I'm at level 48. I don't have the tavern pass, but I did the same approach of storing up some quests for launch, I've been grinding achievements in Wild with pretty mindless decks while I do other things (I think I'm at 49% completion). I'm honestly a bit surprised that so many of the achievements are so doable without tons of new cards, though at some point I will run out of non-legendary quests, and that will be tough. A lot of them are a serious grind, but even just a pretty basic Handlock in wild was able to get quite a few done.
Not entirely sure why you're making specific examples that "an OTK, you're a combo deck". Yes, and water is also wet. What's your point in defining things that have already been defined before? Traditional control isn't strictly attrition, but yes generally does involve "outvaluing" your opponent in terms of resources. Once again, what is the actual point you are trying to make here, other than padding out a response to make it look more substantial or have a higher level of veracity?
I am not just padding my response, I'm responding directly to AngryShuckie's definition of the control archetype. The relevant quote here from Shuckie is "What that win condition is can vary greatly, including plain attrition, overwhelming the opponent with big minions, or maybe even an OTK. The biggest distinction with combo is the amount of draw they run." My point was that I don't agree entirely with the definition Shuckie put forth - if your deck relies on an OTK, then it's a combo deck, plain and simple. Whether you do that quickly or slowly is irrelevant to the actual strategy of your deck.
Ultimately, I think any deck that's classified as Control needs to playing a value game. Brian Kibler's Control Shaman is a great recent example of this.
Quote From Sykomyke
So it's ok for aggro or even combo/OTK to define the meta, but the minute control defines the meta it's "woe is me"? C'mon. This debate is getting ridiculous. It's like that meme…
This is not a "woe is me" complaint - I actually really like control decks, and played a ton of Reno Control Priest back before Knights of the Frozen Throne turned the deck into a combo deck. I'm fine playing some slow games, but tons of control mirrors do make for a boring, grindy experience.
It's also not me trying to define which decks are "allowed" to define the meta, I'm just trying to articular which archetypes tend to define a healthy metagame.
Quote From Sykomyke
Let's examine a much more relevant card: Fire Sale. This card is the *perfect* control card. Cheap, decent aoe, tradable. Means control doesn't have to have it clog their hand. Yet, it's not really being used in control decks right now. It's being used in quest mage, which is (if we are being honest) closer to a OTK/combo deck than an actual Control deck. Though I could see arguments made to "classify" it as a partial control deck (it does control the game before completing it's quest).
I sort of feel like you're making my point for me here. My original argument was that the Aggro > Combo > Control triangle doesn't fit well in Hearthstone, and the place where it fits the worst is the Control part. I've already described in other posts why I think this MTG concept doesn't map perfectly to Hearthstone, but I'll sum it up as this: Hearthstone is much more tempo-oriented, and teching against other strategies is more expensive. This is exactly why you might reasonably classify Quest Mage is being "partial control" - it runs a bunch of cards like First Flame and Fire Sale to control the board because of how important it is to stifle opposing tempo.
This happens all the time in Hearthstone - Aggro and Combo archetypes are more frequently successful, so when you see slower value decks in the early days of the meta, you tend to see more mixed archetypes (i.e. Midrange and Control-Combo) that take elements of Control archetypes, but don't go full control. Traditional control decks don't really come about until late into a meta when the game is stable enough that a more traditional control deck can know what to build against.
All of this is why I think AngryShuckie's original argument is flawed; it leverages that triangle to articular what's wrong with the balance in the game, and blames card draw for that issue, but I don't think that balance problem really exists to nearly the degree that triangle would suggest because we're seeing exactly the kinds of archetypes we'd expect to see in Hearthstone at this stage of the meta: Midrange, Aggro, and Combo. That's a fairly healthy metagame for the early days of an expansion, and exactly what I'd expect to see in Hearthstone because Control in Hearthstone naturally needs a solid meta to play off of. There's a real possibility that the Tradeable keyword changes that by lowering the costs of early meta Control, but so far I don't think we're there, and I don't think we'll get there unless the keyword goes evergreen.
So to clarify, by 'control' I mean a deck that favours the path of removal and/or armour/healing to survive long enough to reach their win condition. What that win condition is can vary greatly, including plain attrition, overwhelming the opponent with big minions, or maybe even an OTK. The biggest distinction with combo is the amount of draw they run. Combo will tend to draw as quickly as possible, only using stall/removal to buy a few precious turns, whereas control will draw their win condition more naturally, needing less card draw as they deny the opponent's attempts to pressure them.
