You put that extremely well, link. The lack of real guild content in the game didn't give us that extra bit of engagement! Seasons are definitely boring and the weekly rotation of families does have its flaws. I was very lucky when I had started that I picked the right hero because my shop rotation worked out well and I was able to scale power quickly with that and the dungeons. Not to mention the thousands of gold I received for server problems that went right into the primary army.
I really should have touched on passives. The mechanic is super shitty and I've been lucky enough that I don't feel like I've bricked any units, but it's clearly a problem that people are having. I was thinking the game might have a heavy Pay to Win element with you getting all the abilities at the same time once you leveled up enough, so I suppose I'm a little thankful that is not the case.
I still have some hope that more might happen with it. Until then though, yeah I'm just not feeling it anymore.
I was so excited for Skyward Sword since I didn't finish the original one, I even bough the special Zelda Joy-Cons they released for it. But I never ended up getting to carve out enough time for it. Zelda just isn't one of those games I want to play for half an hour at a time so it got tossed aside. Sigh.
That's good to hear the motion controls are easy to recalibrate should stuff get wonky. Nothing better than slicing your sword at enemies!
Congratulations to Lemushki, sule, and anchorm4n for winning the giveaway! You have all been sent emails and private messages with instructions on how to claim your prizes. Here are their winning entries:
This is interesting: The first half of Tarim is obviously going to be used as a buff for a smaller friendly minion, and the second half as a debuff for an enemy minion. A neat little two-for-one for aggro pally; I think there's a ton of gas for that archetype so I'm fairly certain we'll be seeing this guy around. (sidenote: one of the great tragedies of Baku-era standard was that Odd Paladin was so good that the obviously busted 6-Cost Tarim was close to an afterthought).
Since we can't preview the vote, instead, here's anchorm4n's comment!
Weird stats on this one. Obviously a hand wide buff can't be too cheap, but why not skip the Lifesteal and give it Windfury instead? Or just reduce the cost a bit… I'm not sold on this one.
Also, fun fact! Anchorm4n is one of the only people who has contributed articles to the website as a non-staff member. Graveyard Deathrattle Rogue was a hell of a deck. We really need to bring back wild Wednesdays.
I'm modifying the giveaway time by an hour (1 more hour). Due to the daylight savings time change, I put in the wrong time into our countdown and don't want to penalize anyone because of it.
I am currently investigating the best solution for that! I know how painful it is to join realms otherwise.
Sidenote: Excited about being able to later on figure out what realms people enjoy so we can suggest realms when people join the site. Anything to make the onboarding process better.
That's some great information to share! You're 100% correct in that you do not want a ton of these packs. They are a super awesome way to bootstrap that collection though if you've been gone a while and I'm happy to see Hearthstone is finally committing to making it easier to get back into the game.
I'll see what we can do to let folks know how many packs they've opened. I know a lot of our metrics within these giveaways are hidden and I wish that wasn't the case.
Heya anchorm4n! The titles are all in and if you visit this page, you should now earn credit for them. (You can also wait and we'll run a query that updates everyone once the crawl is over)
There will be a dedicated post going up this morning for it! The link is (and always has been) accessible on the Hearthstone expansions navigation too:
An absolute titan in the industry! His work is some of the most recognizable and shows the huge impact Japan has had on North American youth culture in the 90s, popularizing anime (and to a degree manga). Every day Dragon Ball could be found on tv and you bet I was glued to it.
I'm looking forward to the April launch of the Sand Land game.
Hero Power synergy cards are some of my favourites in the game. I think Algalon the Observer could be quite a bit of fun with this card since you can really mess your opponent up. The only downside is if you want their next card to show up on top, then you don't get to take a look at the second card.
It'll be interesting to see if Hero Power stuff gets any more support with the expansion. Festival of Legends certainly had a good chunk so maybe Blizzard will continue on that path.
I'm so glad the taste aspect isn't absolutely required. Though it would make Overcooked more interesting when your friend burns the food.
I really hope the Gamescent ends up being good. Even if you don't use it all the time, it would still be nice to break it out occasionally when you want that extra bit of reality. I'm really hoping that the burning tyre smells are good because we're going to have an incredible time in VR with my racing wheel playing F1 and Assetto Corsa.
Alright so it's only fair that I also give my predictions for the year's expansions.
