Well that would help placate the players disappointed by the Forbidden Library event, especially if they thought it was taking the place of the usual (and much better) events.
I honestly wouldn't mind them bringing back a few Wild cards again, so long as they are more careful with what they bring back. After all, they only really messed up with 2 out of 23 cards last time.
I don't read a whole lot, and usually I don't finish books when I start them. But I have read The Hobbit all the way through at least five times. It is exactly the kind of fantasy I love. All of the characters are very well thought out, the adventure is fun and exciting, Bilbo is just awesome. If you haven't read The Hobbit yet, then stop reading whatever it is you are reading now and start reading it. Personally, I think it is better than The Lord of the Rings.
Personally I think there's a few too many dwarves in The Hobbit, which is my one gripe with the book. You could probably cut out 3 or 4 of them and do no real harm to the story. Regardless, I am a big fan of Tolkien's books, and I appreciate everything from the The Hobbit to the much more dense The Silmarillion.
The latter is a brilliant read if you're a big fantasy lore nerd, and probably frightfully dull and difficult to follow otherwise. I recommend it to anyone who liked Lord of the Rings if they haven't (tried to) read it already, especially as there's a lot in LotR that is mentioned in passing but only explained in The Silmarillion.
As for who I'd most want to see, Rexxar is actually quite near the top since I always feel like I only know half of his story. For hero portrait purposes however, I'm more interested in Valeera since I'm a rogue main. Hopefully she's not too far back.
I'm pretty sure it works the same as in Arena, so you'll be matched against others with the same number of wins and losses as you (or as close as it can get). Thanks to the Hearthstone Wiki I was able to find this old tweet confirming this is how it worked before: https://twitter.com/bbrode/status/788106922067046402
I have no idea how many players actually play it at any one time though. If that number is small (which it very well might be) then your wins/losses might be less important than the simple fact that you were queuing at the same time.
As an event it has been rubbish, but I don't think it was really intended to be a major event despite them presenting it as one. I think it was just something to distract us in the time before something actually major happens next month at the usual mid-expansion point. I.e. the new game mode and possibly a real SA solo adventure. Maybe that would use the rules of the new game mode?
I am mostly active on forums and commenting on news posts. A while back I did do a series of story-driven decks which you might find interesting if looking for strange decks, but once they wrapped up I haven't personally used the deck side of OoC very much.
But with regards to whether OoC is "where it's at": it is absolutely the best site for HS news and (polite) discussion purposes. How it compares to hearthpwn for deck lists I couldn't say, partly because I don't make/view enough decks, but also because I never visit hearthpwn anymore.
It's probably not common knowledge, but it is definitely not a bug either. The different watermark is enough information to say they are distinct cards. Indeed, any single attribute being different would be, since that must mean the game data stores them separately, even if they share other attributes.
You can consider each card as a bundle of information, which off the top of my head would be:
Card type (minion, spell, weapon, hero)
Mana cost
Attack (minions and weapons. Probably just a null value for spells and heroes)
Health/durability (again for minions and weapons. Possibly also used for the armour part of heroes)
Card text (just for the purposes of displaying writing on the card)
Some function to enact the card text
Tribe
Card name
Artwork
Set/watermark
Class (dual- and tri-classes might be individual pre-set options here, but there's lots of ways they could go about this)
Since each card can only have 1 'value' for each attribute, any being different must mean you're looking at a different card.
I ask this on both sides of the fence. Whenever I play a common combo deck, I feel like I am constantly getting paired against aggro decks. And when I switch to aggro, I get tossed a lot of control decks. The same goes the other way though. When I play something like Kingsbane Rogue, I end up playing against combo players and dog walk them.
Aren't you contradicting yourself already? You are basically saying aggro is preferentially put against both control and combo. You also make it clear Blizz isn't conspiring against you specifically, since it is happy to grant you easy wins with Kingsbane rogue. There simply is no algorithm that exists to both be kind and cruel, while arranging certain archetype match-ups at the same time as the complete opposite ones. To resolve those contradictions you'd need a time-varying algorithm, which
is a heck of a lot of effort for no good reason on Blizzard's end, and
will look statistically the same as no algorithm existing in the first place.
