People also said that about Battlegrounds, yet here we are. I personally think the answer to the question is that the game lacked a main pve mode for people who enjoy those. Yes, there were Dungeon runs in the past, but that got kinda boring ones you have gone through all the chapters in every difficulty.
Mercenaries on the other hand seems to have a huge amount of not only mercenaries to level, but also a wide selection of bounty missions with an even bigger ammount of variaty than dungeon runs had. The gameplay showed that the bounties are seperated into regions, with each of them having three bounty missions. While they havn't said an exact number, the size of the slider implied that there are around 8-10 different areas, so roughly 60 different bounties to go through. On top of that there is also the heroic difficulty, as well as post launch legendary one. AND they promised regular updates, which will surely include more areas and gameplay mechanics, just like for the other 2 premier modes "Constructed" and "Battlegrounds".
Oh, it's not just Hearthstone. Anyone who's been in a popular fandom knows that there's almost always a salty part of the community who does this all the time. Whenever the creators make a decision they don't like, they make complaints and threats, ruining the creators' days. I know this is a serious issue considering it harms the creators' wellbeing, but I've seen this so frequently that for me it's not even surprising anymore.
I've definitely been posting grumpier Hearthstone rants lately but this is my platform of choice because of the fantastic community Flux and the others have created. I know I can rant here without an endless stream of responses devolving into profanity (I take my downvotes - and occasional upvotes - with grace).
My biggest issue with Mercenaries is that it was advertised as a mode "not utilizing your collection" implying something similar to Battlegrounds, and instead it actually requires an entirely new collection. Cards ARE an amazing way to organize stats, abilities, and information for games, but when I hear "Hearthstone can be a platform for card games" then I expect NEW teams to be assigned to come up with NEW games. It bothers me that Activision/Blizzard is a giant - we're talking about a company with 8 BILLION in revenues - and the same live-content team for Hearthstone is tasked with developing an entirely new game. Mercenaries might be great, but from the visuals (game board specifically) to the marketing, it feels under-developed. Possibly because it is, in fact, underdeveloped, through no fault of the developers themselves, but something like this probably required a lot more investment from the company as a whole. There's a line that can be drawn from some of the workplace harassment and labor violations - a culture of overworking people - and trying to have the company's flagship auto-battler and RPG battler be made on the fly within an existing IP. While I'm sure it was easier to build them in the Hearthstone client than starting from scratch, I don't think this approach is actually giving the community OR THE DEVELOPERS what they want.
I don't agree that the players are ruining the game. Maybe we can share the blame. Players are unhappy because of decisions Blizzard AND developers made, they don't get a pass on responsibility since they said multiple times that they have freedom to make decisions. It's also their job to have a pulse on the community, since we are part of the game. Yes, some people go overboard with the things they say, but there's also a lot of valid criticism, I don't think is fair to only focus on the extremes.
AS for the new mode, I've seen Iksar clearly say multiple times in his AMAs that it was taking up from other areas, so clearly they are sharing responsibilities. Now tell me, why did we need a new mode? They devoted all this time an resources that could have been used in making the games we already have, better. But not only that, we got a new mode that no matter how forgiving it is to f2p, is still monetized like a casino. And yes, every game that implements gatcha systems is a cash grab. And that already being one the most criticized things about traditional HS, they still chose to do exact same thing. No matter how fun the gameplay is, it's still predatory, when easily it didn't have to be. And I think is perfectly valid for the players to point that out.
And honestly the whole speech of "if you're not happy, leave" is such a cop out. Extremely reductive not only for the discussion, but the game itself. If people didn't actually like the game and weren't passionate about it, they wouldn't be playing it. Being positive is not always going to make something better.
Blaming the players is absolutely never the answer.
If players are being obnoxious and toxic, they're probably upset. If you're trying to sell them something, it's your job to make them happy. They don't owe you a cent.
To pretend that players are entitled rather than devs is hilarious.
Players will always complain, exploit, etc., to push the limits of any system. That's an opportunity for the developers to improve their system.
Hearthstone languished for a long time, and the dev team started making some changes more recently, except now we've got turn 4-5 lethal. They nuked patron warrior from orbit when it was like a turn ~17 combo. To have no content on game modes people like for so long, and then fed another thing that no one asked for, is going to piss a lot of players off.
Like you said, they made a horrible presentation. That alone speaks volumes. If all resources and focus is on this game mode that they enjoy internally so much--why didn't they put in the time to make a great presentation? Why wasn't it self-evident how great the game mode is from their crappy presentation?
