Grandmasters was too tough to get into and there were less opportunities for good players to make any money playing competitive Hearthstone because of it. Better players should, in theory, always get into the paid events now and they have a higher chance of getting into relevant events which means it won't feel so bad to not be a GM.
YouTube drops will indeed be a thing! World Championship being a mainline esports event means it won't be on Twitch at all, which is a shame because YouTube still sucks at streaming (seriously, just copy Twitch's layout and push discoverability).
To earn the drops:
Watch 2 hours of the stream to earn one Fractured in Alterac Valley pack
Watch 2 more hours (4 in total) to earn another Fractured in Alterac Valley pack.
Frosty wrapped up our survival guide a couple hours ago and it will be going live later this afternoon/early evening (needs a thumbnail, decks are coming first though).
FWIW I still see them in my shop, but these bundles took a while to appear for everyone when they launched on Tuesday. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a temporary error and you'll see them again with a relog.
We didn't immediately post about them because I wasn't sure how they were being handled out. We stopped posting about tailored bundles with the previous wave of them since there's too many of them and its just too chaotic to figure out how many bundles are live. Recent client data has shown that they have no problems adding 20+ bundle licenses to the game in a single patch, most of which would never be offered to someone. So frustrating but their "random" bundles clearly work better than the old version of them since they can target us with deals that they think we'll pickup.
The Rank 1 AV bundles though do appear to be given to everyone though, it just took time for them to go out. I didn't get them in my shop until around 4 hours after they were first spotted.
Yeah I'm very curious if we'll ever get to that point. Probably when there's a crazy number of skins for each of the heroes.
Battlegrounds being monetized purely off cosmetics does put them in a bit of a weird spot to continue supporting the mode if they just give stuff out for "free".
If we were going to take a position and not post about deals because of the stuff going on with Blizzard's higher-ups, then we would just stop posting about Hearthstone completely. Though at our core we're a community site, news is a big part of that and we like to keep people informed. If we're going to not post about deals in the shop then maybe we shouldn't post about decks that use lots of the new cards either because we're just trying to push it into people's minds that they need to buy the cards to be successful.
What's going on at Blizzard is disgusting on so many levels and I personally believe that Kotick should be removed from his position at the head of the company. But Kotick and other higher-ups aren't the only people at the company. In fact, if things don't change and all the Blizzard products stopped being profitable, I believe there is a decent chance hiring would stop and they might start letting some people go. You can still support the people that work on the games you love while thinking that the people at the top there are a bunch of assholes. Though its not like buying stuff is like a charity handout either, you are getting something in return. If you like or want something and you can afford it, buy it.
The politics at the company will eventually sort themselves out and if anyone doesn't think so, I recommend they stop playing the games completely because everything Blizzard releases is a live service product so if the company shuts down, any money or time invested into the games goes away. Not to say that time investment is completely wasted though as long as you were having fun.
And I agree, everyone is welcome to make their own opinions. Mine is that we're treating everything as business as usual because I'm not trying to create a cesspool - quite the opposite. We'll report on the biggest of the news items at Blizzard because I believe everyone should know what is happening, but we're not going to report on every single detail because at the end of the day, its mentally draining and there's days where our entire front page or Hearthstone portal would be nothing but "what did Blizzard management mess up today".
We are pushing out a deploy now and we're going to be reverting to our original video ad provider.
We'll probably give the new unit a shot again in the future but its still too early and problems need to be worked out. I know our ads are annoying but they keep the site online and my, hopeful, goal is that ads we do display aren't a major pain in the ass.
I'm going to need to see some screenshots of what you're seeing so I can better understand what you're talking about as far as the sizing goes. We did indeed change video ad providers to an in-house solution from our ad network as a test case so there are still some things being ironed out.
Before I make a report though, I do need to see some screenshots to get a better idea of your experience and I need you to confirm that everything mentioned in your post is happening now and not something that happened yesterday as the unit is being rapidly iterated on as issues pop up.
