Naw, although Battlegrounds is huge, and a lot of people streaming to the big numbers now are playing it, it still isn't their main mode. If Battlegrounds shifted to the main mode of Hearthstone for engagement, we'd be seeing them jump onto more monetization for it.
Napkin Math!
Battlegrounds games are around 20 minutes on average. We have 669 million player hours - a single battlegrounds game has 8 players in it which means we're getting around 2 hours played per match. (Estimate since sometimes people drop out quick etc.)
That gives us 334 million matches played in Battlegrounds. Demon Hunters alone had more games played. Granted, DH stat also includes Tavern Brawl and Arena, but those modes are nowhere near as popular as constructed.
Battlegrounds matches played is also probably much higher than that when you consider how many players on the lower end just immediately disconnect or get knocked out super fast. Again though, Napkin math! I think it proves the point though that Constructed is currently the king when it comes to modes.
Yeah, Arena took me for a loop there. Though it is possible that Tavern Brawl is only lower is due to new brawls being a rarity and the brawls that are brought back are definitely not always the fan favourites you'd expect.
Duels released in early access on October 22, 2020. 61.4 million matches in 2 months is not bad at all! We can be certain in that time frame that Tavern Brawl only saw 44 million matches played, give or take a million or two (Total / 12 months * 2), which I know doesn't say much since you're comparing it to Tavern Brawl, but:
I don't think that Duels has to be the most popular mode out there for it to still be successful. I don't play Arena, it's still attracting lots of players though and although people may have their issues with it, it's still a positive force since it retains those players.
We're going to be getting another new mode in Hearthstone soon (not including Classic) and probably another couple after that. The players will spread out more, making some modes maybe look less successful than before, but what we need to care about the most is that Hearthstone as a platform succeeds. Not all modes will apply to all players, heck, I play Battlegrounds more than constructed now and it doesn't really bother me that it happens to be the case (I just get salty when I don't get to play for days at the start of a new expansion and then say screw it when meta is "solved").
The UI is sad though. They really need to rework how the front of the box works. I don't have any major constructive feedback on it, it's just that Hearthstone feels like its just menu after menu when you want to get into something like Battlegrounds. I'd love some shortcuts I could customize on the home, but I know they'd never do it because that's too much interface and could be confusing. At least we're getting 9 more deck slots. How will I ever scroll that far.
Yeah, you'll be able to watch everything via VOD right after each panel ends.
As usual, everything will definitely be covered here and will also make sure we do a large overall recap so you can find everything important very easily. It's gonna be an exciting weekend!
I fully expect this to work like WoW Classic down the line, though doing queues by era would also be cool.
Naxxramas will get added to the pool of cards, and then Goblins vs Gnomes (or both together, but I doubt it). It would give them a chance to legitimately sell the older content to a new audience for minimal dev time which makes it an amazing return on investment.
What I think is most interesting about that though is what it would mean for down the line of Classic. Hear me out.
Let's say Blizzard continues on and rereleases each expansion into Classic Hearthstone - and maybe the original base always remains playable still and they just call each addition "Year of the Blah" - what if they did so without ever rebalancing cards. So that Undertaker nerf? Yeah, it would never be added into the game. It would be another divergence of the Hearthstone timeline, and a damn cool one at that.
Ultimately, I just want to see a rotation, like you said. What they should do is make the rotation that is active in Arena also be active in Duels and then in this new constructed ladder. That way it limits confusion, the newest set will always be playable, and it will give us a chance to see old cards in really weird constructed scenarios. I still love the idea of Classic, and will certainly go play it, but yeah, staying power is questionable.
The issue is we aren't displaying them in order of completion. I know it's something we can solve with the right database query, just need some time to look into it.
I think some new details may come out for the new year, like their plans for the classic set, but I'm not expecting full-on expansion announcements. Maybe a name.
The pricing is a bit nuts considering it is more expensive than BlizzCon's normal Virtual Ticket bundle, but there also is more stuff.
Nice to see the essentials pack. It feels like most people can get something out of this.
The Heroic Pack is what you'd expect from BlizzCon and its roughly the right price.
The Epic pack is crazy good value if you play WoW and one of the other games included in that price point.
For people only playing Hearthstone, this bundle isn't very worth it.
