I'm not so sure about Basic cards though. Are you sure it will be possible to dust them? I somehow remember having read that it isn't. If you're right, that's really great news!
I've wondered this too. Yes we could when basic cards got hall of famed, but this is a different situation.
Hope we can, but I'm not counting my dust until it's hatched. (or something that makes sense there).
There's no longer such a thing as a Basic set. Former Basic cards are now part of the Legacy set and are craftable and disenchantable. I still advise against it.
They are canceling hundreds of cards that were supposed to be permanent…I'm just saying it's kind of stupid that these articles keep saying it's a boon to the wallets of veteran players when that is clearly not the case.
If I understand you right, ...
So, to the extent that you feel this is unfair to veteran players, and that some refund is due for anyone who spent money on the Classic set
You do not understand me right. In fact, you just put a very long wall of text into my mouth. Perhaps you think I share H0lySatan's opinions. I do not, and it would save everyone a lot of time if you would avoid conflating the opinions of different people you disagree with.
I never said it's unfair to veteran players. I said it's not a boon to veteran players, as it is so often being described in articles around the net. There's a huge difference between "unfair" (your words) and "not really a financial benefit" (my words).
And I certainly never said a refund was due to anyone. I merely pointed out that certain assets -- assets that were once believed to have ongoing value in Standard -- no longer hold value. That's not a sunk-cost fallacy. That's the truth, whether you paid for the cards or got them from Brawls. But I'm not asking for anything back because (as I very clearly stated) I recognize that this is a necessary evil of letting the game move forward from the mire of evergreen nonsense. And, of course, it's true that soon-to-be Legacy cards seem to decrease in value every year anyway as expansions become more powerful. I grant all of that, but it's still worth mentioning as an unfortunate side effect.
So once again, for those who think they know my opinion better than I do: CORE SET GOOD, but we don't need to pretend veteran players are coming out ahead. No compensation asked or expected. No claims that Blizzard is an evil empire out to get me. Just stop saying that Core makes the game cheaper for long-term players who were never again going to need to spend additional money on Classic cards anyway.
Good call. It would be pretty silly to buy Classic packs at this point.
(Yes, you can use them in Classic mode, but I assume the people interested in that already have all the Classic cards they care about. Plus, they are still "rotating soon.")
The Tavern Pass is meant to be light on functionality and more aimed at giving you vanity options. It doesn’t affect your gameplay outside of the small impact it has on XP gain.
It's not a small impact. The extra gold generated by the bonus XP will be buying me a lot of packs. Maybe not 20 packs (so it may not quite pay for itself), but definitely more than a dozen. I think for those who play more than I do and who chase achievements and such, it may actually pay for itself.
I don't know what you mean by "the reality behind Activision's PR propaganda as they try to spin this in a more celebratory direction". To most people, this is a genuinely good thing that should be celebrated. And again, the "virtual" removal of 373 useless cards in favor of 240 good cards is not a bad thing. Nobody will miss their classic collection. And if they really do, then they can always play one of the several modes where those cards are still playable.
As I repeated several times, I do think the Core set itself is worth celebrating.
But I'm not talking about most people. I'm not talking about the average player. I don't know why you're bringing those people up. This has thread nothing to do with them.
I'm talking about people who have been around since launch, who did spend a considerable chunk of money on Classic. Those people may not miss the Legacy cards themselves, but those cards used to be called "evergreen" for a reason. For better or worse, Blizzard's original statement when Standard rotations began was that Classic would always be in Standard. Turns out it was for the worse, and I would never dispute that -- evergreen is clearly bad for the game. But that's why the new Classic mode is an apology. They are canceling hundreds of cards that were supposed to be permanent.
And again, I'm not saying it's wrong or a bad decision. I'm just saying it's kind of stupid that these articles keep saying it's a boon to the wallets of veteran players when that is clearly not the case.
Modalko does make a good point about Tavern Brawls. It will be a nice boost when those start rewarding expansion packs. Wait, wait, wait. No. Tavern Brawl rewards are a completely separate issue. Those could and should have been changed with or without the shift to Core. Completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.
I also cannot agree that it's a benefit to be able to dust Legacy cards, however. Dungeon Runs, Tavern Brawls, and even Duels have shown that strip mining your collection can have terrible repercussions.
I definitely agree. That locked-in quest has always seemed weird to me. No one should be forced to play any particular game mode to get weekly quest XP.
I recently stumbled across this passage in an InvenGlobal article, and it left me shaking my head:
Quote From InvenGlobal
By making the upcoming Core Set free to all players, Blizzard is looking to invite new players into their Hearthstone ecosystem while giving old players who have spent a great deal of money on the game a little break from opening their wallets.
