Yeah, but then new cards being inspired by old cards and some of the designs being cyclical has been a known pattern, and not just in Hearthstone. It's hard to avoid past a certain point.
Technically Naaru also aren't classified as Elementals in the existing Warcraft/Hearthstone lore. Guess they weren't trying to break the mold at all cost.
It's a common problem that I find happening when either your software/hardware or network bandwidth become overwhelmed. Hearthstone client is very sensitive nowadays (and I'd add unwieldy), it does not like sharing. So say you have another game or app like Discord opened on the side, they may clash and you will occasionally get stuck on permanent queueing. Or you are downloading or buffering something on the side when trying to play, and Hearthstone doesn't like having limited connection. Too many tabs opened, computer not restarted for a while? Cue lacking memory to keep up. Even a deck tracker can be problematic if for some reason your hardware resources struggle to keep up with it.
As somebody else has already mentioned, the moment you see it happen it's best to close the game manually and restart, at least the reconnecting feature tends to be very solid on both desktop and mobile.
It's definitely still worth reporting so the officials learn just how badly the HS client could use further work.
It doesn't matter as much whether it's Bronze or higher levels, since the matchups are based on your internal MMR. So having a decent streak of wins over the past months or year would've contributed to getting better opponents. Other than that, every meta is different. Some may have people play better decks on average and punish anything less polished, others a person just doesn't get a handle on or gels particularly well with. Even best players get several games loss streaks at times, ironically.
I don't know whether the decks you chose suit your playstyle/comfort levels and how much you know what to expect when facing what's currently popular on Standard ladder; both factors can contribute a lot for and against. The diversity is quite wide now. Knowing how to play and navigate some things in the past doesn't guarantee the same holding true just now.
Both fine points (Scholo has been too overpowered for my taste as well). The meta has been okay, though not to everybody's taste, and that's alright. Sooner or later that always changes; in a major fashion once rotation hits.
On the larger topic: it's indeed difficult to get back into Hearthstone after a longer break, and keeping up with dailies and weeklies can sometimes be asking a lot. Another improvement in the vein of duplicate protection and core set would come a long way. As for fixing things (and communicating on them), I actually feel like it takes them much faster. They've become much better at it compared to olden days. Although the client itself is a sloggy mess.
It's always been more dark red/scarlet bordering on purple, to my eye. Whitemane's staff also tends to look slightly different below the gems part. The models in World of Warcraft had some updates throughout the years.
Very creative! I like the idea a lot (now we definitely need baby Old Gods to become canon). Something tells me I might enjoy playing or facing this one a lot more than the still-evil-Illucia in our current Duels landscape.
P.S. Gotta love the shout-out to ever enigmatic Brad.
The original plan is still - I believe - to first have all available sets join in the party, see how that feels, then consider another route going forward. Tabayrak at least seemed open to the idea (in a tweet I recall seeing a little while ago) of having Duels rotations or more limited pool of cards in the future.
As for so many new or rotating heroes, I'm less sure whether that might happen, or when. It is a lot of work to create and balance them, so definitely a very heavy task on that scale.
I wasn't convinced whether Owlock had a good place in this meta yet, and next to the Handlock power it did not seem as proficient. But there was somebody reporting decent results with it at high Legend (link in case you or anyone else is interested).
Regarding Shadow Priest, there is this Japanese site called BeerBrick where they talked about it recently. Although I recall a similar list making rounds in the West before, as well - the versatility of Najak Hexxen was quite a nice surprise.
Hmm, somehow I haven't seen these notifications until I checked back and went over the comments manually. Sorry about that!
And yes, absolutely, you both make very fair points. I know we've skipped a few shop offerings in recent memory, and haven't been as consistent with it as in the past. We'll be looking to get back on track with this kind of coverage going forward.
Daniel Duffin (whom we've referred to in articles several times by now) mentioned this a while ago in one of his tweets:
"But QA is not a lot of people, we all work on everything and a lot of QA are contractors. We are important but not where the corporate money goes, in general. I won't ramble more on that, tldr we need a union."
And recently we heard from another QA person whose contract might not be getting renewed. So yeah, likely all of those things you mention.
It does seem like Activision (and many gaming companies in general) just treat QA and bug testing as an afterthought. It's better for them to release sooner and with bugs abound than painstakingly comb through everything; players are usually lenient enough. If you are familiar with the whole ongoing drama with Raven people at the forefront, that's just one example. I'm not sure if there are even many permanent QA people embedded within these teams nowadays, as from what we've heard it's been largely contract workers.
It does sound like it could be balance hotfix worthy to be sure, confirming all our concerns. I already saw somebody talk about chained Yoggs, and such... Can't be too fun to be on the receiving end.
Ooh, yes. That could be it. There is actually a line about it in the patch notes:
Duels Achievements will be updated to be hero-specific, instead of class-specific. Various in-game text will be updated to mention hero names instead of classes.
Did not expect it to recalculate anything retroactively, however.
Seeing reports that the patch should be finally available on all mobile devices (updated the text accordingly). Or almost all, since the Play Store for Android was still lagging behind. Aside from the night owls of the EU region, most mobile players over there might not have lasted long enough to see any new stuff today.
Yeah, but then new cards being inspired by old cards and some of the designs being cyclical has been a known pattern, and not just in Hearthstone. It's hard to avoid past a certain point.