It leaves players more than skeptical.
Blizzard did the same thing with HOTS (dead), Diablo Immortal (don't you have phones?) and Overwatch (promise a ton of content, go dark for 2 years, then announce PvE while neglecting PvP). They're on thin ice and it's up to the developers to make their case as to why anyone should care.
I personally do not want an auction house. I like Hearthstone because the only time I am required to interact with another player is when I am in a match. There is also the fact that adding an auction house would require a change to the dust system. Eitherway, I would rather dust economy be improved than a bandaid feature be added.
I agree with this comment so much. Honestly HS is expensive, I'm upset and angry at how the cost to play has continued to increase in the game I love. I don't need to buy, so long ago, I limited myself to just a pre-order. Still dropping $130 (more for me here in Aus after 'exchange' rate) on a game we know nothing about really makes me feel sad for the state of the game. The motive is $$ that's it, confirmed, they may as well have said "don't you guys have credit cards?" The comparison to "Raid" and other games of that ilk make me sadder that a once great PC gaming company (actually maybe never true considering lawsuits) , is taking this shallow path to profit. Re the game mode, I'll give it a go, but having recently bought and played Slay the Spire and loved it, and being wary of getting sucked into a new uber expensive mode I've resolved to not spend a $. If this come across as negative, it's just a reflection of how I feel about the changes in the game.
I'm on the side of being for an auction house for Hearthstone, depending on the implementation. Being able to trade gold for someone else's cards would be a great way to not only let newer players have the ability to 'pick and choose' what cards they want instead of having to rely on good pulls to disenchant, but also just give players more options to control their collection. Converting it to actual money it gets a bit sloppy, I know MTGO has been able to keep it that way for a while but just due to the nature of the games its not really possible to bot it and cause any reasonable form of inflation.
As for the polarization comments, I think that mainly just comes down to you and Ayala are using different interpretations of the word. Ultimately at the end of the day, winrates aren't affected by how a matchup feels. Like at the start of the expansion, quest mage vs handbuff paladin definitely felt bad for the paladin, but overall the matchup was much more even than it actually felt. The polarization that I believe Iksar to be referencing is stuff with the case of original Quest Rogue, where it would have some absolutely horrid matchups against some of the field, yet dominated a good chunk of the rest of it.
Ultimately I think that polarization is just thrown around too much to say a meta is bad. Ultimately different people like different types of metas, a more polarized one lets the player have more leniency to specifically target a deck while in a more level meta this would just be unreasonable. Hell, one of my favorite metas was the RPS meta back in MSOG and the post quest rogue Un'goro meta, despite both of them being heavily polarized.
Finally for your last point about not addressing the quests, I feel like this is mainly done as a way to try and keep hype for the new expansion up. Seeing cards that were literally the main attraction of the set get nerfed is not a good look hence why a lot of post-launch nerfs target older cards unless the newer ones are 100% the culprit, such as the case with Galakrond Shaman or Battleground Battlemaster. I can understand them not messing with the quests just yet, especially assuming there is going to be another mini expansion to hopefully give the underperformers new toys, as well as non-quest decks as a whole.
I think the AH would be more of a spend your gold and dust. It would make any real-money related stuff much harder to do since it then involves account trading. Also, if it isn't direct player to player trading and done through an AH with anonymous purchases, you just pay the lowest price for a card that is currently on the market, its not like someone could sell you a card in real life by putting it up for an absurd amount of gold, letting that player buy the card out and then returning their gold by doing the same thing with a crappy common. World of Warcraft switched to a commodities auction house which was such an incredible change when buying goods, it would work well for a card game.
One thing that I thought would always be a good idea, though it would be way too complicated for players and the interface would be to have it so cards you get for free through gameplay are trade restricted but ones you get with real money packs would be freely tradeable. Or free ones require equivalent trades.
Auction house for hearthstone is a scary thought. I don't think I ever want to see it. Limited time events for card trading among friends is interesting, an entire auction house will just create incentives for people to start multiple accounts for grinding real life cash. I mean, in bronze wild I'm seeing 2 out of 10 games being a bot, and that's just for grinding gold. Imagine what will happen if you can convert said gold to USD.
As for the comment on polarizing, I think its fair to say that we are currently in one of the most polarizing metas for some time. On one hand there's hyper aggro decks like shadow priest and token/taunt oracle druid, and the other are the combo/solitaire decks. Some matchups are so miserable its astounding. After two rounds of nerfs, it has gotten better, but not addressing the quests directly is baffling.