First, the cupcake is confusing. Cogs, a toy plane, a shield-looking-thing, those are all easily indications of Gnomes and Mechs which would be an amazing theme. If they want to use this year as a celebration of Hearthstone, it would make sense to do a huge throwback to Goblins vs Gnomes right off the bat. The cupcake could just be the fact they are celebrating things. My prediction: Bring on the Gnomes and Mechs. Maybe goblins and murlocs too, a "short stuff" expansion. The wood backdrop could indicate the expansion is going to have a tavern theme.
Second, what are we doing in a desert with an oasis. League of Explorers are one of Hearthstone's most beloved set of characters, so they are almost certainly going to be involved. Location? We've got The Stagnant Oasis in The Barrens, but we've already been there recently and it isn't a sandy desert. We've also got Uldum's Oasis of Vir'sar and Vir'naal Oasis. Saviors of Uldum is old enough at this point they could maybe drop in again. The expansion was well received and again, if we're celebrating the good in Hearthstone Uldum would make a damn good choice.
Though, World of Warcraft is doing something with Pirates soon, and it would be very cool for Blizzard to also do something with pirates in Hearthstone. Leeroy back in the core set, gimme a new patches! Screw it, let's yolo this and guess that we're going to see a Pirate expansion.
Third, we've got the cosmos. I immediately start to think of Algalon, the Titans, Ulduar. Uldum, if that is what we were getting in expansion 2, would play into that very well and if Blizzard wants to do thematics in the mini-set for the new Uldum set, it would be a perfect time to tell a story to jump into Expansion 3.
The third expansion it feels silly to be talking about Ulduar with TITANS and the Fall of Ulduar mini-set recently coming out. Or maybe there's more to tell there.
Or.. maybe night elves? Tyrande's card back matches pretty well...
I don't have a really good prediction for number 3. The Celestial Steed mount was released in World of Warcraft during the end year of Wrath of the Lich King, and the steed is really a pegasus... The mount also just returned to the game as an item in the Trading Post. I don't know, Blizzard is probably trying to throw people off with the last image so they don't repeat the obvious Alterac Valley.
You put that extremely well, link. The lack of real guild content in the game didn't give us that extra bit of engagement! Seasons are definitely boring and the weekly rotation of families does have its flaws. I was very lucky when I had started that I picked the right hero because my shop rotation worked out well and I was able to scale power quickly with that and the dungeons. Not to mention the thousands of gold I received for server problems that went right into the primary army.
I really should have touched on passives. The mechanic is super shitty and I've been lucky enough that I don't feel like I've bricked any units, but it's clearly a problem that people are having. I was thinking the game might have a heavy Pay to Win element with you getting all the abilities at the same time once you leveled up enough, so I suppose I'm a little thankful that is not the case.
I still have some hope that more might happen with it. Until then though, yeah I'm just not feeling it anymore.
I was so excited for Skyward Sword since I didn't finish the original one, I even bough the special Zelda Joy-Cons they released for it. But I never ended up getting to carve out enough time for it. Zelda just isn't one of those games I want to play for half an hour at a time so it got tossed aside. Sigh.
That's good to hear the motion controls are easy to recalibrate should stuff get wonky. Nothing better than slicing your sword at enemies!
Congratulations to Lemushki, sule, and anchorm4n for winning the giveaway! You have all been sent emails and private messages with instructions on how to claim your prizes. Here are their winning entries:
Lemushki - Botface Comment
Sule - Toy Captain Tarim Comment
Anchorm4n - Voting on Painter's Virtue
Since we can't preview the vote, instead, here's anchorm4n's comment!
Also, fun fact! Anchorm4n is one of the only people who has contributed articles to the website as a non-staff member. Graveyard Deathrattle Rogue was a hell of a deck. We really need to bring back wild Wednesdays.
I'm modifying the giveaway time by an hour (1 more hour). Due to the daylight savings time change, I put in the wrong time into our countdown and don't want to penalize anyone because of it.
This might be the most excited I've ever been for a quality of life update in a video game. My luck is horrible.
I am currently investigating the best solution for that! I know how painful it is to join realms otherwise.
Sidenote: Excited about being able to later on figure out what realms people enjoy so we can suggest realms when people join the site. Anything to make the onboarding process better.
That's some great information to share! You're 100% correct in that you do not want a ton of these packs. They are a super awesome way to bootstrap that collection though if you've been gone a while and I'm happy to see Hearthstone is finally committing to making it easier to get back into the game.