I'm pretty sure all that is really happening is rooted in human psychology, skewing your perception to find patterns that don't exist. The brain is a brilliant thing, but it is far from infallible.
The main issue with the Book of Heroes is that the story is too condensed to be intelligible by someone who desn't know Warcraft lore. You don't sum up 15 years of WoW like this.
I think it is a slight misunderstanding of the BoH's purpose to think it is meant to tell anything close to the whole story. We have Wikis for that, and they take quite a while to get through and even longer to read enough pages to actually understand Jaina's.
I know this first hand, because I only got into Warcraft lore through HS, and I don't think I learned much about Sylvanas Windrunner (my first legendary) when I first read her story other than that she died, was made a banshee and at some point reclaimed her old body. It took ages to piece together all the surrounding information required to understand her story, largely because I was unfamiliar with all the names and characteristics of people, places and races involved, and you can only take in so much information at a time. However, if I had a super condensed BoH-esque version of events beforehand, I could have read Sylvanas' Wiki and gone "Oh yeah, I know that guy from HS" and would have been better able to follow her story without getting lost in a sea of unfamiliar names.
Hence I view the BoH as a convenient, in-game primer for anyone who wants to learn more, rather than a serious attempt to get everyone completely up to speed with Warcraft lore. I guess it is somewhat analogous to the introductory slides of a presentation: they don't tell you a huge amount on their own, but they help you follow the bulk of the presentation when you get there.
Of course a card game is always going to be a pretty terrible way to tell a story, so the BoH is always going to have its limitations. But it is still a positive addition, especially at a time when WoW players are complaining too much of the Warcraft story is being told outside of the game.
More than that, Grommash is leader of the Warsong clan, so the card is just being used for flavour reasons.
Even so, the card quite possibly will get a rework, but it's appearance in the adventure isn't saying much.
Re Night Elf tribe: this has apparently already been clarified as just a use of leftover code from way back (probably alpha or pre-alpha), as Regis mentions at the end of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y35FqDVO0fk
Oddly, I got a duplicate epic card in my single free pack, despite not having all mage epics in standard
These packs are special in that they don't follow normal pack rules.
You can receive duplicates
You are not guaranteed a legendary card in 10 packs
The reason is because of how special the packs are. They use the same rules the Golden Packs do. Kinda cheesed about the whole situation but it just means it isn't worth buying the packs if they ever show up.
For epics I was missing only 1 copy of Tortollan Pilgrim and Power of Creation, and opened the latter, which made me think they did follow no-duplicate rules. Perhaps I was just lucky then.
I wouldn't be surprised if they actually have more people playing them throughout the week than the ones where you build your own deck, and hence the devs reuse them more often. I'd be interested in seeing the actual numbers as well as a venn diagram of players who spend time on each broad type of brawl; the overlap is probably quite small.
In defense of the random brawls: they are by no means perfect, but I for one enjoy them while they are around, and I certainly appreciate that they don't collapse into a more restrictive and cutthroat meta than constructed within the first hour.
The mage packs include cards from all the standard sets except Classic (so RoS to SA). I might be wrong on the Classic thing, but Regis didn't get any Classic cards, and that's very unlikely across 6 packs since they would take up 15 / (15+5*10) = 23% of cards otherwise (ignoring rarity).
Cards can be golden, but only at their normal rate.
In fairness the Book of Heroes isn't meant as a dungeon run substitute. It's just there to give a bit of background to the main heroes and thus give players a bit more connection to the people they're playing as if they don't already know lots of Warcraft lore.
At absolute worst, it is a small 45 (ish) minute thing that no one is forcing you to do, but will earn you a pack if you do get around to it. I don't see what there is to complain about there.
Meanwhile, if you stop to look at the deck you are given you'll get some insight to what happened in the events being portrayed. You might even appreciate it a bit more (rest in peace Doomed Apprentice, a.k.a. Kinndy Sparkshine).