"A little break from opening their wallets"? In what way, exactly? After all, old players who have spent a great deal of money on the game already had complete Classic collections. Hell, even free players who have been around since launch probably had all the Classic cards they would ever need. This move to a Core set does absolutely nothing for veteran players in terms of saving money, and it's disturbing how often I see the lie repeated.
Don't get me wrong: I think the Core set is a great move, a necessary move, for the game. I'm definitely looking forward to a meta that will get refreshed on an annual basis, adding even more meaning to the "Year of ..." paradigm. But can we please stop pretending this is some kind of cost savings for those of us who have actually supported the game for nearly seven years?
Now let's talk about Classic mode. Yes, some people are excited about it. How long that excitement can continue in a mode that is static by definition remains to be seen. But make no mistake: Blizzard didn't do this because they saw a demand for it. Basically no one was asking for anything like Classic mode, and if they were, it was a very tiny minority. Classic mode had to happen because the Core set is about to remove the one very large chunk of every Standard player's assets they could always count on, and Blizzard would have looked fairly villainous if they'd relegated all those cards to Wild and given nothing back. So now we have yet another "apology" game mode that requires no upkeep at Blizzard's end and that will see only a small fraction of the play Standard gets. But hey, at least they did something, right?
Again, I'm not even mad at the business decisions. They did what they had to do to move forward. I'm just pointing out the reality behind Activision's PR propaganda as they try to spin this in a more celebratory direction. The Core set, in and of itself, is worthy of celebration. The virtual removal of 373 cards from your collection is not. It is a necessary evil, and I think it's important to remember that 240 of those cards were not free. Making the Core set free to all isn't generosity; it's actually the very least Blizzard can do.
Do I recall correctly that packs like these do adhere to the no-duplicates rule, but they have their own pity timer? Meaning 15 packs would guarantee you an epic, but don't hold your breath for a legendary?
So, say I have collected all of Scholomance and all of Darkmoon, these packs would basically be the same as Ashes of Outland packs, but on a separate timer?
I didn't say "lack of communication." I said "poor communication." Self-contradiction is one form of poor communication. They've said it's "in the Slay the Spire vein" and then contradicted themselves by describing a game that's nothing like STS, apart from the map interface. (Not that I'm mad -- I actually don't care for STS very much.)
I'm sure it's not a case of intentional deceit. It's more a poorly considered offhand comment that has propagated. I've got no beef with Ben Lee. I'm more annoyed at everyone else who's talking about STS when there are more apt comparisons to be made.
If you had a friend who loved STS and hated Darkest Dungeon, and you told them about Mercenaries, describing it as being "in the vein of STS," don't you think you'd be setting them up for disappointment?
We know there are many changes in store for the reward system as the year rotates. The one thing I want more than any other change is this:
The ability to opt out of weekly quests for different game modes.
I don't want to deprive anyone of such quests if they enjoy them, but it's supremely annoying that I have to reroll a weekly quest several times before I get one that involves the primary game mode. More than once this has left me with just three or four days to complete a quest that I would normally have the whole week to work on.
Coercion is not the best way to get people to like something.
Lol I'm still not use to the new acronym -- I saw this threat title and thought it might have something to do with the launch of a new Fitbit-integration feature. :-P
Once upon a time, not so long ago, people would leave out the prepositions and articles when abbreviating things like titles. (And it's an abbreviation, not an acronym, unless you actually do try to pronounce it like a word.)
So in this case, why not just call it FB? Even better, just say "Barrens." Your meaning will never be mistaken.
If your opponent has lethal on board, you are perfectly capable of ending the game yourself.
If your opponent emotes sarcastically or too much, there's a Squelch command.
You don't actually know if the opponent is roping to annoy you or to legitimately think. Either way, it's not that much time, so you can put Nozdormu in every deck or get over it.
If you are triggered by which cards your opponent hovers over (seriously?), it's definitely your problem, not theirs.
The only real BM in Hearthstone is people who send a friend request just to swear at you for playing a certain card, deck, archetype or class.
If we were always so vigilant about triggers, we as a society would have a tragically tepid body of literature, art and video games.
It's up to the individual with the problems to avoid things that might make them depressed. It is not the job of artists or game developers to protect their audience from sadness. (Indeed, negative feelings are often intentionally invoked as a way to provide catharsis.)
Finally, I don't think we know much about when the next rotations happens. It sounded like the Barrens set will be out whenever it is ready, which could be anywhere from mid March to late April for all I know.
Pre-purchase offers end March 22. To my knowledge, that has never been incorrect as an indicator of the launch date. It's pretty much always the very next day, or at least later that week.
Blizzard using STS as the reference point is more than enough justification for the community to do the same.
