I played Path of Exile during its Alpha. I played it during Beta. I played it multiple times over the years during different seasons. Sure, the game wasn't great when it came out, but it did exactly what they wanted to - they wanted to make a better Diablo 2.
It's a bit of a difference though with GGG releasing their first title and Blizzard, who is supposed to be an industry titan. Blizzard has had several releases in the Diablo series and what we received was a half-assed attempt at a grand ARPG. Things they learned from Diablo 3, completely forgotten by the team 4's development started.
But, it's a modern game and they're expecting us to wait it out as they slow drip the essential content so they can keep our attention glued to a shop.
Now, your video of Asmongold. He's in a level 68 area. That can't even be considered end game.
I definitely think they will get there. Blizzard has turned most of their recent games around at some point in the patch process so Diablo IV isn't likely to be the exception. Given a few seasons, the game is 100% going to get another shot (and possibly the very first season too). Definitely waiting for that "Loot 2.0" unicorn though.
Feeling things out with some different types of content. Not everything may be everyone's cup of tea, and without access to games it can be difficult to see what is worth pushing into the spotlight, but that should be something that resolves with time as things ramp up here =)
All content from Out of Cards is still here and will still continue to be here. All we did was effectively rename the site. If something was available on Out of Cards, it will still be available on Out of Games.
Card database update is slowly being worked on. Ultimately, it's a very tiny issue compared to everything else that is going on.
I wish I could say the same. I'm a sucker for cosmetics and so limited-time mount trophy, sign me up.
It didn't take too long to get to level 20. I might not play Sorc this time around though because of the chain lightning nerfs so that'll decrease the speed I expected.
Hearthstone card data no longer tries to reload on non-deckbuilder and non-collection pages.
Dev Note: A previous site update caused card data to be stored local to users to improve the speed of certain tasks on the site. This was a net-positive for many users with a few exceptions: slowdowns on some devices and connections throughout the day as fresh data was pushed onto clients and folks using locked-down firefox installs would have issues loading the card data at all. The result of this is that the deckbuilder takes additional time to load than it has in recent times but it should work for all users in all scenarios.
Fixed an issue where the Festival of Legends icon was failing to load for some users.
General
Removed Snow 3 from the navigation.
Dev Note: The event has only been over for 3 months.
That is my assumption with the current info from Twitch. Which is good because the one stream was definitely not enough time for both packs for everyone lol.
Blizzard with these TBD countdowns going into reveals can seriously fuck off. No one has seen any reveals from what I've been able to see and we're now half an hour after the reveal time.
That is true, but that doesn’t stop them from playing Standard, Wild, and BG’s. Why not throw the players who pay to play the game a bone and give them something that makes them keep playing?
Yeah that's my thing with a rotating format. Every format doesn't have to be for every person; Wild certainly doesn't cut it for most and Duels is in the same boat. Standard is there to keep players engaged without a huge investment so give old cards a chance to shine again in a rotating format.
Hell, I'd even be okay if they wanted to make a format where you could optionally rent the card pool for the rotation. $10 or 1000 gold gets you access to all the cards in that season's pool. It lets people who have huge collections take advantage of them but newer players can go try something new too. Maybe they dump a pass for it in the pre-order too. So many ways they could go about boosting engagement, but I believe that no matter what, they're going to be super concerned about standard queues declining so we'll get nothing.
Blizzard will half-ass it like they did with the release of Classic (they had zero plan outside of make Classic a thing again) and then cite poor engagement as a reason to stop updating it. All they had to do was push Naxx into Classic 2 months in, and then Goblins vs Gnomes a couple months after that and they could have had repeated engagement.
Expansions launch, 2 months later a mini-set launches. The perfect time to do something like a Classic swap is between those two events and between a mini-set and the next expansion. Why they don't rotate Duels even on a more regular basis blows my mind. They've made so many improvements and they finally figured out their cosmetics pipeline (which took an embarrassing amount of time) so what's up with the part that matters - playing the game.
Also, no new Tavern Brawls ever when it is probably one of the easiest modes to do shit with is beyond hilarious.
Push out Brawl Blocks once a month. There's a rotating format every 4-5 weeks and the engagement potential is huge. It requires minimal effort to think of the theme too.
I’m going to disagree, mainly because it’ll cost more money on a yearly basis. That wouldn’t bother me if Hearthstone had more ways to play with the cards I have (I know you’ve heard this from me before), but we don’t. Standard, Wild, Duels which I consider a waste of dev time, Tavern Brawl which only stays around because players would have a meltdown if they couldn’t get their weekly free pack, are the only modes in which our cards matter.
Standard rotates every year and Wild where broken decks exist (sometimes) are the main two formats. There are literally thousands of cards in the collection manager but the devs waste time on Mercenaries, Duels, and yet another forgettable Tavern Brawl, instead of giving us formats that fully utilize our collections. Not to mention I don’t think it has dawned on some of them that if they gave actual reasons for players to buy more packs, they’d buy more packs because they wanted to, not just to keep up with expansions/metas
I also can’t say Hearthstone is actively dying but rather it’s almost to the point where the majority of players who call it their ‘main game’ are the people fully invested, similar to the players who kept WoW alive when it had a few bad expansions (I’ve only heard good things about Dragonflight).
