That's interesting because for me it works the other way round... I constantly wonder how games like Diablo and WoW can be sold via these super awesome cinematics that bear absolutely no resemblance at all with the actual gameplay. I wouldn't even be surprised if people had tried to file lawsuits because of "false advertisement" or whatever it is called in legal speech. I mean I get it, you want to show some cool stuff that makes people buy the games, but come on! Compare a Horizon trailer and the corresponding gameplay with a Diablo trailer and its gameplay. That's bonkers! But then again, I've never played WoW or Diablo and that's why I can't wrap my head around its advertisement strategy :D

This is an important addendum in my books, because I initially wanted to reply that (kinda) frequent Health / armor changes would ruin the economy. The game is expensive as it is, I want to be able to judge what is powerful and what isn't without fearing for my money, gold and dust investments to blow up every other week.

Tweaking Health / armor instead of nerfs and buffs might work though. I would be an interesting thing to try out at least.

But all in all, I have to say that I'm pretty happy with the current state of the game. I can play hyper aggro that kills turn 4, I can play OTK that requires some thinking and closes out games around turn 7 and I can go for giga control - all of that is possible in Wild with Shadow Priest, Ilgynoth DH, Renolock / Even Warrior. I don't know what level you're playing at, but from what I've heard from friends and judging by my own experiences, you can enjoy almost whatever archetype you wish on ladder as long as you don't step into 11x spheres.

Time zones being a thing prevent me from watching Blizzcon, but that made reading this article all the more interesting - thank you for that! I'll be excited to wake up Saturday morning and see what they've cooked up for Hearthstone.

On a side note, they've mentioned you'd be able to play a demo of something new for Hearthstone at Blizzcon. I wonder what that might be... Tournament mode? 2vs2? Something else entirely?

Finally got all classes golden! Getting Death Knight to 500 in less than a year is something I'm a bit proud of.

Next up I'll give Rogue the last little push and then I'll go back to playing what is the most fun at the given time. I'm still longing for that 1.000 wins DH portrait but the class needs some support first.

The Jungle Giants deck really might be a mid tier contender :D I ran into one on ladder, got destroyed and found a new friend the other day. His version is running Topior and lots of Nature spells, Dew Process being among them so you draw into your free stuff faster after quest completion. Even Shaman and Seedlock were clear losses but if you run into anything slow it's a ton of fun.

Overall it certainly looks like Wild finally gets the much needed attention, even if those nerfs are mostly aimed at Standard.

• Most importantly, the nerf to Yogg takes away the ability to deal with wide boards for free from Miracle Rogue and Questline Druid, which is something they shouldn't have been able to do in the first place.
• Generally, I for one am happy to know that I no longer have to fear a random board clear out of nowhere from every class.
• Reworked Tony might find his way into people's ETCs to protect them from Mill Druid.
• The Rake nerf is another slap on the wrist of QL Druid - nothing serious, but maybe enough to allow other decks some breathing room. It certainly got harder to combo it with Moonlit Guidance to get an extra copy, for example.

That leaves us with only two decks that look problematic for me - Quest Mage and Mine Rogue. Both are incredibly frustrating to play against. Mage has the downside of being quite reliant on RNG to work out for them while Rogue luckily is pretty boring to play even when you're winning. Maybe that's enough to save us from those two dominating the meta, but I'd love to see them being adressed anyway.

Thanks for the hint! I'm really looking forward to diving back into the story. I've decided to skip through book 1 and 2 to refresh my memory before I start the third volume and I've spent like 2 hours + with the first one alone! There's just so much going on, so many cool scenes I wanted to revisit :-)

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll have a look at it! Mystery / detective usually isn't down my alley but you got me at potential destruction of the galaxy :D

Kaladin is a cool hero and I'm looking forward to seeing his character develop now he's embraced being a knight and no longer sulking and suffering. That got a bit too much for my taste to be honest.

I'm sorry, I must have mixed something up here. Maybe I've finished it in 3 hours and it cost 30 € on release? It definitely felt too short.

About that 30 hours remark... I'm spoilt by the witcher 3 :D

Looking forward to those articles you've mentioned! 