For myself, who plays World of Warcraft and Hearthstone, and I occasionally dabble in other Blizzard games, the Epic bundle makes so much sense. I'm already happy about getting the Heroic pack because I've got a WoW mount + pet (which I would buy for that price alone because the mount looks amazing), so just looking at the Epic pack:
It is $25 more (CAD) to go from Heroic to Epic.
1 month of WoW time is $18 CAD.
That means the 5 golden packs, to me, are only going to cost $7.
I don't really care about D3 Transmog, nor the golden OW boxes.
The inclusion of a 15% coupon on the Blizzard store is kinda nice. I don't really think I'll be buying anything anytime soon, but if people want something specific, it can be worth quite a bit of value. (Coupons can't be used for statues FWIW)
I know this is a bit old at this point but I believe Wizards just had a much smaller device pool at the start of the launch to see how it all was going to work. They lowered the requirements and expanded the pool late yesterday (12 hrs ago), does your phone qualify now?
Sorry Pezman, this is being done specifically so we can target a broader audience and to get more targetted discussion on each of the different subjects. Believe me, I'd love to just have a single post up covering everything that happens but the reality of the content game on the web these days doesn't make that a smart move. Headlines are tailored to getting picked up on the various platforms and algorithms which is less possible when we mash everything together.
Luckily, as you said, it isn't too often that we have to go crazy splitting stuff up. For the very large content drops though, I do think we could do a better job at following everything up with a singular recap more often. Splitting stuff into 2-3, maybe even 4 articles wouldn't really warrant it, but you can be on us doing a large recap for BlizzConline and then whenever we get information about the new year, which will almost without a doubt be chunked into at least half a done headlines.
I can't disagree that this would be great, but there are a few moving pieces that makes this harder to do which is why I like us simply spotlighting community-made decks on the homepage and news feed instead, as Sinti pointed out.
The big one is communication. It can already be difficult to connect with the folks on the team due to timezones, it becomes much harder with potentially new people every week, using private messages and hopes that they respond. The amount of outreach to make it happen might be wasted time that could be better spent elsewhere. By keeping these big spotlights on the team, we have better control over what goes out and when it goes out. Also, this is all going to lead to something else in the near future which isn't going to be as open as creating a deck and writing a guide is; We're just getting things started.
While communication is the big one, we've also got stupid laws. Although our site terms and conditions make it quite clear that people are only allowed to post content they create on the site (not copy-pasting other people's stuff), that doesn't mean it isn't going to happen and it can be hard to vet this kind of stuff. If we link a deck in a round-up that includes content the user didn't make, so what? We'll delete the offending content and have someone else write a bit on it. If we make a whole news article out of it though, that article gets to vanish. There's a certain level of trust we have with people on the team, after all, they are bound by very different legal terms than anyone that just creates an account on the site, which makes needing a proper vetting process less required. Back to the terms and conditions though, we do have the authority to modify and reproduce content everyone creates on here. If we wanted to copy someone's deck guide and post it as a news article, we'd be more than entitled to doing so and no one could do anything about it if they no longer wanted it on the site. Realistically, I don't even see anything coming down to that, but it would be a bit of a dick move though so I really don't want to touch it.
I'm glad people are enjoying the longer-form content though and I hope that it encourages people to write some of it themselves. We don't have enough people writing good guides outside of the staff so if we can get to the point where that is more common, it would be fantastic.
I do want to open up our revenue sharing program to select deck creators in the future though, along with ownership related stuff so people can't just go on a blast and wipeout everything they've created on the site, so if that's something people are interested in, create some top-quality content to start building a portfolio to show us you know your stuff on a game knowledge side and on the other side of content formatting. I can't give you any specifics on it because it isn't something I'm ready to talk about yet (I'm still going through content creator applications from our last recruitment drive, it sucks being the head for everything at times :P) but when the time comes, we'll definitely make some kind of announcement and make it very clear what kind of criteria we're looking for.
Naw, although Battlegrounds is huge, and a lot of people streaming to the big numbers now are playing it, it still isn't their main mode. If Battlegrounds shifted to the main mode of Hearthstone for engagement, we'd be seeing them jump onto more monetization for it.
Napkin Math!
