Naxx out?

The classic set (most notably in neutral) tends to be the most 'vanilla'. This is why we've significantly decreased the rate at which classic neutral cards appear in arena going forward.

I'll be hanging around here intermittently today trying to clear up questions regarding these changes or arena related stuff in general. Happy Wednesday!

We did consider it. One of the most difficult draft problems for us to overcome is the ever-increasing card pool. Something I'm relatively sure of is that when a new set comes out, it would be cool to go to arena to draft that new set and check out what its synergies are all about. It becomes difficult to accomplish that when there start to be 1500+ cards available to draft. We want there to be realistic synergies to draft in arena, and we want drafting the set that just came out to be a fun way to discover the latest and greatest new cards.

That said, making arena standard is just one way to do this. I would not consider these current changes to be forever ones. The main takeaway for me in this development time was that smaller card pools lead to more interesting draft experiences, standard-arena specifically was a simple way for us to accomplish that. I could definitely see us rotating older sets in and out of the pool at some point, but for now I'm curious how these current changes will play out. Looking forward to getting feedback once the changes are released.

Will still be able to play. New drafts will have no Wild cards, but you will still run into a deck that does have them from time to time because it was an older draft that is being completed.

My friend Don I think created that NPC and mentioned there was a reference to me, I appreciated that :). The name is really from my Everquest days though, where I played an Iksar Necro and Iksar Monk. (Iksar is a Lizard Person Race from an old-school MMO)

I think this is a cool idea and one we've talked about in the past. I think it's a pretty reasonable solution but we decided to go with the simplest form of this for now and see how it plays out in practice. From doing a few hundred standard arena drafts myself, I think it's a pretty fun and different draft experience. Constructed and Arena decks on average are still a good distance apart even if they are using the same cards. I mentioned this above, but unless standard only arena gets overwhelmingly positive feedback post-release, I would expect there to be continued changes over time to the format.

I hope that is not the case. The idea isn't that arena decks will turn into constructed decks overnight, but to create a pool of cards that work together enough to give some synergistic excitement slightly more often.

20% more referred to the rate at which spells appeared pre-changes and post-changes.

I specifically am referring to drafting a deck and having it seem interesting and fun. When I say a few hundred drafts, I literally mean I drafted hundreds of decks myself over the course of the last few weeks/months to see how various iterations would feel. We used this anecdotal data in combination with automation tests of each class doing 100k runs and analyzing the card output results.

if you completed a draft, you can finish out the run as normal. If you are in the middle of a draft, your next pick will use the new changes. If you already picked Wild cards, that's fine. They just won't be available during yoru next run.

I talk to Hafu semi-frequently, but no tests outside of Blizzard happened for these particular changes. Also, I think you may be referring to Mike Donais, he is the one who coops with Hafu on some Wednesdays.

We'll get a lot of data and feedback for this round, then things will change a bunch again when the next set releases. I think a month or so after that is the most realistic time for further changes.

Runs that are not finished within a particular month should not be counted towards that month. I'll check it out but this is something we specifically called out as something we wanted to avoid. As to the other question, I think if arena ends up feeling a lot like constructed then that will have been a mistake. From a number of drafts done myself, I didn't feel that way. We reduced the rate at which neutral classics show up, which I think is where most of the 'not so fun' cards are from.

No, those cards remain excluded.

I mentioned this above, but this is how I see these changes playing out in the near(ish) future. We judge the reaction/perception after release while monitoring data until the next set goes live. At that point 'Standard' becomes something totally different and should shake up what defines the arena meta quite a bit. About a month after that set has been released and players have had a chance to play around with it, we might experiment with some subset of cards that is a bit more unusual until the next set releases and shakes things up again.

It's likely we'll get a ton of feedback that changes this tentative plan, but that's the idea for now. In addition to card pool changes, we'll be keeping tabs on class population and power levels and will be able to make balance changes on the fly.

Arena draft pool things live on the server and do not require a client patch to change. Changes to issues in terms of draft pool should be a pretty quick turnaround once they are identified and discussed.

If we thought Arena wasn't fun anymore because of the cards available to draft, we would of course change that. As far as being a race to as close to constructed as possible, that is not a goal, or very close to the truth in our experience drafting under the new system. If it ends up being too similar to playing ranked we will address that.

Good question. I'm not sure yet! What would you want?

An addition has been made to the original post on the forums:

Golden Cards Show Up In Arena

If you own golden cards in your collection, copies of that card that appear in your Arena run will show up as golden. If you own a single golden card, the first copy of it you choose will be golden. If you own two copies of a golden card, every copy of that card you choose in the Arena will be golden. If you own one golden Legendary, every copy of that Legendary you choose in Arena will be golden.

Posted this on another thread, but pasting it here:

Changing Arena to Standard is a big experiment. If players play it for a while and don't enjoy it, we're happy to revert it. We're also likely to experiment with other, crazier formats in the future. Naxx cards only? Only Legendaries and spells?

I think we just need to take a more active role in the Arena experience.

Internally, I don't think we expected much out of the Standard Arena change. But after playtesting, we felt it was pretty fun. I think players will enjoy it, but like I said, try it and let us know.