I can mostly get behind this definition, though I think it highlights exactly how fraught drawing these lines is. I would argue that if your win condition is an OTK, you're a combo deck. Traditional control doesn't have to be strictly attrition decks, but the win condition is generally just to run the opponent out of resources, then play some big threats the opponent can't deal with.
The "extreme" version of that is a fatigue/attrition match where running the opponent out of resources means eventually having them expend their whole deck (because the games are slow and the big threats that typically win games for control can't get a foothold in mirrors), but the principle is the same whether you're trying to run an aggro deck out of cards in their hand or a control deck out of cards in their deck. Your win condition is to eke more value out of your cards than your opponent so that you eventually have more threats than your opponent and win.
Quote From AngryShuckie
I am not advocating for a return of attrition decks to the top of the meta. I just want there to be enough games that go on for enough turns to allow everyone to have the opportunity to try whatever they like. Super efficient card draw is enabling a two-pronged attack on that ideal by squeezing everything slow out of the meta.
I didn't mean to suggest that you were looking for super slow attrition. And I don't mean to suggest that having some long games is bad. All I meant is that because Hearthstone's design/rules emphasize more mixed archetypes like Midrange, when Control plays gets to play a major role in the meta, it often ends up warping the meta. RoS Control Warrior isn't the only example here - I think another good one is KaC Cubelock, which was able to generate a ton of burst with Doomguard and a ton of defense with Voidlord, enabling it to completely dominate any other board-centric deck.
Control can and should find success by preying on popular decks through disruption rather than playing a major role in defining the meta. That can come in the form of AOE and removal against aggro decks, but you can also have hand and deck manipulation to mess with combo decks if those are a significant part of the meta. In that sense, I think the bigger problem is less about card draw and more about combo decks lacking interactivity. Mage Quest is a great example of this - it's really hard to disrupt it because they can play the quest before you can disrupt it (usually - I guess Oh My Yogg! is kind of an option), and can complete the quest and play Arcanist Dawngrasp in the same turn before you can disrupt that because their spells are so cheap. Typical combo disruption would destroy key cards (e.g. with Altar of Fire), but that doesn't do much when they have tons of spells that can complete the quest, and get to draw/play their key cards within the span of a single turn.
The Demon Seed is an absolute menace in Wild, which is pretty unfortunate. But as far as Standard is concerned, my "scalding hot take" is that I actually think it's a brilliantly designed quest. It's a single card that enables a combo archetype focused on Free Admission to tutor out Stealer of Souls/Darkglare/Nightshade Matron, an aggro archetype focused on high tempo self harm cards like Flame Imp to cheat out Flesh Giant, and a control archetype that leverages Soul Rend and Altar of Fire for board clears and disruption respectively, with fatigue as a win con for control mirrors. It's true that not all of those decks are equally successful right now (nor should they be), but all of these archetypes can find ways to use this quest, and I think that's honestly really cool.
To the extent that Quest Zoolock is too powerful right now in Standard, I'm not convinced Flesh Giant is the right target for a nerf. It's a dual-class card, making it less likely to see a nerf anyway, but as powerful as getting a cheap 8/8 is, it's not unstoppable. Any deck that wants to can tech in Big Game Hunter to clear it before it does anything, and there are lots of class-specific answers as well. The real problem, as others have pointed out, is that Battleground Battlemaster's drawback (being a slightly understated 5-drop) is too small a drawback to make it bad. Compare it to Windspeaker - a card that saw very little play - and it's a neutral card with double the effect of a class card for one extra mana. (Obviously it's slightly different - one effect is permanent, the other is an aura, but granting windfury rarely matters beyond a single turn anyway.) I think the only fix for the card would be to drive up the cost - probably to 7 or 8.
Anecdotally, I don't agree with Meister. The "dogmatic" view of deck archetypes has and will always exist. Just because hearthstone's interpretation of mechanics lends itself to a faster paced experience does not mean that's the way it *has* to be, nor does the existence of poorly balanced metas like Mech/Control Warrior indicate that's the status quo for control metas or decks. (In fact during the Boomsday Project, I think it took them way longer than needed to make balance changes to the cards....that was during a phase of their existence where they were very "laissez faire" in their balance approach to Hearthstone ...hands off if you don't get the insinuation).
