Sludge Belcher wasn't really considered an underhyped card. It was exactly what was needed at the time that aggro ran rampant on ladder. It was the replacement for Fen Creeper that some decks ran and the more popular Sen'jin Shieldmasta (though many decks included both Tazdingo and Sludge Belcher).
Piloted Shredder on the other hand, yes, there were a few people who undervalued it, definitely more than Sludge Belcher, but it also received a lot of praise upon reveal. This was a better Harvest Golem which saw plenty of play at the time due to its staying power on the board.
Dr. Boom definitely deserved the slot in the article. Props to Demon for another great showcase!
Honestly, I haven't seen the spreadsheet and don't feel comfortable blindly posting about it without seeing the data. I also believe the headlines coming out are more sensational than factual which again, leads to blindly posting about it.
Plus, it isn't exactly news that Blizzard pay is garbage. It's been quite widely known in the industry you're there more for passion than pay. Is it wrong? Oh yeah. It's one of the reasons I never ended up applying for a job there. High cost of living in the area, shitty pay, long hours is a recipe for disaster.
Not really. Not all words needs to have the same difficulty in finding them. Plus, with random generation, it may be easier or harder depending on luck :
Haha, yeah, some of those pros get predictions so horrible wrong that it is incredibly amusing.
I like to give people an idea of what thoughts go into stuff behind the scenes when possible (usually when people bring it up) so I'm glad I was able to let you in on that.
Thanks for contributing and being a part of everything here. Never stop!
I don't disagree with you. There are definitely negatives when we incentivize discussing these cards and even rating them. I believe the potential benefits outweigh the negatives though.
To start, with votes. We get enough "legitimate" votes that I don't believe we're going to skew this in the wrong direction. Yes, there will always be some bad apples who go through and vote the same 1 star or 5 stars on every single card, but it shouldn't hurt things for our compendium because there are way more people voting properly. We also have the option of removing votes before compendium ships if anyone seems to be manipulating things. I haven't had to pull that trigger yet and don't think it'll happen.
Now, discussion. This is the one that has the best chance of going downhill. There are a few things I want to bring up though.
It gets more people to participate long-term
I actually had just brought this up on our site support channel on Discord. I've noticed that when we do these sorts of things, so people will sign up for an account or actually login for a change and start having meaningful discussion on the cards. This brings people into our community in a contributing role which is awesome! Some of these people do stick around and participate in other forums of discussion on the site too which gives us more activity, creating some nice positive ripples.
It can be hard to jump into a community, intimidating even. Giving people an easy way to jump into things is very important and something I think we could do better. Hearthstone is old, and a lot of us have known each other for some amount of time longer than Out of Cards has existed, so that can be tough to break into.
These are only initial reviews
A lot of what people are saying about these cards is going to be hilariously incorrect once the expansion comes out. One could argue it isn't even worth having the threads available since no one is going to be able to have a proper discussion anyway. This is especially true if one considers that the card threads that are created earlier in the reveal cycle have nowhere near a complete picture of what Scholomance looks like. Should we consider that to be a lower quality discussion because pieces of the puzzle were missing? Some might argue it is.
Lazy people don't usually participate
Looking back at the past couple of these, some people end up rating a handful of cards or with some "low quality" discussion on, again, only a handful of cards. It takes a LOT of effort to rate and discuss every card that gets revealed and it's clear even when we did card pack giveaways for participation, so it isn't always worth it.
Also, what one person may consider "low quality" or "unqualified" isn't necessarily the case and can be a bit of a crummy way of looking at it (I'm guilty here at times). Not everyone is able to correctly articulate all their thoughts, some people just want to say something is cool without giving it a full review, and others may simply want to ask questions that as newer players they don't understand but veterans it is first nature. Being more inclusive to all these types of people makes us a better, stronger community. We should try and keep things positive if possible and encourage participation.
With all that said though, if there are people just spamming nonsense, such as copy-pasting the same thing to every thread, I have zero issues with wiping their posts out. You can report posts you truly believe do not belong there and we can make a call on it. To those reading this comment, reporting should only be reserved as a last resort for spam and not just something you may consider "low quality".
Quick recap on the stages of design (I should really flesh this out as guide material since it is interesting)
Initial Design starts everything off. They name the cards, decide on their art, and give them their identities along with initial stats. This process takes 4 months.
Final design takes over after the initial design team gives the set a pass. They also spend 4 months on the set. The set is finished around 2 months before it gets released, though they do sometimes still make some changes closer to the set launch if they have balance concerns.
This means multiple sets are in production at the same time, with the core concepts of each one coming even before initial design. (Let's make a dark themed, old gods set!)
The December set which should release the first week of that month will have wrapped up final design at the start of October. That does give Gallon a month and a bit of time on the team during that process, but I'm willing to wager most of the time will be getting setup at Blizzard and learning about all their processes. The first set I'd expect to see any of his balance work / contributions on is April 2021. 3 sets if we count Scholomance not being released yet. Since I believe the entire team gets together to discuss themes for new sets, I don't believe he'd have any say in that until sets coming out in 2022 or possibly the last set of 2021.
Unfortunately, no =(
You'd have better luck finding a shoe artist to commission a similar design.
That was a laugh :P
Am I in danger? The train hasn't arrived yet so I can still back out!
Yeah, I was actually talking to someone about exactly this. There has got to be an audience for "back to school" Scholomance kits!
