The offer is going to be available for ~30 days and then go away forever. Prime Gaming offers only last for a month after they are available, but in the case of Hearthstone, there will be more opportunities down the line for more stuff. If you haven't activated a trial yet, I'd wait!
First of all you all are doing a great job to keep this forum spam free. One thing I'd like to know (or get changed if not already) is that spammers in old threads move them to the recent threads and the threads stay there even after deletion. So there is something like "Last Post 1 year and 3 months ago" showing up in the recent threads.
Yeah, that's something we still need to figure out on how to handle. It ends up being the way we deal with caching that information. Our forums aren't exactly the best piece of software that I've ever written. Hopefully we end up with some time to give them a face lift in the future to get rid of oddities like this.
All this being said, I cannot help but wonder if these spam posts are completely random or somehow targeted because it seems to happen very regularly. Does someone have a personal vendetta or any other bad motive against this wonderful community site? I certainly hope not, but since you hinted at the other HS site it only further fuels my train of thought that something more is going on here.
Spam is just a thing you get to deal with on the internet, and it's a bit of a "you've made it" thing.
Spammers can't find your website if you aren't listed anywhere. We're being targeted because we're considered worth targeting. If we don't nuke their links, their job has been accomplished and will help them boost their client's traffic which means they can earn more $$$.
Spam very much is a "throw shit everywhere and it'll stick somewhere" type of game. A lot of it is automated by bots so once you end up on a spammer's list, there's not much you can do about it.
Unfortunately, IP blocks don't work very well anymore - everyone uses these super cheap VPN services and the "good" spammers will rotate their IP address for every single post they make. Although I won't publicly talk about what we do to prevent spam, I can say that we've got some new tech in recently that has made it harder for them to do their "job". I also know for a fact that the people spamming on Out of Cards are doing so manually, so I'm glad to see we're worth their time.
All our newish spammer friends are from mainland China right now. I don't know who upset that Winnie the Pooh lookin' guy, but all I'm saying is they've got a Winnie the Pooh lookin' guy in charge of their country. That photo of Winnie the Pooh beside Barack Obama - good times.
Overall though, we're definitely pretty quick at dealing with spam posts and looking at our statistics compared to last year, we're getting around a tenth of what we used to get, and from that tenth even less of it actually ends up bypassing any of our anti-spam stuff. Overall I'm quite happy where things are at, even if it isn't perfect.
If you report a single one of their posts, it'll put an icon on all staff member's screens which will alert us to the problem.
Stupid asshat spammers. I wish they'd get the message and figure out their posts don't last very long here so they gain 0 traction by posting here. There's another site though that is purely focused on Hearthstone that doesn't seem to delete spam comments though.
It would be such a great way to celebrate the upcoming set. So much better than the theorycrafting streams where people can't actively participate. Bonus points if you award players a pack for that expansion in the brawl as well.
Yeah, this has to be a mistake by Blizzard. I haven't even opened my packs yet and I wouldn't be surprised if there are other people that need to login, open packs, and buy the tavern pass.
That's great to see you got a golden finley though. That's the ultimate value!
After a long afternoon, the collection page should be loading data again. On the plus side, the deckbuilder also got faster because of my changes.
Manual edits should be working though our collection processor is quite busy today though with everyone opening their packs so it can take a bit of time for this to reflect on the website. I'm not sure if the JSON Importer is working right now, that I'll have to dig into later.
Can confirm, iPads run the game pretty well, even the older ones. If you want to save a bit on one, if you go down that route, Apple might have a certified refurbished program for your country (they usually list them at the bottom of their sites), and you can get a nice discount on something new or a little older. The nice thing about their refurb program, last I checked anyway, is for tablets they replace their screen, battery, and shell so that they're brand new - the only thing that isn't replaced is the electronics. I'd definitely confirm that's still the case though if you end up going that route, don't just take my word for it.
On the Android side of things, I can speak to the fact that the Galaxy Tab S6 Lite is able to play Hearthstone pretty well. Haven't seen it in Battlegrounds but it shouldn't be all that different. S20 Ultra, phone, ran the game wonderfully in all modes, though I cannot stand Hearthstone on a phone due to the small screen.