To use a turn of phrase: Don't piss on me and call it rain. And don't try to call midrange/tempo decks, control decks. Midrange decks are the "jack of all trades" decks. They exist outside the 3 major archetypes because they have the ability to *possibly* defeat any deck, but at the cost of diluting their gameplan and deck experience to be able to possibly shift gears to take on a different role. A midrange/tempo deck can try to beat a control deck, but they may still end up losing because they don't draw well or lose too many resources. A control deck however, knows that it's chance of beating a OTK deck are slim to none, barring specific tech cards or circumstances which cause the OTK to lose their win condition.
I'm not saying that Midrange and Control are the same, I'm saying that the mechanics of Hearthstone lend themselves so much more to Midrange than Control that we shouldn't expect Control to play the same central role in the archetype balance triangle originally defined by MTG. I mentioned the differences in combat rules, but they go well beyond that. In Hearthstone, there's very little you can do to interact with your opponent on their turn (mostly just secrets, which your opponent can often play around). In Hearthstone you always play best-of-1 with no sideboard, which implicitly increases the cost of teching for particular match-ups. (The tradeable mechanic may change that, particularly if it becomes evergreen, but right now that's the world we live in.)
I am very aware of the differences between the two deck archetypes, and I'm not saying that strong Control decks can't exist in Hearthstone, all I'm saying is that Control archetypes don't generally play a primary role in balancing the metagame, and when they do the game is usually far less fun because it means they're over-tuned. Ultimately, my point is that the argument from AngryShuckie that the abundance of good card draw is a problem because it edges out Control is (I believe) wrong precisely because Control doesn't play the same critical role in Hearthstone that it does in MTG. A metagame can be very healthy despite a lack of strong/popular Control decks.
There is a real risk that too much good card draw can make the game stale by making it too easy for each deck to do exactly what it wants in every game - that's a very real challenge for the designers, and a big part of why Quest Mage is such a nuisance. However, I think the complaints about a lack of control decks and an overabundance combo and aggro in Standard feels like an overreaction to a few clear examples of "bad opening day meta," with no particular basis in where we are only a few days into the Stormwind expansion.
It's already the case the majority of Day 1 and 2 combo decks that were terrorizing the metagame are taking a back seat to Handbuff Paladin, which fits squarely into a Midrange/Tempo archetype. Looking more broadly at the data on HSReplay, you've got three different Aggro decks (Face Hunter, Zoo Warlock, and Elemental Shaman), two Combo decks (Quest Mage and Quest Druid), and three Midrange/Tempo decks (Handbuff Paladin, SI Rogue, and Pirate Warrior) all with solid positive win rates. Quest Warlock has fallen off precipitately because unlike Quest Mage it crumbles against aggro, and the only classes that have no representation on that list are Priest and Demon Hunter. It's early yet, and the meta isn't solidified, but I think it's clear that a lot of classes and archetypes are finding success right now.
Of course, you'll note that none of the archetypes I mentioned are strictly control decks, even though that very lack of control is called out as the central problem with too much card draw. To be frank, I think the idea that Hearthstone lacking traditional control decks is a problem reflects an overly dogmatic reading of the traditional Aggro > Combo > Control triange. It's a great tool for thinking about how archetypes interact, but it was always intended as more illustrative (because in any given match-up, your aggro deck might have to be the "control" rather than the "beatdown," etc.), and its MTG roots make very clear that it isn't a perfect tool for Hearthstone. MTGs rules about attackers and blockers create a fundamentally different control experience, while Hearthstone is designed to produce a faster gameplay experience that's intended as a mobile-first experience.
Because Hearthstone has always been a tempo game first and foremost, I think it's natural that Midrange/Tempo decks replace Control most of the time in that triangle, which makes pretty clear that today's distribution of archetypes is actually pretty healthy. In fact, when I think back to metagames with prominent traditional control decks, those metagames were typically awful. Control Mech Warrior around Rise of Shadows is a great example of this - it was typical that these decks would generate 30+ armor in a game, leverage Archivist Elysiana to extend their deck, and drag any even remotely slow game into fatigue (and potentially to the 90 turn cap). That was a miserable time to play the game, even if you love traditional control decks, because every game felt super samey and super slow.
You could just play Handbuff Paladin - it currently has a crazy high win rate against a wide array of decks, including most quest decks (even though everyone seems to want to spend their time hating on Quest decks).