Just finished "All the birds in the sky" by Charlie Jane Anders (Winner of the 2017 Nebula Award, Finalist for the 2017 Hugo Award). It's kind of a dystopian Fantasy / Sci-Fi mix that takes a little too long to build up but gets better (that is more exciting) in the second half. I would have liked it to be somewhat more flashy about the magic and the science but the way it is written certainly feels quite realistic (if you can accept magic being a thing in the first place, that is). The main characters are studied closely and there's some romance going on as well. I'd rate it 3.5 out of 5 stars, it was a nice relaxing read of 320 sites.

I think I'll continue with the stormlight archives part 3 next. What are you guys and gals reading these days? Any hidden Sci-Fi gems I haven't heard of yet?

Awesome article, thanks for sharing!

You've got me interested in trying out Hollow Knight, I'll add that to my wishlist. Elden Ring and Ghost of Tsushima are both games that I've tried and did not finish for very different reasons. While Elden Ring is just not my type of game, I completely agree with your assessment of Ghost of Tsushima: it's so so deep and rich, I've lost the atmosphere. Unfortunately, that doesn't really work out if you can't play it for at least one or two hours on a regular basis which I wasn't able to at the time. I've honestly never heard of Patapon before but I'll give it a look. Thanks again!

For me, these games have made the most lasting impression so far: Zelda Ocarina of Time, The Portal series, The Witcher 3.

When it comes to atmosphere I can also recommend Stray. It isn't a very long game (30ish hours if I remember correctly), but very well made and every cat lover should have a look at it.

Free stuff yay!

Let's goooooo! 

My idea, design by my daughter, execution by Sandro @ Stencil Tattoo in Fürth, Germany

Nothing spectacular from me. A friend of mine recently sent me a template for "your Top 25 games of all time" and I couldn't even come up with more than 10 :D On the plus side, I usually finish them.

Anyways. Here's my schedule for October:

• Keep adding Rogue and DK wins in Hearthstone (less than 100 to go for 1.000 and 500 wins)
• God of War 2018 (main story finished, need to look into the Valkyries before I get Ragnarök)
• maybe polish up my Witcher 3 end game - I have yet to win all the horse races and fist fights as well as a few side quests
• do more sports, read more books

I can't express how happy I am for wild. Even not knowing what the changes will be, just the fact that they acknowledge the problematic decks and at least try to do something about them is a huge improvement. There's barely a problematic deck left imo and I'm very much looking forward to exploring the new meta. 

Undead Priest is still working fine. I've climbed to D3 with it on a 6-star-bonus. To my surprise, Warrior isn't the worst matchup, Warlock is far more difficult to handle (Defile is a nightmare for Reborn boards). Soulburner Varia is a nice addition to the usual list. I replaced Astalor with her to spice things up a bit - as powerful as that guy is, playing him has become boring (insert angry reminder of the reasoning behind the Renathal nerf).

Honestly I think Undead Priest is still meta even without this new addition. VS rates it at tier 2 and I've piloted it to Diamond 6 on a 6-star bonus this month.

That said, rating the new card is pretty hard. I can see your argument, but on the other hand you usually want to hold the upper hand on the board for the first 2-4 turns, so there is potential here imo. The most important use case would probably be the necessity of trading your stuff into taunts, that actually becomes an advantage with Varia in play. Too bad she probably won't trigger on her own death because of the "after" wording.

The DK cards all look very bad, but I like the Priest package. The legendary will keep me interested in playing Standard until the next rotation on its own - Undead Priest is a very viable deck as it is and now it got a new toy.

Still, the overall impression of the mini-set is kinda meh for me. I'm not a big fan of RNG stuff so a Yogg-oriented bunch of cards has a hard time to get good marks from my side :D

So 4 years have gone by since I've started this thread and not only have I changed my mind about not doing a Hearthstone specific tattoo, I also came up with a unique design of my own. Luckily I have a very talented stepdaughter who polished it up a bit and so I've made an appointment for October the 13th to get the Hearthstone tattoo done! I'll post the design and a picture of the execution afterwards, just wanted to share my excitement for the moment :) 

Seconded. At this point, even if the major overhaul that I suspect is going on behind the scenes were to happen tomorrow, it would need to be flanked by massive PR stunts because it feels like there's hardly a handful of people left who comes here regularly.