I agree with this post for the most part. Sadly it is really hard to create a positive community in a competitive game. You cant just expect people to sugarcoat anything when they are playing a frustrating game. Yea it is the game that is frustrating. It is a card game that you have no control over of most things but yet the outcome of the game is decided on wheter you win or lose. That being said Hearthstone has always been salty. Its not 2021 that changed that. However the promises of the game is changing. Instead of a game that I could play lets say in a bus or vacation, the game is getting faster and faster. Mana is getting more obsolete and minion combat is out of discussion. You cannot expect the same people who played yesterday to be happy today. Which Im pretty confident that they weren't that much happy yesterday too. This expansion was kinda like a decent of dragons in terms of feels. Which also had a huge backlash for most standard players. The difference is that instead of nerfing older cards they went directly with the galakronds. Something that they are not doing for some reason today (Im talking about the quests). And also please, you cannot have an entitled community. The game is for the player, the player is not for the game. If the community is raging mad the first place to look for a cause is the game. Not the people.
One thing I noticed is that while the flanking minions on the bottom row (your side of the board) are random copies of minions on the top row (opponent's side of the board), two things are always true:
the order in which the minions appear on the bottom row is always the same as the order in the top row
the two minions on the bottom row are never neighbors on the top row: there is always at least one minion between them, although it can be as many as five
My guess is that the flanking minions represent some kind of operation or filter you have to apply to the top row.
It looks like each minion represents a 7-digit number: the 3 digits from attack, 3 from health and 1 from tribe, where tribe is the digit with the lowest significance, followed by health, followed by attack, since that is the casting order when you build your 7-digit answer on the question mark minion.
When at some point I entered the number formed by all the tribes from the top row (so basically just cast the spells matching the top row tribes from right to left), I got a board of different minions. I don't know whether this always works or whether I got lucky that the flanking minions happened to ask for that.
Edit: It seems I didn't make progress at all. Apparently after a certain time the server changes which minions you are given for phase 1.
I wrote down the top row as a 7x7 grid of digits and tried to input columns from that grid, but except for that one time I never saw any progression.
I can see how self inserting youself as a character is narcissistic. I just don't think that the way Blizz was doing it (or at least in HS) was narcissistic.
After the episode of having to rename in game characters because the higher ups are such sleezebags, I can understand this decision. I never understood why people would want things named after themselves, it will always at some point in time create controversy one way or another. St Petersburg has been renamed so many times within the last 150 years its just comical.
They may have not presented the game mode in the wisest possible way, but you sound like you already know everything about it and you can give a very trustworthy verdict. Which is definitely not the case.
Okay, let's nerf The Demon Seed - how? And by "how" I mean: how to nerf in order to make it less powerful but not completely destroy it. Because, you know, people who play and enjoy Questline Warlock are players too!
The easiest way to nerf quest warlock is no avoid fatigue damage, that totally broke the hearthstone fundamentals and basics, its a non sense interaction.
What bothers me the most is all the misinformation people are willing to believe -- and even more willing to spread -- just because they are upset or distrustful or plain or ignorant.
I've seen so many people ranting about things that aren't even true, it makes me wonder how they even know Mercenaries exists. They certainly haven't taken the time to find out any actual facts about it.
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
People also said that about Battlegrounds, yet here we are. I personally think the answer to the question is that the game lacked a main pve mode for people who enjoy those. Yes, there were Dungeon runs in the past, but that got kinda boring ones you have gone through all the chapters in every difficulty.
Mercenaries on the other hand seems to have a huge amount of not only mercenaries to level, but also a wide selection of bounty missions with an even bigger ammount of variaty than dungeon runs had. The gameplay showed that the bounties are seperated into regions, with each of them having three bounty missions. While they havn't said an exact number, the size of the slider implied that there are around 8-10 different areas, so roughly 60 different bounties to go through. On top of that there is also the heroic difficulty, as well as post launch legendary one. AND they promised regular updates, which will surely include more areas and gameplay mechanics, just like for the other 2 premier modes "Constructed" and "Battlegrounds".
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
Oh, it's not just Hearthstone. Anyone who's been in a popular fandom knows that there's almost always a salty part of the community who does this all the time. Whenever the creators make a decision they don't like, they make complaints and threats, ruining the creators' days. I know this is a serious issue considering it harms the creators' wellbeing, but I've seen this so frequently that for me it's not even surprising anymore.