I really hope that isn't what they conclude lol. It was a super cool concept and I had fun, but it was the first time we had a new brawl in a billion years so the number of people interested in checking it out must have been high. Hey Blizzard, add more new brawls and up the engagement rate!
Mo'arg Artificer can help with survival by pairing it with Drain Soul and to a lesser extent, Touch of the Nathrezim. Although it can also help with survival if you pair it with AoE since then you've got nothing scary to attack you.
But yeah, Rod is overpowered! Yay cost-reduction =/
Yeah its insane to me that it hasn't fully caught on yet that time changes are bad news. Its an archaic construct that used to be important but no longer is. I'm remain hopeful that we're going to ditch it in the next 5 years.
Honestly, I almost didn't even pre-order this expansion which would have been the first time I didn't purchase a pre-order product. I feel like I played a decent chunk of Forged in the Barrens (relative to the year before that) and had some good fun with it, but the Questlines in Stormwind were too much for me. I dislike not being able to do anything consistently. I also really hate the mana cheat in the game, it has gotten too extreme.
The Hearthstone team has a huge problem on their hands and they best have an answer for it come March/April because I don't think a simple set rotation and small changes to the core set is going to do anything about it.
I just want another format that rotates sets more frequently. Duels doesn't hit the mark for me because as fun as dungeon run treasures are and building decks on the fly with buckets, it feels to me like there's just too much BS (though each time I do have a Duels run I definitely still have fun- its sort of just a mental hurdle). Give me a format with 4 expansions + newest + core set and then rotate the sets every month. That way during an expansion cycle, I have a chance of returning to the game 4 different times because its constantly changing. Nerfs in standard don't mean anything to me anymore.
I do think Hearthstone might be more enjoyable if I ignored everything that was going on in the community though. I think there's a part of it that stems from a mob mentality that ultimately comes from a vocal minority. "Well everyone else is angry, so I should be angry too." Unfortunately, I'm not in a position where I can ignore what is going on in the community. Perhaps the path I chose made it so it would not be possible to enjoy the game. I'm thankful I don't have to put a fake smile on and stream every day.
Countdown is fixed - timezones are stupid and this further proves that we need to get rid of daylight savings time. Hurry up North America, get your stuff together.
I do mean that, though I should have more clearly stated that the buy-in would not be necessary if you already owned those cards or were happy with the cards that you did own for the format. It's just frustrating to see how hard some of these formats can be to enter for a newer player when the content that is used is otherwise pointless outside of wild. Like, we may have GvG in Duels right now, and so if someone went and bought a chunk of those packs, in a few months time they might not get to really play with them again for a year. The more formats they open up, the worse it'll get. It's not even like they properly acknowledge in-game which sets are in which formats very well.
If people add someone at the end of a match just to cuss them out, they deserve to be removed from the game. If there was a real penalty that could be applied, then these people wouldn't stick around forever. At some point they will leave when their collections keep getting reset when a new account needs to be made.
Hearthstone needs a rotating set format so bad. I would love to see a format where the sets rotated every month and you could buy into it. Maybe you spend $5 or $10, with gold also being an option (or no buy-in if you own the cards/are happy with the cards you do own from the current sets). It would give you access to all the cards that were present in that mode at the time and your pass for it would last the month, with a price reduction halfway through the month. Bans would likely be needed in such a format as well, just to get rid of a couple of those really crazy cards.
It would be such a great sell and let people experiences these older cards without a huge investment.
We'd likely not see access to the most current expansion within that pool, but that's okay.
Another way to do it is to just pull all your followers and then when one gets selected you check to see if they retweeted the tweet. Not a great solution but it kinda works since everyone still has the same odds of being selected.
I've always just pulled retweets every 30 seconds and formulated lists that way. Or you get people to use a special hashtag or just a simple reply to the tweet.
I do suspect many of the people don't care about that though. Also kinda sus when people don't announce winners. That last part hasn't been a recent problem, but I've definitely seen it happen.