*puts on tinfoil hat* With all that being said and with the Battle Pass right around the corner, I honestly wouldn't doubt it if they announced that some of the stories are paid for. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I haven't seen anywhere that it is stated that all of the Hero Stories are F2P(BTW).
It'll be monetised by the hero skin purchases. It is very unlikely the adventures themselves aren't free.
Certainly true, but the default Jaina emotes are already friendly and use simple language, as you might expect young Jaina to use. The only emote she has that has any hint of anger or darkness to it is her threaten, but unless young Jaina has a low confidence, almost apologetic threaten, I don't see why hers wouldn't be angry too.
That is not to say I wouldn't like new emotes, but her existing ones would work just fine if it wasn't for the fact we already have them.
Edit: since she does have new voice lines in the adventure, it just became a little harder to defend...
They said they'd all be done in 12 months, which I assume means one each month, possibly except expansion release months to stretch 10 classes across a year. So it won't take forever, though I'm sure it'll feel slow if there's one your'e particularly interested in and it comes towards the end.
First off, sexualised imagery and killing things in game are completely different and cannot really be compared like for like. Gamers don't actually go out and think it is OK to murder people just because they can in video games, because they know very well it is illegal and all pressures in the real world tell them it would be the wrong thing to do. Hence, murder stays safely within the game.
Over-sexualisation and objectification of women doesn't have that sort of protection: society is divided over the issue and what people see in-game sometimes gets treated as affirmation that it is OK and influences behaviour outside the game.
So while the two things look comparable within the game, the wider context is completely different, leading to sexualised imagery actually being potentially much worse than any amount of violence is.
Regarding the picture being better, it is also in the same clothing as the basic hero, so it wouldn't be distinct enough to be worth bothering with imo.
I'm pretty sure they explicitly stated it will involve Wild cards, so I agree with you and Bersak that it seems like a missed opportunity. I wouldn't be surprised if this was still being done to help bolster Wild collections in preparation for the new game mode, even if they should really telegraph that properly.
While I agree there is space for a few extra/different lines of dialogue, interactions with other heroes would be a bit odd when applied to a younger version of her but not the normal skin. Surely the young Jaina knows very few other heroes beyond Arthas Menethil?
Long story short, most if Zeph's errors arise from not knowing card text beyond keywords, so I doubt he even knows Ice Block exists. He only knows what to offer because the devs have given him end points for his decision tree.
Not that I'm rushing to defend a quest mage player, but if I was one of them I'd also be calling bs that there's a card out there that is not only anti-secret tech, but also anti-anything tech for the frankly tiny deck-building restriction of making a singleton deck in Wild, which already has multiple other massive payoff cards.
In Standard he is like giving a crutch to someone with a twisted ankle; in Wild the person is already top level athlete in perfect condition. I have to think maybe the athlete was doing just fine without the crutch, and isn't giving it enough credit when it helps him win a race he had not prepared for...
Well that would help placate the players disappointed by the Forbidden Library event, especially if they thought it was taking the place of the usual (and much better) events.
I honestly wouldn't mind them bringing back a few Wild cards again, so long as they are more careful with what they bring back. After all, they only really messed up with 2 out of 23 cards last time.
Personally I think there's a few too many dwarves in The Hobbit, which is my one gripe with the book. You could probably cut out 3 or 4 of them and do no real harm to the story. Regardless, I am a big fan of Tolkien's books, and I appreciate everything from the The Hobbit to the much more dense The Silmarillion.
The latter is a brilliant read if you're a big fantasy lore nerd, and probably frightfully dull and difficult to follow otherwise. I recommend it to anyone who liked Lord of the Rings if they haven't (tried to) read it already, especially as there's a lot in LotR that is mentioned in passing but only explained in The Silmarillion.
They definitely strongly hinted at hunter at about 3:40 in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIFLY-1XtU0
As for who I'd most want to see, Rexxar is actually quite near the top since I always feel like I only know half of his story. For hero portrait purposes however, I'm more interested in Valeera since I'm a rogue main. Hopefully she's not too far back.