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
I've definitely been posting grumpier Hearthstone rants lately but this is my platform of choice because of the fantastic community Flux and the others have created. I know I can rant here without an endless stream of responses devolving into profanity (I take my downvotes - and occasional upvotes - with grace).
My biggest issue with Mercenaries is that it was advertised as a mode "not utilizing your collection" implying something similar to Battlegrounds, and instead it actually requires an entirely new collection. Cards ARE an amazing way to organize stats, abilities, and information for games, but when I hear "Hearthstone can be a platform for card games" then I expect NEW teams to be assigned to come up with NEW games. It bothers me that Activision/Blizzard is a giant - we're talking about a company with 8 BILLION in revenues - and the same live-content team for Hearthstone is tasked with developing an entirely new game. Mercenaries might be great, but from the visuals (game board specifically) to the marketing, it feels under-developed. Possibly because it is, in fact, underdeveloped, through no fault of the developers themselves, but something like this probably required a lot more investment from the company as a whole. There's a line that can be drawn from some of the workplace harassment and labor violations - a culture of overworking people - and trying to have the company's flagship auto-battler and RPG battler be made on the fly within an existing IP. While I'm sure it was easier to build them in the Hearthstone client than starting from scratch, I don't think this approach is actually giving the community OR THE DEVELOPERS what they want.
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
I don't agree that the players are ruining the game. Maybe we can share the blame. Players are unhappy because of decisions Blizzard AND developers made, they don't get a pass on responsibility since they said multiple times that they have freedom to make decisions. It's also their job to have a pulse on the community, since we are part of the game. Yes, some people go overboard with the things they say, but there's also a lot of valid criticism, I don't think is fair to only focus on the extremes.
AS for the new mode, I've seen Iksar clearly say multiple times in his AMAs that it was taking up from other areas, so clearly they are sharing responsibilities. Now tell me, why did we need a new mode? They devoted all this time an resources that could have been used in making the games we already have, better. But not only that, we got a new mode that no matter how forgiving it is to f2p, is still monetized like a casino. And yes, every game that implements gatcha systems is a cash grab. And that already being one the most criticized things about traditional HS, they still chose to do exact same thing. No matter how fun the gameplay is, it's still predatory, when easily it didn't have to be. And I think is perfectly valid for the players to point that out.
And honestly the whole speech of "if you're not happy, leave" is such a cop out. Extremely reductive not only for the discussion, but the game itself. If people didn't actually like the game and weren't passionate about it, they wouldn't be playing it. Being positive is not always going to make something better.
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
Blaming the players is absolutely never the answer.
If players are being obnoxious and toxic, they're probably upset. If you're trying to sell them something, it's your job to make them happy. They don't owe you a cent.
To pretend that players are entitled rather than devs is hilarious.
Players will always complain, exploit, etc., to push the limits of any system. That's an opportunity for the developers to improve their system.
Hearthstone languished for a long time, and the dev team started making some changes more recently, except now we've got turn 4-5 lethal. They nuked patron warrior from orbit when it was like a turn ~17 combo. To have no content on game modes people like for so long, and then fed another thing that no one asked for, is going to piss a lot of players off.
Like you said, they made a horrible presentation. That alone speaks volumes. If all resources and focus is on this game mode that they enjoy internally so much--why didn't they put in the time to make a great presentation? Why wasn't it self-evident how great the game mode is from their crappy presentation?
It leaves players more than skeptical.
Blizzard did the same thing with HOTS (dead), Diablo Immortal (don't you have phones?) and Overwatch (promise a ton of content, go dark for 2 years, then announce PvE while neglecting PvP). They're on thin ice and it's up to the developers to make their case as to why anyone should care.
Dean Ayala's Hearthstone Community Q&A #28 - Warlock in Wild, Arena, Rewards Track Cosmetics Coming for Mercenaries & Battlegrounds, & More
I personally do not want an auction house. I like Hearthstone because the only time I am required to interact with another player is when I am in a match. There is also the fact that adding an auction house would require a change to the dust system. Eitherway, I would rather dust economy be improved than a bandaid feature be added.
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
Agree, killing control and removing the need to consider your resources, board, opponents board has just really made the game feel bland.