Poor communication on Blizzard's part, compounded with the spreading of misinformation by the community? Sounds a lot like what happened with the launch of the rewards track, so I'm going to have to disagree.
Right, but I'm not just talking about dev comments about their inspiration. Fansites, news pieces and comments keep acting like the two games are similar, but they are really, really not.
I don't know why Slay the Spire keeps getting mentioned. Any similarity is extremely superficial. Slay the Spire is a deckbuilding game at its core, and they've just confirmed that there's no deckbuilding in Mercenaries.
Slay the Spire can't really claim credit for maps with branching paths and procedurally generated encounters. As one example, Darkest Dungeon had both of those things three years before Slay the Spire came out.
In fact, now that I think about it, the gameplay of Mercenaries sounds a lot more like Darkest Dungeon than STS.
I feel ya, friend. I thought Iksar had hinted we'd get some breathing room between hero card releases.
But as a Core card, maybe Jaraxxus won't be quite as strong as expansion heroes and won't see much play. (Or will definitely see a ton of play due to nostalgia but won't be oppressive?)
There's no longer such a thing as a Basic set. Former Basic cards are now part of the Legacy set and are craftable and disenchantable. I still advise against it.
You do not understand me right. In fact, you just put a very long wall of text into my mouth. Perhaps you think I share H0lySatan's opinions. I do not, and it would save everyone a lot of time if you would avoid conflating the opinions of different people you disagree with.
I never said it's unfair to veteran players. I said it's not a boon to veteran players, as it is so often being described in articles around the net. There's a huge difference between "unfair" (your words) and "not really a financial benefit" (my words).
And I certainly never said a refund was due to anyone. I merely pointed out that certain assets -- assets that were once believed to have ongoing value in Standard -- no longer hold value. That's not a sunk-cost fallacy. That's the truth, whether you paid for the cards or got them from Brawls. But I'm not asking for anything back because (as I very clearly stated) I recognize that this is a necessary evil of letting the game move forward from the mire of evergreen nonsense. And, of course, it's true that soon-to-be Legacy cards seem to decrease in value every year anyway as expansions become more powerful. I grant all of that, but it's still worth mentioning as an unfortunate side effect.
So once again, for those who think they know my opinion better than I do: CORE SET GOOD, but we don't need to pretend veteran players are coming out ahead. No compensation asked or expected. No claims that Blizzard is an evil empire out to get me. Just stop saying that Core makes the game cheaper for long-term players who were never again going to need to spend additional money on Classic cards anyway.
Good call. It would be pretty silly to buy Classic packs at this point.
(Yes, you can use them in Classic mode, but I assume the people interested in that already have all the Classic cards they care about. Plus, they are still "rotating soon.")
It's not a small impact. The extra gold generated by the bonus XP will be buying me a lot of packs. Maybe not 20 packs (so it may not quite pay for itself), but definitely more than a dozen. I think for those who play more than I do and who chase achievements and such, it may actually pay for itself.
As I repeated several times, I do think the Core set itself is worth celebrating.
But I'm not talking about most people. I'm not talking about the average player. I don't know why you're bringing those people up. This has thread nothing to do with them.
I'm talking about people who have been around since launch, who did spend a considerable chunk of money on Classic. Those people may not miss the Legacy cards themselves, but those cards used to be called "evergreen" for a reason. For better or worse, Blizzard's original statement when Standard rotations began was that Classic would always be in Standard. Turns out it was for the worse, and I would never dispute that -- evergreen is clearly bad for the game. But that's why the new Classic mode is an apology. They are canceling hundreds of cards that were supposed to be permanent.
And again, I'm not saying it's wrong or a bad decision. I'm just saying it's kind of stupid that these articles keep saying it's a boon to the wallets of veteran players when that is clearly not the case.
Modalko does make a good point about Tavern Brawls. It will be a nice boost when those start rewarding expansion packs. Wait, wait, wait. No. Tavern Brawl rewards are a completely separate issue. Those could and should have been changed with or without the shift to Core. Completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.
I also cannot agree that it's a benefit to be able to dust Legacy cards, however. Dungeon Runs, Tavern Brawls, and even Duels have shown that strip mining your collection can have terrible repercussions.
I definitely agree. That locked-in quest has always seemed weird to me. No one should be forced to play any particular game mode to get weekly quest XP.
I recently stumbled across this passage in an InvenGlobal article, and it left me shaking my head:
"A little break from opening their wallets"? In what way, exactly? After all, old players who have spent a great deal of money on the game already had complete Classic collections. Hell, even free players who have been around since launch probably had all the Classic cards they would ever need. This move to a Core set does absolutely nothing for veteran players in terms of saving money, and it's disturbing how often I see the lie repeated.