I removed references in your comment to the domain in question.
While it is indeed a reference to the album, Blizzard really should not be promoting something that looks like a domain name that goes to adult content.
I'm aware we've got some deckbuilder problems. Our current deckbuilder and overall deck system just doesn't work in a way that makes this an easy change but believe me, it's something I'd like to address. Unfortunately, there's only so many hours in a day anyone can work so we end up with it being pushed off to the side.
Not my favourite response, but I'm just being real with everyone.
My assumption is they've looked at the whole upcoming year to make those adjustments. No point in unnerfing something if they have to nerf it again in 4 or 8 months.
I've always wanted to dive into this as a topic. My memory could be bad considering it's only been a million years since Hearthstone came out, but I remember them printing such varied strategies for each class every set and there were definitely cards that didn't look like they fit anywhere but then they did.
It feels like to me Hearthstone just doesn't have much of that anymore. They print tools for the 1 or 2 archetypes they want to establish for that year and then leave it at that. Granted, it would take an entire year to make things feel right by printing varied things (you'd need the next rotation to hit to properly fix that). I think the biggest problem there is that the power level can become less predictable when you no longer have your sights on 1 or 2 goals.
There's no "deckbuilder" for meals. We definitely didn't have the time to pull that off this time around, though looking back on it, I don't know if we'd want to give everyone the ability to add meals because we'd likely get a lot of junk that would just ruin the joke.
Meal subforum is definitely a great place to share meals though =)
Here's how we're going to decommission "Out of Carbs".
In the future, probably this upcoming weekend, we'll deactivate Out of Carbs since it'll have been live for a week.
The navigation links will be removed.
The subforum will move to the bottom of the Out of Cards forums.
The Discord channel will move to the bottom of the Out of Cards Discord.
Forum threads from the Out of Carbs subforum will no longer appear in the forum thread widgets seen on the homepage and game portals.
Other than that, everything will remain accessible if you know how to find it. There has already been talk about having some more fun with it next year, so we'll keep everything around to support that in the future.
If you want to contribute a recipe on the forums, definitely go for it!
The offer is going to be available for ~30 days and then go away forever. Prime Gaming offers only last for a month after they are available, but in the case of Hearthstone, there will be more opportunities down the line for more stuff. If you haven't activated a trial yet, I'd wait!
Yeah, that's something we still need to figure out on how to handle. It ends up being the way we deal with caching that information. Our forums aren't exactly the best piece of software that I've ever written. Hopefully we end up with some time to give them a face lift in the future to get rid of oddities like this.
Spam is just a thing you get to deal with on the internet, and it's a bit of a "you've made it" thing.
Spammers can't find your website if you aren't listed anywhere. We're being targeted because we're considered worth targeting. If we don't nuke their links, their job has been accomplished and will help them boost their client's traffic which means they can earn more $$$.
Spam very much is a "throw shit everywhere and it'll stick somewhere" type of game. A lot of it is automated by bots so once you end up on a spammer's list, there's not much you can do about it.
Unfortunately, IP blocks don't work very well anymore - everyone uses these super cheap VPN services and the "good" spammers will rotate their IP address for every single post they make. Although I won't publicly talk about what we do to prevent spam, I can say that we've got some new tech in recently that has made it harder for them to do their "job". I also know for a fact that the people spamming on Out of Cards are doing so manually, so I'm glad to see we're worth their time.
All our newish spammer friends are from mainland China right now. I don't know who upset that Winnie the Pooh lookin' guy, but all I'm saying is they've got a Winnie the Pooh lookin' guy in charge of their country. That photo of Winnie the Pooh beside Barack Obama - good times.
Overall though, we're definitely pretty quick at dealing with spam posts and looking at our statistics compared to last year, we're getting around a tenth of what we used to get, and from that tenth even less of it actually ends up bypassing any of our anti-spam stuff. Overall I'm quite happy where things are at, even if it isn't perfect.
Thanks for the report :)
If you report a single one of their posts, it'll put an icon on all staff member's screens which will alert us to the problem.