5k twitch subs
Yup! They had my size on file lol
That's some next-level photoshop Kappa
Sludge Belcher wasn't really considered an underhyped card. It was exactly what was needed at the time that aggro ran rampant on ladder. It was the replacement for Fen Creeper that some decks ran and the more popular Sen'jin Shieldmasta (though many decks included both Tazdingo and Sludge Belcher).
Piloted Shredder on the other hand, yes, there were a few people who undervalued it, definitely more than Sludge Belcher, but it also received a lot of praise upon reveal. This was a better Harvest Golem which saw plenty of play at the time due to its staying power on the board.
Dr. Boom definitely deserved the slot in the article. Props to Demon for another great showcase!
Yup, same stuff as before. I know, it is not great on mobile =(
Looks like you earned it already so GG!
Honestly, I haven't seen the spreadsheet and don't feel comfortable blindly posting about it without seeing the data. I also believe the headlines coming out are more sensational than factual which again, leads to blindly posting about it.
Plus, it isn't exactly news that Blizzard pay is garbage. It's been quite widely known in the industry you're there more for passion than pay. Is it wrong? Oh yeah. It's one of the reasons I never ended up applying for a job there. High cost of living in the area, shitty pay, long hours is a recipe for disaster.
But yes, Bobby Kotick can go fuck himself.
If you'd like, since you commented about the issue, I can manually credit the achievement. Otherwise, yes!
Not really. Not all words needs to have the same difficulty in finding them. Plus, with random generation, it may be easier or harder depending on luck :
This is fixed. The achievement was flagged incorrectly as not being active.
Looking into this.
The location where you need to comment for credit is found on the "Discuss this Card" buttons under each card in the Scholomance guide.
Yeah, perfect timing since stuff was gonna rotate anyway. Looking forward to what I can do with them when rotation hits!
Haha, yeah, some of those pros get predictions so horrible wrong that it is incredibly amusing.
I like to give people an idea of what thoughts go into stuff behind the scenes when possible (usually when people bring it up) so I'm glad I was able to let you in on that.
Thanks for contributing and being a part of everything here. Never stop!
I don't disagree with you. There are definitely negatives when we incentivize discussing these cards and even rating them. I believe the potential benefits outweigh the negatives though.
To start, with votes. We get enough "legitimate" votes that I don't believe we're going to skew this in the wrong direction. Yes, there will always be some bad apples who go through and vote the same 1 star or 5 stars on every single card, but it shouldn't hurt things for our compendium because there are way more people voting properly. We also have the option of removing votes before compendium ships if anyone seems to be manipulating things. I haven't had to pull that trigger yet and don't think it'll happen.
Now, discussion. This is the one that has the best chance of going downhill. There are a few things I want to bring up though.
It gets more people to participate long-term
I actually had just brought this up on our site support channel on Discord. I've noticed that when we do these sorts of things, so people will sign up for an account or actually login for a change and start having meaningful discussion on the cards. This brings people into our community in a contributing role which is awesome! Some of these people do stick around and participate in other forums of discussion on the site too which gives us more activity, creating some nice positive ripples.
It can be hard to jump into a community, intimidating even. Giving people an easy way to jump into things is very important and something I think we could do better. Hearthstone is old, and a lot of us have known each other for some amount of time longer than Out of Cards has existed, so that can be tough to break into.
These are only initial reviews
A lot of what people are saying about these cards is going to be hilariously incorrect once the expansion comes out. One could argue it isn't even worth having the threads available since no one is going to be able to have a proper discussion anyway. This is especially true if one considers that the card threads that are created earlier in the reveal cycle have nowhere near a complete picture of what Scholomance looks like. Should we consider that to be a lower quality discussion because pieces of the puzzle were missing? Some might argue it is.
Lazy people don't usually participate
Looking back at the past couple of these, some people end up rating a handful of cards or with some "low quality" discussion on, again, only a handful of cards. It takes a LOT of effort to rate and discuss every card that gets revealed and it's clear even when we did card pack giveaways for participation, so it isn't always worth it.
Also, what one person may consider "low quality" or "unqualified" isn't necessarily the case and can be a bit of a crummy way of looking at it (I'm guilty here at times). Not everyone is able to correctly articulate all their thoughts, some people just want to say something is cool without giving it a full review, and others may simply want to ask questions that as newer players they don't understand but veterans it is first nature. Being more inclusive to all these types of people makes us a better, stronger community. We should try and keep things positive if possible and encourage participation.
With all that said though, if there are people just spamming nonsense, such as copy-pasting the same thing to every thread, I have zero issues with wiping their posts out. You can report posts you truly believe do not belong there and we can make a call on it. To those reading this comment, reporting should only be reserved as a last resort for spam and not just something you may consider "low quality".
Quick recap on the stages of design (I should really flesh this out as guide material since it is interesting)
Initial Design starts everything off. They name the cards, decide on their art, and give them their identities along with initial stats. This process takes 4 months.
Final design takes over after the initial design team gives the set a pass. They also spend 4 months on the set. The set is finished around 2 months before it gets released, though they do sometimes still make some changes closer to the set launch if they have balance concerns.
This means multiple sets are in production at the same time, with the core concepts of each one coming even before initial design. (Let's make a dark themed, old gods set!)
The December set which should release the first week of that month will have wrapped up final design at the start of October. That does give Gallon a month and a bit of time on the team during that process, but I'm willing to wager most of the time will be getting setup at Blizzard and learning about all their processes. The first set I'd expect to see any of his balance work / contributions on is April 2021. 3 sets if we count Scholomance not being released yet. Since I believe the entire team gets together to discuss themes for new sets, I don't believe he'd have any say in that until sets coming out in 2022 or possibly the last set of 2021.