Don't get me wrong: I think the Core set is a great move, a necessary move, for the game. I'm definitely looking forward to a meta that will get refreshed on an annual basis, adding even more meaning to the "Year of ..." paradigm. But can we please stop pretending this is some kind of cost savings for those of us who have actually supported the game for nearly seven years?
Now let's talk about Classic mode. Yes, some people are excited about it. How long that excitement can continue in a mode that is static by definition remains to be seen. But make no mistake: Blizzard didn't do this because they saw a demand for it. Basically no one was asking for anything like Classic mode, and if they were, it was a very tiny minority. Classic mode had to happen because the Core set is about to remove the one very large chunk of every Standard player's assets they could always count on, and Blizzard would have looked fairly villainous if they'd relegated all those cards to Wild and given nothing back. So now we have yet another "apology" game mode that requires no upkeep at Blizzard's end and that will see only a small fraction of the play Standard gets. But hey, at least they did something, right?
Again, I'm not even mad at the business decisions. They did what they had to do to move forward. I'm just pointing out the reality behind Activision's PR propaganda as they try to spin this in a more celebratory direction. The Core set, in and of itself, is worthy of celebration. The virtual removal of 373 cards from your collection is not. It is a necessary evil, and I think it's important to remember that 240 of those cards were not free. Making the Core set free to all isn't generosity; it's actually the very least Blizzard can do.
Do I recall correctly that packs like these do adhere to the no-duplicates rule, but they have their own pity timer? Meaning 15 packs would guarantee you an epic, but don't hold your breath for a legendary?
So, say I have collected all of Scholomance and all of Darkmoon, these packs would basically be the same as Ashes of Outland packs, but on a separate timer?
I didn't say "lack of communication." I said "poor communication." Self-contradiction is one form of poor communication. They've said it's "in the Slay the Spire vein" and then contradicted themselves by describing a game that's nothing like STS, apart from the map interface. (Not that I'm mad -- I actually don't care for STS very much.)
I'm sure it's not a case of intentional deceit. It's more a poorly considered offhand comment that has propagated. I've got no beef with Ben Lee. I'm more annoyed at everyone else who's talking about STS when there are more apt comparisons to be made.
If you had a friend who loved STS and hated Darkest Dungeon, and you told them about Mercenaries, describing it as being "in the vein of STS," don't you think you'd be setting them up for disappointment?
We know there are many changes in store for the reward system as the year rotates. The one thing I want more than any other change is this:
The ability to opt out of weekly quests for different game modes.
I don't want to deprive anyone of such quests if they enjoy them, but it's supremely annoying that I have to reroll a weekly quest several times before I get one that involves the primary game mode. More than once this has left me with just three or four days to complete a quest that I would normally have the whole week to work on.
Coercion is not the best way to get people to like something.
Once upon a time, not so long ago, people would leave out the prepositions and articles when abbreviating things like titles. (And it's an abbreviation, not an acronym, unless you actually do try to pronounce it like a word.)
So in this case, why not just call it FB? Even better, just say "Barrens." Your meaning will never be mistaken.
Why these things are not BM:
The only real BM in Hearthstone is people who send a friend request just to swear at you for playing a certain card, deck, archetype or class.
If we were always so vigilant about triggers, we as a society would have a tragically tepid body of literature, art and video games.
It's up to the individual with the problems to avoid things that might make them depressed. It is not the job of artists or game developers to protect their audience from sadness. (Indeed, negative feelings are often intentionally invoked as a way to provide catharsis.)
Pre-purchase offers end March 22. To my knowledge, that has never been incorrect as an indicator of the launch date. It's pretty much always the very next day, or at least later that week.
Poor communication on Blizzard's part, compounded with the spreading of misinformation by the community? Sounds a lot like what happened with the launch of the rewards track, so I'm going to have to disagree.
Right, but I'm not just talking about dev comments about their inspiration. Fansites, news pieces and comments keep acting like the two games are similar, but they are really, really not.
I don't know why Slay the Spire keeps getting mentioned. Any similarity is extremely superficial. Slay the Spire is a deckbuilding game at its core, and they've just confirmed that there's no deckbuilding in Mercenaries.
Slay the Spire can't really claim credit for maps with branching paths and procedurally generated encounters. As one example, Darkest Dungeon had both of those things three years before Slay the Spire came out.
In fact, now that I think about it, the gameplay of Mercenaries sounds a lot more like Darkest Dungeon than STS.
I feel ya, friend. I thought Iksar had hinted we'd get some breathing room between hero card releases.
But as a Core card, maybe Jaraxxus won't be quite as strong as expansion heroes and won't see much play. (Or will definitely see a ton of play due to nostalgia but won't be oppressive?)
Looking forward to the return of Lemonade this summer (fingers crossed)!
I know this is just a joke, but it's something Riot would actually do.