Battlegrounds games are around 20 minutes on average. We have 669 million player hours - a single battlegrounds game has 8 players in it which means we're getting around 2 hours played per match. (Estimate since sometimes people drop out quick etc.)
That gives us 334 million matches played in Battlegrounds. Demon Hunters alone had more games played. Granted, DH stat also includes Tavern Brawl and Arena, but those modes are nowhere near as popular as constructed.
Battlegrounds matches played is also probably much higher than that when you consider how many players on the lower end just immediately disconnect or get knocked out super fast. Again though, Napkin math! I think it proves the point though that Constructed is currently the king when it comes to modes.
Yeah, Arena took me for a loop there. Though it is possible that Tavern Brawl is only lower is due to new brawls being a rarity and the brawls that are brought back are definitely not always the fan favourites you'd expect.
Duels released in early access on October 22, 2020. 61.4 million matches in 2 months is not bad at all! We can be certain in that time frame that Tavern Brawl only saw 44 million matches played, give or take a million or two (Total / 12 months * 2), which I know doesn't say much since you're comparing it to Tavern Brawl, but:
I don't think that Duels has to be the most popular mode out there for it to still be successful. I don't play Arena, it's still attracting lots of players though and although people may have their issues with it, it's still a positive force since it retains those players.
We're going to be getting another new mode in Hearthstone soon (not including Classic) and probably another couple after that. The players will spread out more, making some modes maybe look less successful than before, but what we need to care about the most is that Hearthstone as a platform succeeds. Not all modes will apply to all players, heck, I play Battlegrounds more than constructed now and it doesn't really bother me that it happens to be the case (I just get salty when I don't get to play for days at the start of a new expansion and then say screw it when meta is "solved").
The UI is sad though. They really need to rework how the front of the box works. I don't have any major constructive feedback on it, it's just that Hearthstone feels like its just menu after menu when you want to get into something like Battlegrounds. I'd love some shortcuts I could customize on the home, but I know they'd never do it because that's too much interface and could be confusing. At least we're getting 9 more deck slots. How will I ever scroll that far.
Yeah, you'll be able to watch everything via VOD right after each panel ends.
As usual, everything will definitely be covered here and will also make sure we do a large overall recap so you can find everything important very easily. It's gonna be an exciting weekend!
I fully expect this to work like WoW Classic down the line, though doing queues by era would also be cool.
Naxxramas will get added to the pool of cards, and then Goblins vs Gnomes (or both together, but I doubt it). It would give them a chance to legitimately sell the older content to a new audience for minimal dev time which makes it an amazing return on investment.
What I think is most interesting about that though is what it would mean for down the line of Classic. Hear me out.
Let's say Blizzard continues on and rereleases each expansion into Classic Hearthstone - and maybe the original base always remains playable still and they just call each addition "Year of the Blah" - what if they did so without ever rebalancing cards. So that Undertaker nerf? Yeah, it would never be added into the game. It would be another divergence of the Hearthstone timeline, and a damn cool one at that.
Ultimately, I just want to see a rotation, like you said. What they should do is make the rotation that is active in Arena also be active in Duels and then in this new constructed ladder. That way it limits confusion, the newest set will always be playable, and it will give us a chance to see old cards in really weird constructed scenarios. I still love the idea of Classic, and will certainly go play it, but yeah, staying power is questionable.
Yeah, someone also mentioned the Murloc stuff and it didn't make it in either. I've now correctly added it.
Heck yeah
This forum is to discuss Hearthstone's Classic Format!
They'll be removed along with the other snow items.
Snowballs themselves will remain usable the next event. We might have some new plans for things you can do with them though...
The issue is we aren't displaying them in order of completion. I know it's something we can solve with the right database query, just need some time to look into it.
Old achievements will remain doable next Snowpocalypse.
We'll also add to the list with a new meta feat.
Originally we stated there were 14 new cards. It is actually 15 - I forgot to include the previously revealed Gifts From Beyond.
That's what happens when you deploy the site to staging but don't flip the switch to live. Yikes.
I think some new details may come out for the new year, like their plans for the classic set, but I'm not expecting full-on expansion announcements. Maybe a name.
The new mode is definitely a given.