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
I agree with this comment so much. Honestly HS is expensive, I'm upset and angry at how the cost to play has continued to increase in the game I love. I don't need to buy, so long ago, I limited myself to just a pre-order. Still dropping $130 (more for me here in Aus after 'exchange' rate) on a game we know nothing about really makes me feel sad for the state of the game. The motive is $$ that's it, confirmed, they may as well have said "don't you guys have credit cards?" The comparison to "Raid" and other games of that ilk make me sadder that a once great PC gaming company (actually maybe never true considering lawsuits) , is taking this shallow path to profit. Re the game mode, I'll give it a go, but having recently bought and played Slay the Spire and loved it, and being wary of getting sucked into a new uber expensive mode I've resolved to not spend a $. If this come across as negative, it's just a reflection of how I feel about the changes in the game.
Mercenaries: My First Impressions
Just sharing an article by RHat.
https://www.pcgamer.com/blizzard-mercenaries-announcement/
Good read.
Dean Ayala's Hearthstone Community Q&A #28 - Warlock in Wild, Arena, Rewards Track Cosmetics Coming for Mercenaries & Battlegrounds, & More
I'm on the side of being for an auction house for Hearthstone, depending on the implementation. Being able to trade gold for someone else's cards would be a great way to not only let newer players have the ability to 'pick and choose' what cards they want instead of having to rely on good pulls to disenchant, but also just give players more options to control their collection. Converting it to actual money it gets a bit sloppy, I know MTGO has been able to keep it that way for a while but just due to the nature of the games its not really possible to bot it and cause any reasonable form of inflation.
As for the polarization comments, I think that mainly just comes down to you and Ayala are using different interpretations of the word. Ultimately at the end of the day, winrates aren't affected by how a matchup feels. Like at the start of the expansion, quest mage vs handbuff paladin definitely felt bad for the paladin, but overall the matchup was much more even than it actually felt. The polarization that I believe Iksar to be referencing is stuff with the case of original Quest Rogue, where it would have some absolutely horrid matchups against some of the field, yet dominated a good chunk of the rest of it.
Ultimately I think that polarization is just thrown around too much to say a meta is bad. Ultimately different people like different types of metas, a more polarized one lets the player have more leniency to specifically target a deck while in a more level meta this would just be unreasonable. Hell, one of my favorite metas was the RPS meta back in MSOG and the post quest rogue Un'goro meta, despite both of them being heavily polarized.
Finally for your last point about not addressing the quests, I feel like this is mainly done as a way to try and keep hype for the new expansion up. Seeing cards that were literally the main attraction of the set get nerfed is not a good look hence why a lot of post-launch nerfs target older cards unless the newer ones are 100% the culprit, such as the case with Galakrond Shaman or Battleground Battlemaster. I can understand them not messing with the quests just yet, especially assuming there is going to be another mini expansion to hopefully give the underperformers new toys, as well as non-quest decks as a whole.
Dean Ayala's Hearthstone Community Q&A #28 - Warlock in Wild, Arena, Rewards Track Cosmetics Coming for Mercenaries & Battlegrounds, & More
I think the AH would be more of a spend your gold and dust. It would make any real-money related stuff much harder to do since it then involves account trading. Also, if it isn't direct player to player trading and done through an AH with anonymous purchases, you just pay the lowest price for a card that is currently on the market, its not like someone could sell you a card in real life by putting it up for an absurd amount of gold, letting that player buy the card out and then returning their gold by doing the same thing with a crappy common. World of Warcraft switched to a commodities auction house which was such an incredible change when buying goods, it would work well for a card game.
One thing that I thought would always be a good idea, though it would be way too complicated for players and the interface would be to have it so cards you get for free through gameplay are trade restricted but ones you get with real money packs would be freely tradeable. Or free ones require equivalent trades.
Dean Ayala's Hearthstone Community Q&A #28 - Warlock in Wild, Arena, Rewards Track Cosmetics Coming for Mercenaries & Battlegrounds, & More
Auction house for hearthstone is a scary thought. I don't think I ever want to see it. Limited time events for card trading among friends is interesting, an entire auction house will just create incentives for people to start multiple accounts for grinding real life cash. I mean, in bronze wild I'm seeing 2 out of 10 games being a bot, and that's just for grinding gold. Imagine what will happen if you can convert said gold to USD.
As for the comment on polarizing, I think its fair to say that we are currently in one of the most polarizing metas for some time. On one hand there's hyper aggro decks like shadow priest and token/taunt oracle druid, and the other are the combo/solitaire decks. Some matchups are so miserable its astounding. After two rounds of nerfs, it has gotten better, but not addressing the quests directly is baffling.