I'm pretty sure it works the same as in Arena, so you'll be matched against others with the same number of wins and losses as you (or as close as it can get). Thanks to the Hearthstone Wiki I was able to find this old tweet confirming this is how it worked before: https://twitter.com/bbrode/status/788106922067046402
I have no idea how many players actually play it at any one time though. If that number is small (which it very well might be) then your wins/losses might be less important than the simple fact that you were queuing at the same time.
As an event it has been rubbish, but I don't think it was really intended to be a major event despite them presenting it as one. I think it was just something to distract us in the time before something actually major happens next month at the usual mid-expansion point. I.e. the new game mode and possibly a real SA solo adventure. Maybe that would use the rules of the new game mode?
I am mostly active on forums and commenting on news posts. A while back I did do a series of story-driven decks which you might find interesting if looking for strange decks, but once they wrapped up I haven't personally used the deck side of OoC very much.
But with regards to whether OoC is "where it's at": it is absolutely the best site for HS news and (polite) discussion purposes. How it compares to hearthpwn for deck lists I couldn't say, partly because I don't make/view enough decks, but also because I never visit hearthpwn anymore.
It's probably not common knowledge, but it is definitely not a bug either. The different watermark is enough information to say they are distinct cards. Indeed, any single attribute being different would be, since that must mean the game data stores them separately, even if they share other attributes.
You can consider each card as a bundle of information, which off the top of my head would be:
Since each card can only have 1 'value' for each attribute, any being different must mean you're looking at a different card.
Aren't you contradicting yourself already? You are basically saying aggro is preferentially put against both control and combo. You also make it clear Blizz isn't conspiring against you specifically, since it is happy to grant you easy wins with Kingsbane rogue. There simply is no algorithm that exists to both be kind and cruel, while arranging certain archetype match-ups at the same time as the complete opposite ones. To resolve those contradictions you'd need a time-varying algorithm, which
I'm pretty sure all that is really happening is rooted in human psychology, skewing your perception to find patterns that don't exist. The brain is a brilliant thing, but it is far from infallible.
I think it is a slight misunderstanding of the BoH's purpose to think it is meant to tell anything close to the whole story. We have Wikis for that, and they take quite a while to get through and even longer to read enough pages to actually understand Jaina's.
I know this first hand, because I only got into Warcraft lore through HS, and I don't think I learned much about Sylvanas Windrunner (my first legendary) when I first read her story other than that she died, was made a banshee and at some point reclaimed her old body. It took ages to piece together all the surrounding information required to understand her story, largely because I was unfamiliar with all the names and characteristics of people, places and races involved, and you can only take in so much information at a time. However, if I had a super condensed BoH-esque version of events beforehand, I could have read Sylvanas' Wiki and gone "Oh yeah, I know that guy from HS" and would have been better able to follow her story without getting lost in a sea of unfamiliar names.
Hence I view the BoH as a convenient, in-game primer for anyone who wants to learn more, rather than a serious attempt to get everyone completely up to speed with Warcraft lore. I guess it is somewhat analogous to the introductory slides of a presentation: they don't tell you a huge amount on their own, but they help you follow the bulk of the presentation when you get there.
Of course a card game is always going to be a pretty terrible way to tell a story, so the BoH is always going to have its limitations. But it is still a positive addition, especially at a time when WoW players are complaining too much of the Warcraft story is being told outside of the game.
More than that, Grommash is leader of the Warsong clan, so the card is just being used for flavour reasons.
Even so, the card quite possibly will get a rework, but it's appearance in the adventure isn't saying much.
Re Night Elf tribe: this has apparently already been clarified as just a use of leftover code from way back (probably alpha or pre-alpha), as Regis mentions at the end of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y35FqDVO0fk
For epics I was missing only 1 copy of Tortollan Pilgrim and Power of Creation, and opened the latter, which made me think they did follow no-duplicate rules. Perhaps I was just lucky then.