I know the feels. I just hit mass disenchant last week =(
Thoughts:
Grandmasters was too tough to get into and there were less opportunities for good players to make any money playing competitive Hearthstone because of it. Better players should, in theory, always get into the paid events now and they have a higher chance of getting into relevant events which means it won't feel so bad to not be a GM.
YouTube drops will indeed be a thing! World Championship being a mainline esports event means it won't be on Twitch at all, which is a shame because YouTube still sucks at streaming (seriously, just copy Twitch's layout and push discoverability).
To earn the drops:
Frosty wrapped up our survival guide a couple hours ago and it will be going live later this afternoon/early evening (needs a thumbnail, decks are coming first though).
FWIW I still see them in my shop, but these bundles took a while to appear for everyone when they launched on Tuesday. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a temporary error and you'll see them again with a relog.
We didn't immediately post about them because I wasn't sure how they were being handled out. We stopped posting about tailored bundles with the previous wave of them since there's too many of them and its just too chaotic to figure out how many bundles are live. Recent client data has shown that they have no problems adding 20+ bundle licenses to the game in a single patch, most of which would never be offered to someone. So frustrating but their "random" bundles clearly work better than the old version of them since they can target us with deals that they think we'll pickup.
The Rank 1 AV bundles though do appear to be given to everyone though, it just took time for them to go out. I didn't get them in my shop until around 4 hours after they were first spotted.
Yeah I'm very curious if we'll ever get to that point. Probably when there's a crazy number of skins for each of the heroes.
Battlegrounds being monetized purely off cosmetics does put them in a bit of a weird spot to continue supporting the mode if they just give stuff out for "free".
If we were going to take a position and not post about deals because of the stuff going on with Blizzard's higher-ups, then we would just stop posting about Hearthstone completely. Though at our core we're a community site, news is a big part of that and we like to keep people informed. If we're going to not post about deals in the shop then maybe we shouldn't post about decks that use lots of the new cards either because we're just trying to push it into people's minds that they need to buy the cards to be successful.
What's going on at Blizzard is disgusting on so many levels and I personally believe that Kotick should be removed from his position at the head of the company. But Kotick and other higher-ups aren't the only people at the company. In fact, if things don't change and all the Blizzard products stopped being profitable, I believe there is a decent chance hiring would stop and they might start letting some people go. You can still support the people that work on the games you love while thinking that the people at the top there are a bunch of assholes. Though its not like buying stuff is like a charity handout either, you are getting something in return. If you like or want something and you can afford it, buy it.
The politics at the company will eventually sort themselves out and if anyone doesn't think so, I recommend they stop playing the games completely because everything Blizzard releases is a live service product so if the company shuts down, any money or time invested into the games goes away. Not to say that time investment is completely wasted though as long as you were having fun.
And I agree, everyone is welcome to make their own opinions. Mine is that we're treating everything as business as usual because I'm not trying to create a cesspool - quite the opposite. We'll report on the biggest of the news items at Blizzard because I believe everyone should know what is happening, but we're not going to report on every single detail because at the end of the day, its mentally draining and there's days where our entire front page or Hearthstone portal would be nothing but "what did Blizzard management mess up today".
We are pushing out a deploy now and we're going to be reverting to our original video ad provider.
We'll probably give the new unit a shot again in the future but its still too early and problems need to be worked out. I know our ads are annoying but they keep the site online and my, hopeful, goal is that ads we do display aren't a major pain in the ass.
You can upload screenshots to Imgur or another image sharing service and put links here. You may DM their links to me instead as well.
Hey DragonDraena,
I'm going to need to see some screenshots of what you're seeing so I can better understand what you're talking about as far as the sizing goes. We did indeed change video ad providers to an in-house solution from our ad network as a test case so there are still some things being ironed out.
Before I make a report though, I do need to see some screenshots to get a better idea of your experience and I need you to confirm that everything mentioned in your post is happening now and not something that happened yesterday as the unit is being rapidly iterated on as issues pop up.
Thanks!
You must be blind. The hero power is very clearly under Related Cards and has been for some time.
Lazy lazy lazy.