The pricing is a bit nuts considering it is more expensive than BlizzCon's normal Virtual Ticket bundle, but there also is more stuff.
For people only playing Hearthstone, this bundle isn't very worth it.
For myself, who plays World of Warcraft and Hearthstone, and I occasionally dabble in other Blizzard games, the Epic bundle makes so much sense. I'm already happy about getting the Heroic pack because I've got a WoW mount + pet (which I would buy for that price alone because the mount looks amazing), so just looking at the Epic pack:
The inclusion of a 15% coupon on the Blizzard store is kinda nice. I don't really think I'll be buying anything anytime soon, but if people want something specific, it can be worth quite a bit of value. (Coupons can't be used for statues FWIW)
I'll be grabbing the epic pack and enjoying it.
I know this is a bit old at this point but I believe Wizards just had a much smaller device pool at the start of the launch to see how it all was going to work. They lowered the requirements and expanded the pool late yesterday (12 hrs ago), does your phone qualify now?
The Battlegrounds part is the only one I'm looking forward to!
Sorry Pezman, this is being done specifically so we can target a broader audience and to get more targetted discussion on each of the different subjects. Believe me, I'd love to just have a single post up covering everything that happens but the reality of the content game on the web these days doesn't make that a smart move. Headlines are tailored to getting picked up on the various platforms and algorithms which is less possible when we mash everything together.
Luckily, as you said, it isn't too often that we have to go crazy splitting stuff up. For the very large content drops though, I do think we could do a better job at following everything up with a singular recap more often. Splitting stuff into 2-3, maybe even 4 articles wouldn't really warrant it, but you can be on us doing a large recap for BlizzConline and then whenever we get information about the new year, which will almost without a doubt be chunked into at least half a done headlines.
Thanks for the love and feedback!
I can't disagree that this would be great, but there are a few moving pieces that makes this harder to do which is why I like us simply spotlighting community-made decks on the homepage and news feed instead, as Sinti pointed out.
The big one is communication. It can already be difficult to connect with the folks on the team due to timezones, it becomes much harder with potentially new people every week, using private messages and hopes that they respond. The amount of outreach to make it happen might be wasted time that could be better spent elsewhere. By keeping these big spotlights on the team, we have better control over what goes out and when it goes out. Also, this is all going to lead to something else in the near future which isn't going to be as open as creating a deck and writing a guide is; We're just getting things started.
While communication is the big one, we've also got stupid laws. Although our site terms and conditions make it quite clear that people are only allowed to post content they create on the site (not copy-pasting other people's stuff), that doesn't mean it isn't going to happen and it can be hard to vet this kind of stuff. If we link a deck in a round-up that includes content the user didn't make, so what? We'll delete the offending content and have someone else write a bit on it. If we make a whole news article out of it though, that article gets to vanish. There's a certain level of trust we have with people on the team, after all, they are bound by very different legal terms than anyone that just creates an account on the site, which makes needing a proper vetting process less required. Back to the terms and conditions though, we do have the authority to modify and reproduce content everyone creates on here. If we wanted to copy someone's deck guide and post it as a news article, we'd be more than entitled to doing so and no one could do anything about it if they no longer wanted it on the site. Realistically, I don't even see anything coming down to that, but it would be a bit of a dick move though so I really don't want to touch it.
I'm glad people are enjoying the longer-form content though and I hope that it encourages people to write some of it themselves. We don't have enough people writing good guides outside of the staff so if we can get to the point where that is more common, it would be fantastic.
I do want to open up our revenue sharing program to select deck creators in the future though, along with ownership related stuff so people can't just go on a blast and wipeout everything they've created on the site, so if that's something people are interested in, create some top-quality content to start building a portfolio to show us you know your stuff on a game knowledge side and on the other side of content formatting. I can't give you any specifics on it because it isn't something I'm ready to talk about yet (I'm still going through content creator applications from our last recruitment drive, it sucks being the head for everything at times :P) but when the time comes, we'll definitely make some kind of announcement and make it very clear what kind of criteria we're looking for.
Can confirm, Dean is correct. Down with M&C!
Yeah, honestly, Wretched Tiller is a junk card anyway so why can't they just leave it in its grave? lol
My guess is they foresee additional issues in the future with Hysteria so it makes more sense to change it instead.