I wouldn't be surprised if they actually have more people playing them throughout the week than the ones where you build your own deck, and hence the devs reuse them more often. I'd be interested in seeing the actual numbers as well as a venn diagram of players who spend time on each broad type of brawl; the overlap is probably quite small.
In defense of the random brawls: they are by no means perfect, but I for one enjoy them while they are around, and I certainly appreciate that they don't collapse into a more restrictive and cutthroat meta than constructed within the first hour.
The mage packs include cards from all the standard sets except Classic (so RoS to SA). I might be wrong on the Classic thing, but Regis didn't get any Classic cards, and that's very unlikely across 6 packs since they would take up 15 / (15+5*10) = 23% of cards otherwise (ignoring rarity).
Cards can be golden, but only at their normal rate.
In fairness the Book of Heroes isn't meant as a dungeon run substitute. It's just there to give a bit of background to the main heroes and thus give players a bit more connection to the people they're playing as if they don't already know lots of Warcraft lore.
At absolute worst, it is a small 45 (ish) minute thing that no one is forcing you to do, but will earn you a pack if you do get around to it. I don't see what there is to complain about there.
Meanwhile, if you stop to look at the deck you are given you'll get some insight to what happened in the events being portrayed. You might even appreciate it a bit more (rest in peace Doomed Apprentice, a.k.a. Kinndy Sparkshine).
It'll be monetised by the hero skin purchases. It is very unlikely the adventures themselves aren't free.
Certainly true, but the default Jaina emotes are already friendly and use simple language, as you might expect young Jaina to use. The only emote she has that has any hint of anger or darkness to it is her threaten, but unless young Jaina has a low confidence, almost apologetic threaten, I don't see why hers wouldn't be angry too.
That is not to say I wouldn't like new emotes, but her existing ones would work just fine if it wasn't for the fact we already have them.
Edit: since she does have new voice lines in the adventure, it just became a little harder to defend...
They said they'd all be done in 12 months, which I assume means one each month, possibly except expansion release months to stretch 10 classes across a year. So it won't take forever, though I'm sure it'll feel slow if there's one your'e particularly interested in and it comes towards the end.
First off, sexualised imagery and killing things in game are completely different and cannot really be compared like for like. Gamers don't actually go out and think it is OK to murder people just because they can in video games, because they know very well it is illegal and all pressures in the real world tell them it would be the wrong thing to do. Hence, murder stays safely within the game.
Over-sexualisation and objectification of women doesn't have that sort of protection: society is divided over the issue and what people see in-game sometimes gets treated as affirmation that it is OK and influences behaviour outside the game.
So while the two things look comparable within the game, the wider context is completely different, leading to sexualised imagery actually being potentially much worse than any amount of violence is.
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Regarding the picture being better, it is also in the same clothing as the basic hero, so it wouldn't be distinct enough to be worth bothering with imo.
I'm pretty sure they explicitly stated it will involve Wild cards, so I agree with you and Bersak that it seems like a missed opportunity. I wouldn't be surprised if this was still being done to help bolster Wild collections in preparation for the new game mode, even if they should really telegraph that properly.
While I agree there is space for a few extra/different lines of dialogue, interactions with other heroes would be a bit odd when applied to a younger version of her but not the normal skin. Surely the young Jaina knows very few other heroes beyond Arthas Menethil?
Long story short, most if Zeph's errors arise from not knowing card text beyond keywords, so I doubt he even knows Ice Block exists. He only knows what to offer because the devs have given him end points for his decision tree.
Not that I'm rushing to defend a quest mage player, but if I was one of them I'd also be calling bs that there's a card out there that is not only anti-secret tech, but also anti-anything tech for the frankly tiny deck-building restriction of making a singleton deck in Wild, which already has multiple other massive payoff cards.
In Standard he is like giving a crutch to someone with a twisted ankle; in Wild the person is already top level athlete in perfect condition. I have to think maybe the athlete was doing just fine without the crutch, and isn't giving it enough credit when it helps him win a race he had not prepared for...