Okay - I must have missed that Q&A or wherever that was originally posted, but it does seem like other shuffles (outside of the Trade mechanic) ought to treat them like any other card.
I've been playing Handlock in wild and recently noticed that shuffling tradeable cards back into the deck (either via effects like Plot Twist or trading) doesn't seem to remove cost reductions on the card. I'm not sure if other buffs would also persist, but that certainly seems wrong.
I think the HS team really screwed up with the entire expansion here. Because if Mage gets nerfed, then Warlock will need to be nerfed as well because that deck is disgustingly strong and only being held back by Mage. And then if it’s not Mage/Warlock it will be Shaman and so on… everything is at way too high of a power level right now,
I tend to think that Mage is actually a big part of what's enabling Quest Warlock decks. Both offer uninteractive win conditions, and both feature tons of card draw, but current incarnations of Quest Warlock are dramatically more vulnerable to aggressive strategies. You can see this a lot in Face Hunter/Quest Warlock matchups - the deck collapses because because by the time they get Stealer of Souls + Draw online, their health is too low to play any of the cards they draw.
The health costs of cards is a big part of it, but there are other weakpoints in Warlock that Mage lacks. School Spirits is okay as AOE, but Mage has Fire Sale when they need to answer wide boards, and for solitaire match-ups they can just trade it away. Warlock can reduce the cost of cards in hand over time with Runed Mithril Rod, but Mage gets to reduce the cost of literally every card in their deck with Incanter's Flow (a fact that would matter less if they had worse card draw). Warlock is fundamentally a combo deck that relies on several key demons to cascade into its win condition, so you can disrupt them with a fair number of cards (e.g. Glide, Star Student Stelina, Mindrender Illucia, Felsoul Jailer, Mutanus the Devourer). Mage, by contrast, just needs to run a bunch of goods spells (as that naturally gives them lots of access to different types) along with burn for the end game, making it pretty easy for them to play around the few counterplay options that are available (e.g. Oh My Yogg! and Counterspell, and to a lesser extent Cult Neophyte and Ogremancer)
I agree that there are probably other offenders who also need to be weeded out of the organization, but I don’t think it’s right to suggest CEOs are regularly used as fall guys, as that implies a certain level of blamelessness when PR is bad. Even if we ignore the allegations that Brack did nothing despite knowledge of the harassment, he was the leader of an organization whose culture allowed for pervasive harassment. That demonstrates (at minimum) a lack of leadership, which means he has some responsibility for what happened by virtue of being bad at his job. He doesn’t need to have been an active participant in harassment for that to be true.
I don't think they will add core races like undead, human, elf etc. to the game as tribes. It brings a lot of problems about Pirate tribe for example. Tribes like Moonkin might find its place in the game at future tho. We saw that for Quillboar's for example.
For playable WoW races, it is better to keep them off from game as tribes in my opinion. It opens a lot of opportunities for tribes such as Pirate again. It makes possible to make for example a Merchant or Artisan tribe. That sounds better than simple Night Elf, Undead, Goblin etc.
For diversity of undeads, it would be better to add tribes as specific as Ghoul, Abomination etc.
I agree that it doesn't make sense to add the playable races as tribes because of the presence of "profession" tribes like Pirate. (They'd have to be more like MTG and have a type and subtype to make those work together). But with respect to undead, Dean Ayala has already said it makes sense as a tribe. I think the way you square that with playable races is by calling the playable undead "Forsaken" rather than "Undead." The former is the official WoW name for the race, while the latter is something of a holdover from Warcraft 3 race names.
That would probably lead to some confusion around which cards get an Undead tag, but it would suit the idea that playable WoW races aren't tribes.
Punishing Blizzard is the job of the courts, not the customers. It is the whole reason for the lawsuit.
I agree that the job of the courts is to punish this sort of thing, but I don't think that means customers have no role to play. It's certainly true that court can have a much larger impact than any individual in terms of punishing Blizzard, but a large, unified group of consumers can exert a lot of power too. That's the basic premise of any free market economy - that businesses which are bad (produce bad products, abuse workers, etc.) will be punished by the market rejecting them.