Edit: I mean hell, Tournament mode, formats, guilds. Basic things they can add within a year each and they choose not to do it but instead try to sell us more cards
That is why I said provided they don't increase the overall cost the same. If they effectively increase the price of playing by 33% with the additional set, that's a super hard pass from me.
They really do just need to stick another format in the game. Rotate the sets in it every couple of months and it'll be a breath of fresh air. I suspect they are too afraid to do it because it might end up making Standard look like a joke and we certainly can't have that happen! The best part is if they rotate content on a good enough schedule, you never need to balance anything! You could do card bans to keep the super annoying stuff out but that's fairly low effort.
I think this game is too expensive for most people in the world.
It’s too expensive period, even for a whale like myself. With rumors (and pretty much a downright confirmation) that Hearthstone will go from three expansions a year to four, I’d imagine a good chunk of us will jump ship and be done with it. The expansions, more importantly the cards, are worthless since Team 5 limits us on how we can play with them. So why buy more of them?
Yeah, honestly, I haven't played Hearthstone at all in like 2 years. The last expansion pre-order I bought was Sunken City and I still haven't opened the card packs for it. I was hoping to get back into it, but nothing really intrigued me. The year before that, there were a few games played during expansion launched, but hardly what I'd consider playing the game to be.
And I know I'm not alone in that. My close friend group, everyone played Hearthstone for years. Everyone slowly dropped out of the game though and people that did return would do so for at most a week during a new set. It took Blizzard too much time to figure out a decent cadence for game updates. I think 4 expansions will be a net positive for the game, provided that they keep the overall cost the same.
Bonus points for Bobby Kotick in that scenario because when they announce cheaper pack bundle prices, people that aren't clued into why that is happening (4 sets vs 3) they'll come back and buy cards.
I still think one of the worst things they ever did was give classes 2 legendaries each expansion. The power level of them due to them being unique to classes is just disgusting. The neutrals they were at least forced to tame them down a bit so they weren't all instant includes for all classes.
^ Though I'm sure someone can find me saying otherwise, because there was a point in time where I thought it was a positive from the "they'll be able to push at least two archetypes per class per expansion now", but I still viewed the cost increase as the big downfall.
Digital card games fucking suck. Riot has a pretty decent model but the game itself feels too jank to me. Give me a Hearthstone, minus 70% of the RNG, and a model closer to what Riot is doing with Legends of Runeterra, and I think that would make a solid card game. I'd make it myself if I had the time! True story, there was a point in time where it was planned to have a card game on Out of Cards itself.
Oh, it was quite a drama. When Fandom acquired Curse they announced that they will close (or rather put to read-only) a lot of Curse's sites including Hearthpwn. I think Flux offered to buy hearthpwn, but they refused. So everyone expected that hearthpwn will be gone but then out of the blue it was announced that it'd been sold to some company no one heard about before.
The same happened to mtgsalvation, i.e. Fandom promised to close it but then suddenly sold it to the same folks.
It wasn't even sold, they gave the properties away to Magic Find. The deal was that they'd run Curse/Fandom ads on the sites for 3 years so Fandom would get a cut of the revenue. That was never an option for us.
And then Magic Find sold the whole company to Mobafire for 12 million USD.
The folks who founded Magic Find are slimy and people I distanced myself from long ago.
I played Path of Exile during its Alpha. I played it during Beta. I played it multiple times over the years during different seasons. Sure, the game wasn't great when it came out, but it did exactly what they wanted to - they wanted to make a better Diablo 2.
It's a bit of a difference though with GGG releasing their first title and Blizzard, who is supposed to be an industry titan. Blizzard has had several releases in the Diablo series and what we received was a half-assed attempt at a grand ARPG. Things they learned from Diablo 3, completely forgotten by the team 4's development started.
But, it's a modern game and they're expecting us to wait it out as they slow drip the essential content so they can keep our attention glued to a shop.
Now, your video of Asmongold. He's in a level 68 area. That can't even be considered end game.
I definitely think they will get there. Blizzard has turned most of their recent games around at some point in the patch process so Diablo IV isn't likely to be the exception. Given a few seasons, the game is 100% going to get another shot (and possibly the very first season too). Definitely waiting for that "Loot 2.0" unicorn though.
Feeling things out with some different types of content. Not everything may be everyone's cup of tea, and without access to games it can be difficult to see what is worth pushing into the spotlight, but that should be something that resolves with time as things ramp up here =)
<-
Not really though haha.
Issue with the old logo appearing on mobile-only devices. Will be fixed on next update!
General
Known Issues
All content from Out of Cards is still here and will still continue to be here. All we did was effectively rename the site. If something was available on Out of Cards, it will still be available on Out of Games.
