I've been preaching cosmetic sales for way too long. I hope it's Legends of Runeterra that has put this pressure on Blizzard to perform better in this space.
Now we just need a random hero option for out decks :D
Yup! Sometimes lore stuff doesn't get launched immediately on the main page because it is more "filler" style content (and its been a damn busy month so far). The goal is that everything is eventually promoted there though so it doesn't get missed.
Also, if you love the lore posts and want to see when they are published, we'll have a follow feature coming on the site soon (we'll have a front-page post when it goes live) so you can follow Goliath to get notifications when new lore guides are published (and any other content he ends up writing).
I can't be bothered to look it up but if memory serves correct, I believe Ben Brode back in the day had said they really don't want to show you losses ever for exactly that reason. If it was him that said it, I hope its the one thing the team keeps from his vision.
I love win loss ratio, and I can easily track that with Hearthstone Deck Tracker so I don't need it in-game, but it definitely would not be good for most players for exactly the reason you described. Positive statistics, and fun ones like how many Murlocs you've played or how many times you killed someone in a single turn, are way better to see. Though one could certainly argue how positive or healthy OTK is, it is a fact of life for card games =D
If it got more players playing, it would likely be a huge win for the mode and would help with possible problems skill-based matchmaking would bring.
Personally, I think they should go the route of "Heroic" Arena and regular, with no rewards for the normal offering like they do for Duels. It can be a very intimidating mode so that alone doesn't make me want to possibly waste gold on it, especially if all I'm gonna get back out of it is a card back that isn't really worth anything to me at this point. It also would mean they didn't have to give out tickets when they want to do special Arena events like dual-class arena for Halloween since they can just run that in the free mode as well. Turn the heroic arena into something more like heroic brawl with more kickass rewards with a higher cost to enter and leave that at the wins-losses matchmaking.
If they were to do more monetization through cosmetics, making Arena free seems like a way better way to earn money. Then again, I don't have access to the data they do so I could be completely wrong on this.
Like someone said last night on The Angry Chicken's 400th episode, I'd rather just draft Magic the Gathering anyway because its better than what Arena is.
This has nothing to do with ads. If I wanted to push more ads, we would have made individual articles for each card reveal and then done separate articles for each class and their spoilers. (In-article ads are certainly nice, but they are nothing compared to what we have in the header that everyone sees on a page load). Hell, we woulda gotten better SEO if we divided stuff up better too!
The reason for this format was primarily because space for content is going to be very tight over the next couple of days so by including our thoughts now, it lets us save that space for other articles that are planned. It's also a nice little test to see what people think about it. If it's popular, we'll maybe attempt to do the same thing during an actual reveal season. We have so many more staff members now that it makes doing real-time reviews easier.
We will be doing a full recap of the mini set a little later today which will have the cards in a more normal gallery format organized by class which will feel less chaotic.
I'm surprised that I'm even faster than the OoC front page. The mini-set has just been announced officially on YouTube: Introducing the Darkmoon Races Mini-Set!
It usually takes us an extra few minutes after announcements drop to write out our social posts, make our post image, format the article :P
Some serious hypefest going on today though helllll yeah!
It's the default site event that is active during a non-event period. Yes, it's not really supposed to be there, however, we also don't link very prominently to the page and the page itself isn't a pretty listing yet so I'm not too worried about it displaying. It may actually have a use going forward to explain some stuff.
We've been lucky enough to have some snow stay on the ground over the past couple of weeks, but damn, it ain't what it used to be. I need to move further North.
Every card released that is for a class is dual-class.
You can build decks with two classes.
They release some dual-class cards every expansion.
My interpretation was that Dean meant #3, which I agree with. Though, a new constructed mode that lets you dual-class like dual-class arena would be amazing.
I commented on this when the event first went live and was hoping we wouldn't see it brought up again because it can be "abused". It's an issue with how dumb our tasks system is and how, right now, it isn't really worth the time to flesh it out more since it will be abandoned in favor of something more advanced in the future. I don't really mind that you can "exploit" it because honestly, it's all fun and games and since it's available for everyone and not just a few people, it feels fair.
TL;DR: Won't fix, don't really consider it an issue even though it kind of is. Have fun and have some snowflakes. *throws snowball*
I've been preaching cosmetic sales for way too long. I hope it's Legends of Runeterra that has put this pressure on Blizzard to perform better in this space.
Now we just need a random hero option for out decks :D
Yup! Sometimes lore stuff doesn't get launched immediately on the main page because it is more "filler" style content (and its been a damn busy month so far). The goal is that everything is eventually promoted there though so it doesn't get missed.