Technically Naaru also aren't classified as Elementals in the existing Warcraft/Hearthstone lore. Guess they weren't trying to break the mold at all cost.
Added some trivia and developer insights from Cora. She is quick!
It's a common problem that I find happening when either your software/hardware or network bandwidth become overwhelmed. Hearthstone client is very sensitive nowadays (and I'd add unwieldy), it does not like sharing. So say you have another game or app like Discord opened on the side, they may clash and you will occasionally get stuck on permanent queueing. Or you are downloading or buffering something on the side when trying to play, and Hearthstone doesn't like having limited connection. Too many tabs opened, computer not restarted for a while? Cue lacking memory to keep up. Even a deck tracker can be problematic if for some reason your hardware resources struggle to keep up with it.
As somebody else has already mentioned, the moment you see it happen it's best to close the game manually and restart, at least the reconnecting feature tends to be very solid on both desktop and mobile.
It's definitely still worth reporting so the officials learn just how badly the HS client could use further work.
It doesn't matter as much whether it's Bronze or higher levels, since the matchups are based on your internal MMR. So having a decent streak of wins over the past months or year would've contributed to getting better opponents.
Other than that, every meta is different. Some may have people play better decks on average and punish anything less polished, others a person just doesn't get a handle on or gels particularly well with. Even best players get several games loss streaks at times, ironically.
I don't know whether the decks you chose suit your playstyle/comfort levels and how much you know what to expect when facing what's currently popular on Standard ladder; both factors can contribute a lot for and against. The diversity is quite wide now. Knowing how to play and navigate some things in the past doesn't guarantee the same holding true just now.
Both fine points (Scholo has been too overpowered for my taste as well). The meta has been okay, though not to everybody's taste, and that's alright. Sooner or later that always changes; in a major fashion once rotation hits.
On the larger topic: it's indeed difficult to get back into Hearthstone after a longer break, and keeping up with dailies and weeklies can sometimes be asking a lot. Another improvement in the vein of duplicate protection and core set would come a long way.
As for fixing things (and communicating on them), I actually feel like it takes them much faster. They've become much better at it compared to olden days. Although the client itself is a sloggy mess.
It's always been more dark red/scarlet bordering on purple, to my eye. Whitemane's staff also tends to look slightly different below the gems part. The models in World of Warcraft had some updates throughout the years.
They are indeed very similar, but the color hue itself more closely follows that of Onyxia/Prestor than Whitemane.
Very creative! I like the idea a lot (now we definitely need baby Old Gods to become canon). Something tells me I might enjoy playing or facing this one a lot more than the still-evil-Illucia in our current Duels landscape.
P.S. Gotta love the shout-out to ever enigmatic Brad.
The original plan is still - I believe - to first have all available sets join in the party, see how that feels, then consider another route going forward. Tabayrak at least seemed open to the idea (in a tweet I recall seeing a little while ago) of having Duels rotations or more limited pool of cards in the future.
As for so many new or rotating heroes, I'm less sure whether that might happen, or when. It is a lot of work to create and balance them, so definitely a very heavy task on that scale.
(We are definitely onto Guff's dark secrets now)
I thought so too, looking at that image! All credit goes to Sinti for coming up with the idea on the fly.
I wasn't convinced whether Owlock had a good place in this meta yet, and next to the Handlock power it did not seem as proficient. But there was somebody reporting decent results with it at high Legend (link in case you or anyone else is interested).
Regarding Shadow Priest, there is this Japanese site called BeerBrick where they talked about it recently. Although I recall a similar list making rounds in the West before, as well - the versatility of Najak Hexxen was quite a nice surprise.
Hmm, somehow I haven't seen these notifications until I checked back and went over the comments manually. Sorry about that!
And yes, absolutely, you both make very fair points. I know we've skipped a few shop offerings in recent memory, and haven't been as consistent with it as in the past. We'll be looking to get back on track with this kind of coverage going forward.
Daniel Duffin (whom we've referred to in articles several times by now) mentioned this a while ago in one of his tweets:
"But QA is not a lot of people, we all work on everything and a lot of QA are contractors. We are important but not where the corporate money goes, in general. I won't ramble more on that, tldr we need a union."
And recently we heard from another QA person whose contract might not be getting renewed. So yeah, likely all of those things you mention.
It does seem like Activision (and many gaming companies in general) just treat QA and bug testing as an afterthought. It's better for them to release sooner and with bugs abound than painstakingly comb through everything; players are usually lenient enough. If you are familiar with the whole ongoing drama with Raven people at the forefront, that's just one example.
I'm not sure if there are even many permanent QA people embedded within these teams nowadays, as from what we've heard it's been largely contract workers.
Afraid not anymore, unless you have somehow managed to avoid updating to patch 22.2 on your devices and could still access the previous version.
One of the bugs, I believe. Don't try to put the ones you don't have in there, I heard it could cause game crashes.
It does sound like it could be balance hotfix worthy to be sure, confirming all our concerns. I already saw somebody talk about chained Yoggs, and such... Can't be too fun to be on the receiving end.
Ooh, yes. That could be it. There is actually a line about it in the patch notes:
Did not expect it to recalculate anything retroactively, however.
Seeing reports that the patch should be finally available on all mobile devices (updated the text accordingly). Or almost all, since the Play Store for Android was still lagging behind. Aside from the night owls of the EU region, most mobile players over there might not have lasted long enough to see any new stuff today.