Dean Ayala's Hearthstone Community Q&A #28 - Warlock in Wild, Arena, Rewards Track Cosmetics Coming for Mercenaries & Battlegrounds, & More
More Diablo stuff would be amazing! Fingers crossed! 🤞🔥
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
Just saw Trumps video on how Mercenaries mode works. In fact just like he says its an entirely new game but within the HS interface.
After seeing his video my hopes that this new game might be good and not as much of a cash grab just went up. I recommend giving it a watch
Going Forward, Characters in Hearthstone Won't be Named After Employees
that dean ayala card really is a nice reference
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
I agree with this post for the most part. Sadly it is really hard to create a positive community in a competitive game. You cant just expect people to sugarcoat anything when they are playing a frustrating game. Yea it is the game that is frustrating. It is a card game that you have no control over of most things but yet the outcome of the game is decided on wheter you win or lose. That being said Hearthstone has always been salty. Its not 2021 that changed that. However the promises of the game is changing. Instead of a game that I could play lets say in a bus or vacation, the game is getting faster and faster. Mana is getting more obsolete and minion combat is out of discussion. You cannot expect the same people who played yesterday to be happy today. Which Im pretty confident that they weren't that much happy yesterday too. This expansion was kinda like a decent of dragons in terms of feels. Which also had a huge backlash for most standard players. The difference is that instead of nerfing older cards they went directly with the galakronds. Something that they are not doing for some reason today (Im talking about the quests). And also please, you cannot have an entitled community. The game is for the player, the player is not for the game. If the community is raging mad the first place to look for a cause is the game. Not the people.
A New Hearthstone Puzzle Card Back "Gift of Elune" Has Been Added - Solve the Mysteries of Stormwind
One thing I noticed is that while the flanking minions on the bottom row (your side of the board) are random copies of minions on the top row (opponent's side of the board), two things are always true:
My guess is that the flanking minions represent some kind of operation or filter you have to apply to the top row.
It looks like each minion represents a 7-digit number: the 3 digits from attack, 3 from health and 1 from tribe, where tribe is the digit with the lowest significance, followed by health, followed by attack, since that is the casting order when you build your 7-digit answer on the question mark minion.
When at some point I entered the number formed by all the tribes from the top row (so basically just cast the spells matching the top row tribes from right to left), I got a board of different minions. I don't know whether this always works or whether I got lucky that the flanking minions happened to ask for that.
Edit: It seems I didn't make progress at all. Apparently after a certain time the server changes which minions you are given for phase 1.
I wrote down the top row as a 7x7 grid of digits and tried to input columns from that grid, but except for that one time I never saw any progression.
Going Forward, Characters in Hearthstone Won't be Named After Employees
I can see how self inserting youself as a character is narcissistic. I just don't think that the way Blizz was doing it (or at least in HS) was narcissistic.
Hearthstone's Arena Mode Could Potentially See Updates Next Year Thanks to Blizzard's Annual "Free Your Mind" Event
I like the idea of Tavern Tickets being more of a thing. Mode rewards could also be used to nudge you towards other modes:
A good Arena run nets you a "pick from all 10 heroes" on your next Duels run.
A good Duels run nets you a "revise 3 draft picks" on your next Arena run.
Winning the Tavern Brawl with all 10 classes nets you an extra Mercenaries campfire quest.
Going Forward, Characters in Hearthstone Won't be Named After Employees
After the episode of having to rename in game characters because the higher ups are such sleezebags, I can understand this decision. I never understood why people would want things named after themselves, it will always at some point in time create controversy one way or another. St Petersburg has been renamed so many times within the last 150 years its just comical.
Going Forward, Characters in Hearthstone Won't be Named After Employees
Always, stupid, and narcissistic are often words used by the same.
Hearthstone is Looking at Possible Nerfs and Buffs in the September Balance Patch, Wild Balance May be Coming
The easiest way to nerf quest warlock is no avoid fatigue damage, that totally broke the hearthstone fundamentals and basics, its a non sense interaction.
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
What bothers me the most is all the misinformation people are willing to believe -- and even more willing to spread -- just because they are upset or distrustful or plain or ignorant.
I've seen so many people ranting about things that aren't even true, it makes me wonder how they even know Mercenaries exists. They certainly haven't taken the time to find out any actual facts about it.
Going Forward, Characters in Hearthstone Won't be Named After Employees
It was always a stupid, narcissistic practice anyway.
Rant: Why Devs Making New Content Aren't Ruining the Game, Players Are
Sure, the customer it's always wrong...