not quite as commercially successful as Crash, but still ranks up there very formidably.
The original game, Ripto's Rage/Gateway to Glimmer, and Year of the Dragon rank 18th, 26th, and 28th respectively on that list.
Kirby and the World Beyond Announced for Nintendo Switch 2
(stolen shamelessly from Arlo) Kirby: Suck of the Wild.
Breaking Ground
I've done this a couple times. I like the collaborative vibe of this season, so I figured why not set some other folks up for success.
Wild Rift Patch 7.3 Overhauls Ranked and Adds Rift Rumble, a New Three-Team Mode
Just for clarity, Riot didn't release any images yet with this press release which is why its quite barren. I was surprised.
Breaking Ground
Is anyone else not donating when it's at 99/100 just to give others the chance to get The Last Nail achievement?
New Ocarina of Time Details Revealed: Key Characters, Location Overviews, and Gameplay
I thought Zelda was the only character who looked kinda weird.
The art style though, I'm a massive fan of what they've done. I was a little worried about it when we only had "bed link" to go off of but the entire game looks very cohesive and gameplay makes it work well. I'd love to see this running on the hardware though and not a compressed stream.
I too am chasing the console release. I'm also getting the amiibos, pro controller, and almost certainly will get the foil edition of the physical release no matter the cost.
The Ocarina they announced interests me. I have always wanted an Ocarina and remember in Nintendo Power when Songbird Ocarina would advertise in every issue. Makes sense to mayyybe chase down an official one from Nintendo now all these years later. We'll see though, I'm more interested in the game and hardware.
New Ocarina of Time Details Revealed: Key Characters, Location Overviews, and Gameplay
Man, Link looks so weird in this. All the kids do, honestly, but Link has it the worst, especially with his 🥺 face when having an item above his head.
The rest of the game, though looks amazing! Can't wait to get it, alongside that Switch 2.
The Legend of Zelda Movie Gets a Logo, No Subtitle
No trailer either. Only Nintendo would have a movie coming out in 7 months and not show a trailer for it.
Mountain Map
Does anyone know what happens if you play this after having played a minion of every single type? I've found this card super useful in Spells-only Mug Shaman, and I don't know how likely it is to actually play all minion types (I think there are 12?). Just curious.