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Flux, I have trouble finding the forums since the site was updated.  But on the front page there is an article from a few days ago featuring a picture of Harth Stonebrew that doesn't link to anything.  It says "Reuse" as the article title, so it makes me feel like maybe you guys meant to post an article about Harth's "Iconic Hands" and accidentally put up a link to an article template or something.

Just wanted to make sure someone on the team is aware so you could get it fixed.

That sounds fine in an ideal world run by ideal leaders/management, but reality is not so wonderful. What you're asking for is self-regulation on the subject, which is what they've been allowed to do for decades now. Companies self-regulating is why we have 10-year-old cocoa farmers in Africa pretending they're 21 to avoid child labor fines. It's why here in the US we have freight trains that have become longer and longer, frequently block traffic, and are run by two people at the most (the industry wants to cut that down to one person per train). Self-regulation leads to a path of least resistance for the highest profit, regardless of things like safety, public wellbeing, or indeed inclusion.

I don't believe GLAAD is demanding that every game from now on must absolutely include an LGBTQ person: that's unreasonable, unachievable, and will certainly lead to companies "shoving them (in) just for the sake of inclusion", without tact or care for what they're doing. But in a lot of ways that's already what some are doing, and shaming them into adopting a more inclusive mindset will not be enough to affect positive change.

In American football (the NFL, to be particular), they were forcibly pushed to adopt the Rooney Rule to demand general managers and team owners include ethnic-minority candidates for head coaching positions in their batch of interviews. You could argue "wouldn't the best candidate get the job, regardless of the color of their skin?" And again, in an ideal world that would be true, but it's been proven that the truth is far more racially biased. It is unfortunate, but this is similarly true for video game companies with the issue of LGBTQ inclusion. They've already demonstrated that - to some capacity - they can't be allowed to self-regulate, or we end up right where we are now: with a pitifully low LGBTQ inclusion-rate and numerous examples of negative stereotypes dotting the digital landscape.

How about we let companies decide for themselves whether they want lgbt characters in their games instead of forcefully shoving them just for the sake of inclusion? There's a difference between an lgbt character made with heart and passion and characters that were forcefully remade into lgbt or were made entirely around their sexual orientation (that being their main highlight). If you try to force it onto companies they will take the second route and fail miserably which will just make things worse in online communities.

Though this is  Wild deck (listed as standard)

of course we're playing for fun, but you have to understand that just because someone else's deck isnt fun to play against when you're losing doesnt mean that deck shouldnt exist because for every mill/combo/etc. deck that makes people rage theres a whole community of players that are passionate about that deck and the different complexities to playing it, and those players shouldnt just be disregarded.

best example would be combo decks in mtg. in the eternal formats there are plenty of combo decks like storm or charbelcher that can combo off and kill extremely early (as early as turn one in the case of my beloved belcher). no one losing against that is going to have fun. however, instead of just ruining those decks, wizards of the coast prints cards like countermagic that give others the ability to stop those decks from going off in an interactive way.

Making predictions late, so obviously we know about Whizbang's Workshop.

Given that the portrait in the WW big bundle is a Patches portrait, I was thinking it could be a clue to the second one, which could be a Pirate themed adventure.  Maybe a group of pirates, or a few different pirate factions, are going to a desert isle in search of treasure, only to find the isle is overrun by murlocs!  So you get a bit of a throwback to their first main expansion by calling it Pirates vs Murlocs!

The final one, something with Elune, so finally a Night Elf focused expansion.

From RidiculousHat on Twitter: "the shaman deck uses the 3 current shaman quests. all of these decks are prebuilt but we aren't sharing any decklists before launch. you'll have to wait and see!" 

Hi. Just realized i never told you my gripe with the website :D

After going into a community thread and pressing the "back" button on my phone, the main page defaults to the "news" section/tab instead of opening up the Community section/tab, where i navigated from.

Not sure you can do something about it, but putting it out there :)

Other than that, the new looks needs a bit of getting used to, but it's a clear improvement for organizing stuff over the previous design. Nice going!