Card database update is slowly being worked on. Ultimately, it's a very tiny issue compared to everything else that is going on.
Login issues should be resolved. Sorry about that!
I wish I could say the same. I'm a sucker for cosmetics and so limited-time mount trophy, sign me up.
It didn't take too long to get to level 20. I might not play Sorc this time around though because of the chain lightning nerfs so that'll decrease the speed I expected.
Zelda on the backburner though feels awful.
You've had quite a few negative comments here over the past few weeks since you've made your account. Enjoy the vacation.
Hearthstone
General
That is my assumption with the current info from Twitch. Which is good because the one stream was definitely not enough time for both packs for everyone lol.
It seems like they didn't communicate this very well.
The packs from this drop also include the theorycrafting streams. It was too good to be true, getting 5 packs.
Blizzard with these TBD countdowns going into reveals can seriously fuck off. No one has seen any reveals from what I've been able to see and we're now half an hour after the reveal time.
Yeah that's my thing with a rotating format. Every format doesn't have to be for every person; Wild certainly doesn't cut it for most and Duels is in the same boat. Standard is there to keep players engaged without a huge investment so give old cards a chance to shine again in a rotating format.
Hell, I'd even be okay if they wanted to make a format where you could optionally rent the card pool for the rotation. $10 or 1000 gold gets you access to all the cards in that season's pool. It lets people who have huge collections take advantage of them but newer players can go try something new too. Maybe they dump a pass for it in the pre-order too. So many ways they could go about boosting engagement, but I believe that no matter what, they're going to be super concerned about standard queues declining so we'll get nothing.
Blizzard will half-ass it like they did with the release of Classic (they had zero plan outside of make Classic a thing again) and then cite poor engagement as a reason to stop updating it. All they had to do was push Naxx into Classic 2 months in, and then Goblins vs Gnomes a couple months after that and they could have had repeated engagement.
Expansions launch, 2 months later a mini-set launches. The perfect time to do something like a Classic swap is between those two events and between a mini-set and the next expansion. Why they don't rotate Duels even on a more regular basis blows my mind. They've made so many improvements and they finally figured out their cosmetics pipeline (which took an embarrassing amount of time) so what's up with the part that matters - playing the game.
Also, no new Tavern Brawls ever when it is probably one of the easiest modes to do shit with is beyond hilarious.
Push out Brawl Blocks once a month. There's a rotating format every 4-5 weeks and the engagement potential is huge. It requires minimal effort to think of the theme too.
That is why I said provided they don't increase the overall cost the same. If they effectively increase the price of playing by 33% with the additional set, that's a super hard pass from me.
They really do just need to stick another format in the game. Rotate the sets in it every couple of months and it'll be a breath of fresh air. I suspect they are too afraid to do it because it might end up making Standard look like a joke and we certainly can't have that happen! The best part is if they rotate content on a good enough schedule, you never need to balance anything! You could do card bans to keep the super annoying stuff out but that's fairly low effort.
Yeah, honestly, I haven't played Hearthstone at all in like 2 years. The last expansion pre-order I bought was Sunken City and I still haven't opened the card packs for it. I was hoping to get back into it, but nothing really intrigued me. The year before that, there were a few games played during expansion launched, but hardly what I'd consider playing the game to be.
And I know I'm not alone in that. My close friend group, everyone played Hearthstone for years. Everyone slowly dropped out of the game though and people that did return would do so for at most a week during a new set. It took Blizzard too much time to figure out a decent cadence for game updates. I think 4 expansions will be a net positive for the game, provided that they keep the overall cost the same.
Bonus points for Bobby Kotick in that scenario because when they announce cheaper pack bundle prices, people that aren't clued into why that is happening (4 sets vs 3) they'll come back and buy cards.
I still think one of the worst things they ever did was give classes 2 legendaries each expansion. The power level of them due to them being unique to classes is just disgusting. The neutrals they were at least forced to tame them down a bit so they weren't all instant includes for all classes.
^ Though I'm sure someone can find me saying otherwise, because there was a point in time where I thought it was a positive from the "they'll be able to push at least two archetypes per class per expansion now", but I still viewed the cost increase as the big downfall.
Digital card games fucking suck. Riot has a pretty decent model but the game itself feels too jank to me. Give me a Hearthstone, minus 70% of the RNG, and a model closer to what Riot is doing with Legends of Runeterra, and I think that would make a solid card game. I'd make it myself if I had the time! True story, there was a point in time where it was planned to have a card game on Out of Cards itself.
It wasn't even sold, they gave the properties away to Magic Find. The deal was that they'd run Curse/Fandom ads on the sites for 3 years so Fandom would get a cut of the revenue. That was never an option for us.
And then Magic Find sold the whole company to Mobafire for 12 million USD.
The folks who founded Magic Find are slimy and people I distanced myself from long ago.
That's it for reveals today. 10 new cards in total.
March 20 2023
Mana, Attack, Health :P
Really, it should be 23-02-20 YY-MM-DD is the superior format, with YYYY-MM-DD being even better.