Also, if you love the lore posts and want to see when they are published, we'll have a follow feature coming on the site soon (we'll have a front-page post when it goes live) so you can follow Goliath to get notifications when new lore guides are published (and any other content he ends up writing).
I can't be bothered to look it up but if memory serves correct, I believe Ben Brode back in the day had said they really don't want to show you losses ever for exactly that reason. If it was him that said it, I hope its the one thing the team keeps from his vision.
I love win loss ratio, and I can easily track that with Hearthstone Deck Tracker so I don't need it in-game, but it definitely would not be good for most players for exactly the reason you described. Positive statistics, and fun ones like how many Murlocs you've played or how many times you killed someone in a single turn, are way better to see. Though one could certainly argue how positive or healthy OTK is, it is a fact of life for card games =D
If it got more players playing, it would likely be a huge win for the mode and would help with possible problems skill-based matchmaking would bring.
Personally, I think they should go the route of "Heroic" Arena and regular, with no rewards for the normal offering like they do for Duels. It can be a very intimidating mode so that alone doesn't make me want to possibly waste gold on it, especially if all I'm gonna get back out of it is a card back that isn't really worth anything to me at this point. It also would mean they didn't have to give out tickets when they want to do special Arena events like dual-class arena for Halloween since they can just run that in the free mode as well. Turn the heroic arena into something more like heroic brawl with more kickass rewards with a higher cost to enter and leave that at the wins-losses matchmaking.
If they were to do more monetization through cosmetics, making Arena free seems like a way better way to earn money. Then again, I don't have access to the data they do so I could be completely wrong on this.
Like someone said last night on The Angry Chicken's 400th episode, I'd rather just draft Magic the Gathering anyway because its better than what Arena is.
I'm sorry you feel that way, FortyDust =(
This has nothing to do with ads. If I wanted to push more ads, we would have made individual articles for each card reveal and then done separate articles for each class and their spoilers. (In-article ads are certainly nice, but they are nothing compared to what we have in the header that everyone sees on a page load). Hell, we woulda gotten better SEO if we divided stuff up better too!
The reason for this format was primarily because space for content is going to be very tight over the next couple of days so by including our thoughts now, it lets us save that space for other articles that are planned. It's also a nice little test to see what people think about it. If it's popular, we'll maybe attempt to do the same thing during an actual reveal season. We have so many more staff members now that it makes doing real-time reviews easier.
We will be doing a full recap of the mini set a little later today which will have the cards in a more normal gallery format organized by class which will feel less chaotic.
Confirmed
It usually takes us an extra few minutes after announcements drop to write out our social posts, make our post image, format the article :P
Some serious hypefest going on today though helllll yeah!
It really should be!
66, you get full playable copies.
I suspect you may be biased... hmmmmm
It's funny this got brought up again because it's coming out late tonight or tomorrow. Been a weekend project of mine.
Update: Few other things have come up preventing deploying this. Some work on notifications-related stuff.
Observant =)
It's the default site event that is active during a non-event period. Yes, it's not really supposed to be there, however, we also don't link very prominently to the page and the page itself isn't a pretty listing yet so I'm not too worried about it displaying. It may actually have a use going forward to explain some stuff.
Its similar pricing/value compared to Galakrond's Awakening!
Its similar pricing/value compared to Galakrond's Awakening, so yeah, you do understand correctly!
The 4 legendaries alone might be worth the $15! I hope all of them are playable in some capacity instead of just being memes.
We've been lucky enough to have some snow stay on the ground over the past couple of weeks, but damn, it ain't what it used to be. I need to move further North.
I see it as one of three things:
My interpretation was that Dean meant #3, which I agree with. Though, a new constructed mode that lets you dual-class like dual-class arena would be amazing.
I know there's a good chance you're just joking around, but in all seriousness, they almost certainly have it finalized by this point.
I wish people would stop talking about it :D
I commented on this when the event first went live and was hoping we wouldn't see it brought up again because it can be "abused". It's an issue with how dumb our tasks system is and how, right now, it isn't really worth the time to flesh it out more since it will be abandoned in favor of something more advanced in the future. I don't really mind that you can "exploit" it because honestly, it's all fun and games and since it's available for everyone and not just a few people, it feels fair.
TL;DR: Won't fix, don't really consider it an issue even though it kind of is. Have fun and have some snowflakes. *throws snowball*
Once they become "regular" priced, they'll display as owned for everyone. Its a query I need to run that hasn't been created yet :D