I'm sympathetic to the view that this premise puts too much burden on individuals to punish massive corporations, but I think you can find plenty of examples where corporate malfeasance is only punished with a slap on the wrist by courts, so it's not like that route is consistently effective. Moreover, there's no shortage of people online who regularly complain about Blizzard being strictly focused on profits above game quality (at least as far back as Activision's acquisition of them). The Warcraft 3 Reforged fiasco is a great recent example of this, and the tone deaf responses from corporate leaders in the wake of this scandal highlight how their priorities aren't really on fixing the company rather than saving face. Hitting them in their wallet via boycott sends a strong market signal that their consumers want to see change in their behavior.
Quote From FortyDust
Trying to sink the whole company would be misguided. Blizzard continues to employ many innocent people who make a product I enjoy.
I don't want to sink the whole company. I agree there are lots of innocent people (and even victims) at Blizzard who deserve a better workplace, not a bankrupt employer. I have enjoyed playing Hearthstone for years, and I don't want to see it gone because I really don't think other CCGs in the market can replace it (I have soured considerably on LoR, and as great as MTGA is, I think its complexity means it can't fill the same fast-paced space that Hearthstone occupies).
But that doesn't mean I don't want to send Blizzard a message that makes clear that I want to see them make meaningful changes to their corporate culture. A boycott doesn't need to mean "destroy this company by taking away all their revenue." It can simply be a protest that shows Blizzard that their customers are willing to hit them where it hurts.
After mulling it over for a while, I've decided to stop paying for anything in Hearthstone (and any Blizzard games writ large), and just going totally F2P. That leaves the door open to spending more on the game if Blizzard can show meaningful change, while not cutting out a product that I enjoy a lot.
Over a long period of time (and assuming you either always buy Tavern Pass or never buy Tavern Pass), there shouldn't be much of a difference from a value perspective.
That said, I think the case where it does make sense is if you're F2P. Extra levels early translate to more stuff on day 1, which is much more impactful for F2P players who don't already have loads of packs to open from purchased bundles.
I mean, realistically speaking, you're not gonna support the employees by sinking the game and having them laid off.
I don't really think it's necessary for the average player to just straight up uninstall everything and never touch Blizzard games again. At the end of the day, how long would you keep it up? When will you know that things have changed for the better?
If you don't feel like paying for the game anymore that's fine, but I don't think just quitting the game entirely is going to change anything. Blizzard is getting hit hard by this and I doubt they can just sit this one out so things will change (for better or worse). In the meantime, we can basically just do whatever and see how it goes.
At the end of the day people should stick to their own set of ethics and not try to coerce others into following them (lest they turn out to be hypocrites).
I certainly hope my question didn't read as an attempt at coercion. I'm just trying to start a conversation that I was surprised wasn't already happening on this forum.
This is a question I've been grappling with, and haven't really resolved yet. Particularly with a new expansion coming up, this seems like a moment where the fans can really make an impact and help support the cause of a just and equitable workplace for Blizzard employees.
Please, calm down. Even if things look very ugly, we are not sure yet if they are guilty or not.
Haha, I'm perfectly calm. It's just something that's been on my mind, I was generally surprised that this discussion didn't seem to be happening already. It's fairly common for bad behavior from corporations to be met with boycotts, but perhaps it's fair to say that the legal ramifications of this will dwarf anything a boycott could do.
You're right that nothing has been proven in a court of law, but the stories surfacing from former Blizzard employees about this stuff has convinced me regardless of what the court says. (That certainly means I'm unfit to be a juror, but I don't live in CA, so that's entirely moot.)
How would not playing the expansion (it is already pre-purchased) "help support the cause of a just and equitable workplace for Blizzard employees" ?
I certainly can't speak for everyone, but I haven't yet pre-purchased the expansion (I typically wait until the final card drop before deciding whether buying is worth it). Obviously if you already have, the impact is financially negligible. But there can be PR impacts from public boycotts that extend beyond financial impacts.
This is a question I've been grappling with, and haven't really resolved yet. Particularly with a new expansion coming up, this seems like a moment where the fans can really make an impact and help support the cause of a just and equitable workplace for Blizzard employees.
The Gloria Steinem namedrop makes the whole thing ring super fake. Maybe J. Allen Brack did honestly have this unverifiable conversation between him and Bobby Kotick where he brought her up, but the whole thing reads as "Of course I'm a feminist because I can Google who Gloria Steinem is."