First one - seems to be related to rockets and such. As a WOW area i'd say Tanaris, Stonetalon Mountains or that gnome city area in Northrend (K3 - storm peaks?).

Second one - seems to be related to pirates and sea shells, so i'd wager on the east coast of Tanaris.

Third one - looks like something from Moonglade, or something from another WoW expansion that i never played. Yet, it may be related to lunar stuff (druids, lunar festival). Not really seeing the space theme tbh.

Drift Boss. is a mesmerizing driving experience that requires skillful steering and quick reactions.

Probably not. One, they definitely would've come out the gate with that. Two, it specifies Shaman Quests, and I seriously doubt they're adding three Quests per class. If I had to guess, the token puts Unite the Murlocs, Corrupt the Waters, and Command the Elements in play as one mega-quest.

So ... Quests confirmed? I assume they would have said "from the past" if they were from the past.

Can we become friends? I know a fairly great game that we can play jointly called Connections game. I think it's quite awesome.

I'm not complaining about the cosmetics; I even said in my original post that I'm fine with it. But I do spot a trend of ever more items for purchase being added to the game and often at pretty high price levels, which makes me think they're under pressure to bring in more money. Especially as they're cutting costs at the same time, with layoffs and cancelling Duels.

It's a common misunderstanding that companies exist to make profit. Companies exist to provide goods and services. They have to make a profit to continue to exist, but that doesn't make it their purpose.

I'm not even a F2P player: I typically buy the Tavern Pass and a cheap bundle each season. However, those purchases always felt optional. I just really dislike being pressured into buying something. And with games like Diablo Immortal being straight up pay-to-win and games like Marvel Snap putting you permanently behind the meta if you don't pay, I don't think it's strange to be worried about the future of Hearthstone.

Why would I make something so innocuous up? It's possible I'm misremembering, certainly. Looking at old threads when the announcement happened, Odd Shaman was the biggest Shaman archetype, so it was definitely a nerf in that specific deck. Maybe that's what I'm remembering.

Why are you complaining about cosmetic stuff? If you don't want it, it does not affect you in any way.

It does not indicate "desperation." It indicates a company that is interested in making money. That is the whole point of every for-profit company ever created in the history of humankind. 

Worry all you want; Hearthstone is a for-profit venture, and you're extremely naive if you ever thought free players were some sort of protected species.

I don't remember "most people" calling it a nerf. You flat-out made that shit up.

Obviously it was desirable in a deck that could take advantage of it, but it's not great for the game overall. The current Totem Shaman build, for example, has maybe one card that would benefit from spell damage.

By punishing decks that don't use burn spells, it's cutting Shaman off from minion-heavy archetypes. Strength Totem doesn't do that, because it at least works on other totems you might create, even if you are running few or no minions.

It wasn't possible to pre-order minisets in the past, but they could easily introduce that, as they already have the required infrastructure. I will admit they probably wouldn't do a 5-week release cycle for a miniset, so maybe 50% is not realistic, but if they run miniset pre-orders for two weeks, pre-order periods would end up spanning 40% of the year.

The point is, they seem to be increasingly desperate for more monetization: signature cards, the ridiculously expensive diamond cards and skins, adding skins to Heroic Brawl etc. While Corridor Sleeper is unlikely to break the meta, they have shown that there is no hard boundary preventing them from introducing paid exclusives that could have game play impact on Standard. I'm worried what this means for the future of the game.

I don't think these early access cards are going to break the game. If they were good cards, it would be a different story, but it looks like they chose "trap" cards that will not be worth playing until after rotation (and maybe not even then).

I think this is a MUCH better move than destroying the meta by temporarily re-releasing un-nerfed cards as they have in the past.

They are not going to do it for mini-sets because you cannot pre-order mini-sets. (Also, the pre-release phase of mini-sets is only a week.)

I see a painting canvas in the bottom left of the new game board... really hope we can paint while playing