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A collection of some statements and answers from Ben Brode from his last stream

Allow me to preface this short collection of Q&A by saying that I do not dictate for a living. I have done my best to quote Ben exactly, where time allowed. Apologies in advance, Mr Brode, if anything here is erroneous.

• Addressing the stream generally and speaking thoughtfully

  What perturbed me from when i last streamed was how people would inaccurately paraphrase what i said when posting online. So for those of you doing those recaps...try to convey my tone.

• Why did you nerf Call of the Wild QQ it was my favourite card?

  I still think it's gona be pretty good.

• What is your favourite alternate hero?

  I love Morgl. I think its cool because it feels very hearthstoney. Morgl was created by our team, and it was really cool to add something to the universe of Warcraft.

• You head down to the street to the taco bell? When i was there i got to have some secret stuff. (this question was odd, but Ben seems to somehow have made sense of it)

  that sounds amazing. I love taco bell.

• Will classic set always be standard?

  There are some real upsides to keeping the classic in standard forever. When you take a break from hearthstone and come back, it's a big deal to know that you can return and create a standard deck without needing every card. There's some actual value in having familiar cards in the standard format. One of the problems we were worried over was having was keeping the game fresh, which influenced the choice to nerf what we did before releasing standard.

• Any advice for becoming the world's greatest video game developer?

  chuckles you are asking the wrong guy about that. I did do a video on game design though.

• Have you considered giving all class secrets?

  Yes, but what's important to class design is keeping every class unique. It's important to cut some things out from class to the next.

• The mic is too quiet.

  You know, i don't trust you guys anymore. I've been trolled multiple times over my mic, so i've began to lose faith in the internet.

• Do you always stream on your F2P account?

  Yes because i dont want people to find out my battletag and spam me with requests.

• Do you think magma rager is the still the worst card in the game?

  Nope, not anymore.

• What was the first video game you played?

  Probably WarcraftII. I played a lot of WarcraftII.

• Is it weird that I can't stop looking at your feet?

  chuckling Stop looking at my feet. Why are you looking at my feet?

• Could you use your developer powers to cheat in hearthstone?

  No, absolutely not. I don't think anyone has that power. No one can adjust randomness or something like that.

• When making hearthstone how did you decide to make it a turn by turn game? Any thoughts on making more formats?

  Yeah there's a real good talk between a colleague and i when we developed all that stuff online somewhere. The backstory is once upon a time we were testing WoW/TCG esque windows. But the waiting sucked bigtime. Maybe we can make it better by reducing it to just attacks. We had - opens a boogiemonster YEAH WASSUP *dusts boogiemonster So ah...we were playing around with (mechanics) and people were having a lot of fun with the game. People would play against a minion with taunt and be able to respond in kind. Obviously some cards have taken away from this interactivity, like charge. We've had to nerf a bunch of those. After this we added secrets, because we liked the idea of bluffs and surprises. We also had stun, exhaustion and summoning sickness. Some of these would later be removed. We were thinking about how taunt works and had a system in place where you would attack a taunt minion and it would lose its taunt. A bug cropped up, where taunt minions would not lose their taunt. We realised it was much simpler and a much funner way for taunt minions to exist in the game and so we kept it.

• Play any mobas?

  Yes. I love heroes of the storm. I play a buttload of heroes of the storm. I also love awesomenauts. I play the crap out of awesomenauts.

• Remember you said you were going to draft this deck then go to bed?

  I thought i said i was going to play one game. I feel like you have to play one game after drafting because you always forget what you drafted.

• Can you explain your design philosophy on OTK?

  So OTKs are fine if they are infrequent. Thaurissan procs for 3-4 turns are okay. Combos are great and can be very fun. I think they are very important for the game. I love the new patron warrior. Lock and load is a card that feels combo-y and is very fun. OTKs that win literally out nowhere, like bam there's 30 damage. I don't think those are great.

• Watch out there's someone behind you!

  I need a sign on the back of my chair that says it's a mirror, you know, written backwards.

• When will balance changes be live?

  I am not sure because there are tournaments all the time. They'll be soon though. You really wana ask someone who knows these things.

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