Stupid asshat spammers. I wish they'd get the message and figure out their posts don't last very long here so they gain 0 traction by posting here. There's another site though that is purely focused on Hearthstone that doesn't seem to delete spam comments though.
Heya,
Thanks for the report. I've fixed the issue and it should be working as expected now.
I'm marking this as resolved. I've tested the importer with my most recent HSR data and it is working.
100% Agreed.
It would be such a great way to celebrate the upcoming set. So much better than the theorycrafting streams where people can't actively participate. Bonus points if you award players a pack for that expansion in the brawl as well.
Yeah, seriously.
I hope this isn't a one-off and they use this opportunity to do something good right after an expansion drops. Let people test out the cards!
Yeah, this has to be a mistake by Blizzard. I haven't even opened my packs yet and I wouldn't be surprised if there are other people that need to login, open packs, and buy the tavern pass.
That's great to see you got a golden finley though. That's the ultimate value!
After a long afternoon, the collection page should be loading data again. On the plus side, the deckbuilder also got faster because of my changes.
Manual edits should be working though our collection processor is quite busy today though with everyone opening their packs so it can take a bit of time for this to reflect on the website. I'm not sure if the JSON Importer is working right now, that I'll have to dig into later.
Okay but they don't charge it if you cancel, so it is free.
Can confirm, iPads run the game pretty well, even the older ones. If you want to save a bit on one, if you go down that route, Apple might have a certified refurbished program for your country (they usually list them at the bottom of their sites), and you can get a nice discount on something new or a little older. The nice thing about their refurb program, last I checked anyway, is for tablets they replace their screen, battery, and shell so that they're brand new - the only thing that isn't replaced is the electronics. I'd definitely confirm that's still the case though if you end up going that route, don't just take my word for it.
On the Android side of things, I can speak to the fact that the Galaxy Tab S6 Lite is able to play Hearthstone pretty well. Haven't seen it in Battlegrounds but it shouldn't be all that different. S20 Ultra, phone, ran the game wonderfully in all modes, though I cannot stand Hearthstone on a phone due to the small screen.
I removed references in your comment to the domain in question.
While it is indeed a reference to the album, Blizzard really should not be promoting something that looks like a domain name that goes to adult content.
Collection fixes are on the to do list. I know how frustrating it is when a core site mechanic isn't behaving.
I'm aware we've got some deckbuilder problems. Our current deckbuilder and overall deck system just doesn't work in a way that makes this an easy change but believe me, it's something I'd like to address. Unfortunately, there's only so many hours in a day anyone can work so we end up with it being pushed off to the side.
Not my favourite response, but I'm just being real with everyone.
Just don't wait until the very last minute ;)
My assumption is they've looked at the whole upcoming year to make those adjustments. No point in unnerfing something if they have to nerf it again in 4 or 8 months.
I've always wanted to dive into this as a topic. My memory could be bad considering it's only been a million years since Hearthstone came out, but I remember them printing such varied strategies for each class every set and there were definitely cards that didn't look like they fit anywhere but then they did.
It feels like to me Hearthstone just doesn't have much of that anymore. They print tools for the 1 or 2 archetypes they want to establish for that year and then leave it at that. Granted, it would take an entire year to make things feel right by printing varied things (you'd need the next rotation to hit to properly fix that). I think the biggest problem there is that the power level can become less predictable when you no longer have your sights on 1 or 2 goals.
There's no "deckbuilder" for meals. We definitely didn't have the time to pull that off this time around, though looking back on it, I don't know if we'd want to give everyone the ability to add meals because we'd likely get a lot of junk that would just ruin the joke.
Meal subforum is definitely a great place to share meals though =)
Here's how we're going to decommission "Out of Carbs".
In the future, probably this upcoming weekend, we'll deactivate Out of Carbs since it'll have been live for a week.
Other than that, everything will remain accessible if you know how to find it. There has already been talk about having some more fun with it next year, so we'll keep everything around to support that in the future.
If you want to contribute a recipe on the forums, definitely go for it!