I really hope that isn't what they conclude lol. It was a super cool concept and I had fun, but it was the first time we had a new brawl in a billion years so the number of people interested in checking it out must have been high. Hey Blizzard, add more new brawls and up the engagement rate!
Mo'arg Artificer can help with survival by pairing it with Drain Soul and to a lesser extent, Touch of the Nathrezim. Although it can also help with survival if you pair it with AoE since then you've got nothing scary to attack you.
But yeah, Rod is overpowered! Yay cost-reduction =/
Yeah its insane to me that it hasn't fully caught on yet that time changes are bad news. Its an archaic construct that used to be important but no longer is. I'm remain hopeful that we're going to ditch it in the next 5 years.
Honestly, I almost didn't even pre-order this expansion which would have been the first time I didn't purchase a pre-order product. I feel like I played a decent chunk of Forged in the Barrens (relative to the year before that) and had some good fun with it, but the Questlines in Stormwind were too much for me. I dislike not being able to do anything consistently. I also really hate the mana cheat in the game, it has gotten too extreme.
The Hearthstone team has a huge problem on their hands and they best have an answer for it come March/April because I don't think a simple set rotation and small changes to the core set is going to do anything about it.
I just want another format that rotates sets more frequently. Duels doesn't hit the mark for me because as fun as dungeon run treasures are and building decks on the fly with buckets, it feels to me like there's just too much BS (though each time I do have a Duels run I definitely still have fun- its sort of just a mental hurdle). Give me a format with 4 expansions + newest + core set and then rotate the sets every month. That way during an expansion cycle, I have a chance of returning to the game 4 different times because its constantly changing. Nerfs in standard don't mean anything to me anymore.
I do think Hearthstone might be more enjoyable if I ignored everything that was going on in the community though. I think there's a part of it that stems from a mob mentality that ultimately comes from a vocal minority. "Well everyone else is angry, so I should be angry too." Unfortunately, I'm not in a position where I can ignore what is going on in the community. Perhaps the path I chose made it so it would not be possible to enjoy the game. I'm thankful I don't have to put a fake smile on and stream every day.
Countdown is fixed - timezones are stupid and this further proves that we need to get rid of daylight savings time. Hurry up North America, get your stuff together.
I do mean that, though I should have more clearly stated that the buy-in would not be necessary if you already owned those cards or were happy with the cards that you did own for the format. It's just frustrating to see how hard some of these formats can be to enter for a newer player when the content that is used is otherwise pointless outside of wild. Like, we may have GvG in Duels right now, and so if someone went and bought a chunk of those packs, in a few months time they might not get to really play with them again for a year. The more formats they open up, the worse it'll get. It's not even like they properly acknowledge in-game which sets are in which formats very well.
If people add someone at the end of a match just to cuss them out, they deserve to be removed from the game. If there was a real penalty that could be applied, then these people wouldn't stick around forever. At some point they will leave when their collections keep getting reset when a new account needs to be made.
Hearthstone needs a rotating set format so bad. I would love to see a format where the sets rotated every month and you could buy into it. Maybe you spend $5 or $10, with gold also being an option (or no buy-in if you own the cards/are happy with the cards you do own from the current sets). It would give you access to all the cards that were present in that mode at the time and your pass for it would last the month, with a price reduction halfway through the month. Bans would likely be needed in such a format as well, just to get rid of a couple of those really crazy cards.
It would be such a great sell and let people experiences these older cards without a huge investment.
We'd likely not see access to the most current expansion within that pool, but that's okay.
#FluxDreamLand
Edit: Updated for clarity.
Another way to do it is to just pull all your followers and then when one gets selected you check to see if they retweeted the tweet. Not a great solution but it kinda works since everyone still has the same odds of being selected.
I've always just pulled retweets every 30 seconds and formulated lists that way. Or you get people to use a special hashtag or just a simple reply to the tweet.
I do suspect many of the people don't care about that though. Also kinda sus when people don't announce winners. That last part hasn't been a recent problem, but I've definitely seen it happen.