I hope you get this lucky too, that's incredible!
Luckily we do have a cap on the number of packs someone can open to be eligible for the giveaway!
There are indeed multipliers for golden cards and for signature cards since they increase the overall value of a card pack.
There's some other magic too with different cards being assigned base values based on criteria we don't make public ;)
I'll see what we can do to let folks know how many packs they've opened. I know a lot of our metrics within these giveaways are hidden and I wish that wasn't the case.
Heya anchorm4n! The titles are all in and if you visit this page, you should now earn credit for them. (You can also wait and we'll run a query that updates everyone once the crawl is over)
Good luck on getting those scholars!
There will be a dedicated post going up this morning for it! The link is (and always has been) accessible on the Hearthstone expansions navigation too:
A couple additional bug fixes have gone out.
An absolute titan in the industry! His work is some of the most recognizable and shows the huge impact Japan has had on North American youth culture in the 90s, popularizing anime (and to a degree manga). Every day Dragon Ball could be found on tv and you bet I was glued to it.
I'm looking forward to the April launch of the Sand Land game.
May he rest in peace.
I have always been a huge fan of no-minion mage! Great way to chunk through your deck and get a little extra value for the whopping 6 mana cost.
Hero Power synergy cards are some of my favourites in the game. I think Algalon the Observer could be quite a bit of fun with this card since you can really mess your opponent up. The only downside is if you want their next card to show up on top, then you don't get to take a look at the second card.
It'll be interesting to see if Hero Power stuff gets any more support with the expansion. Festival of Legends certainly had a good chunk so maybe Blizzard will continue on that path.
And we didn't even need to get frozen in time to experience it!
For your sake, Demon, I hope they don't come up with "theme park vomit" as a smell.
I'm so glad the taste aspect isn't absolutely required. Though it would make Overcooked more interesting when your friend burns the food.
I really hope the Gamescent ends up being good. Even if you don't use it all the time, it would still be nice to break it out occasionally when you want that extra bit of reality. I'm really hoping that the burning tyre smells are good because we're going to have an incredible time in VR with my racing wheel playing F1 and Assetto Corsa.
Alright so it's only fair that I also give my predictions for the year's expansions.
First, the cupcake is confusing. Cogs, a toy plane, a shield-looking-thing, those are all easily indications of Gnomes and Mechs which would be an amazing theme. If they want to use this year as a celebration of Hearthstone, it would make sense to do a huge throwback to Goblins vs Gnomes right off the bat. The cupcake could just be the fact they are celebrating things. My prediction: Bring on the Gnomes and Mechs. Maybe goblins and murlocs too, a "short stuff" expansion. The wood backdrop could indicate the expansion is going to have a tavern theme.
Second, what are we doing in a desert with an oasis. League of Explorers are one of Hearthstone's most beloved set of characters, so they are almost certainly going to be involved. Location? We've got The Stagnant Oasis in The Barrens, but we've already been there recently and it isn't a sandy desert. We've also got Uldum's Oasis of Vir'sar and Vir'naal Oasis. Saviors of Uldum is old enough at this point they could maybe drop in again. The expansion was well received and again, if we're celebrating the good in Hearthstone Uldum would make a damn good choice.
Though, World of Warcraft is doing something with Pirates soon, and it would be very cool for Blizzard to also do something with pirates in Hearthstone. Leeroy back in the core set, gimme a new patches! Screw it, let's yolo this and guess that we're going to see a Pirate expansion.
Third, we've got the cosmos. I immediately start to think of Algalon, the Titans, Ulduar. Uldum, if that is what we were getting in expansion 2, would play into that very well and if Blizzard wants to do thematics in the mini-set for the new Uldum set, it would be a perfect time to tell a story to jump into Expansion 3.
The third expansion it feels silly to be talking about Ulduar with TITANS and the Fall of Ulduar mini-set recently coming out. Or maybe there's more to tell there.
Or.. maybe night elves? Tyrande's card back matches pretty well...
I don't have a really good prediction for number 3. The Celestial Steed mount was released in World of Warcraft during the end year of Wrath of the Lich King, and the steed is really a pegasus... The mount also just returned to the game as an item in the Trading Post. I don't know, Blizzard is probably trying to throw people off with the last image so they don't repeat the obvious Alterac Valley.