I'm at level 48. I don't have the tavern pass, but I did the same approach of storing up some quests for launch, I've been grinding achievements in Wild with pretty mindless decks while I do other things (I think I'm at 49% completion). I'm honestly a bit surprised that so many of the achievements are so doable without tons of new cards, though at some point I will run out of non-legendary quests, and that will be tough. A lot of them are a serious grind, but even just a pretty basic Handlock in wild was able to get quite a few done.
I am not just padding my response, I'm responding directly to AngryShuckie's definition of the control archetype. The relevant quote here from Shuckie is "What that win condition is can vary greatly, including plain attrition, overwhelming the opponent with big minions, or maybe even an OTK. The biggest distinction with combo is the amount of draw they run." My point was that I don't agree entirely with the definition Shuckie put forth - if your deck relies on an OTK, then it's a combo deck, plain and simple. Whether you do that quickly or slowly is irrelevant to the actual strategy of your deck.
Ultimately, I think any deck that's classified as Control needs to playing a value game. Brian Kibler's Control Shaman is a great recent example of this.
This is not a "woe is me" complaint - I actually really like control decks, and played a ton of Reno Control Priest back before Knights of the Frozen Throne turned the deck into a combo deck. I'm fine playing some slow games, but tons of control mirrors do make for a boring, grindy experience.
It's also not me trying to define which decks are "allowed" to define the meta, I'm just trying to articular which archetypes tend to define a healthy metagame.
I sort of feel like you're making my point for me here. My original argument was that the Aggro > Combo > Control triangle doesn't fit well in Hearthstone, and the place where it fits the worst is the Control part. I've already described in other posts why I think this MTG concept doesn't map perfectly to Hearthstone, but I'll sum it up as this: Hearthstone is much more tempo-oriented, and teching against other strategies is more expensive. This is exactly why you might reasonably classify Quest Mage is being "partial control" - it runs a bunch of cards like First Flame and Fire Sale to control the board because of how important it is to stifle opposing tempo.
This happens all the time in Hearthstone - Aggro and Combo archetypes are more frequently successful, so when you see slower value decks in the early days of the meta, you tend to see more mixed archetypes (i.e. Midrange and Control-Combo) that take elements of Control archetypes, but don't go full control. Traditional control decks don't really come about until late into a meta when the game is stable enough that a more traditional control deck can know what to build against.
All of this is why I think AngryShuckie's original argument is flawed; it leverages that triangle to articular what's wrong with the balance in the game, and blames card draw for that issue, but I don't think that balance problem really exists to nearly the degree that triangle would suggest because we're seeing exactly the kinds of archetypes we'd expect to see in Hearthstone at this stage of the meta: Midrange, Aggro, and Combo. That's a fairly healthy metagame for the early days of an expansion, and exactly what I'd expect to see in Hearthstone because Control in Hearthstone naturally needs a solid meta to play off of. There's a real possibility that the Tradeable keyword changes that by lowering the costs of early meta Control, but so far I don't think we're there, and I don't think we'll get there unless the keyword goes evergreen.
I can mostly get behind this definition, though I think it highlights exactly how fraught drawing these lines is. I would argue that if your win condition is an OTK, you're a combo deck. Traditional control doesn't have to be strictly attrition decks, but the win condition is generally just to run the opponent out of resources, then play some big threats the opponent can't deal with.
The "extreme" version of that is a fatigue/attrition match where running the opponent out of resources means eventually having them expend their whole deck (because the games are slow and the big threats that typically win games for control can't get a foothold in mirrors), but the principle is the same whether you're trying to run an aggro deck out of cards in their hand or a control deck out of cards in their deck. Your win condition is to eke more value out of your cards than your opponent so that you eventually have more threats than your opponent and win.
I didn't mean to suggest that you were looking for super slow attrition. And I don't mean to suggest that having some long games is bad. All I meant is that because Hearthstone's design/rules emphasize more mixed archetypes like Midrange, when Control plays gets to play a major role in the meta, it often ends up warping the meta. RoS Control Warrior isn't the only example here - I think another good one is KaC Cubelock, which was able to generate a ton of burst with Doomguard and a ton of defense with Voidlord, enabling it to completely dominate any other board-centric deck.
Control can and should find success by preying on popular decks through disruption rather than playing a major role in defining the meta. That can come in the form of AOE and removal against aggro decks, but you can also have hand and deck manipulation to mess with combo decks if those are a significant part of the meta. In that sense, I think the bigger problem is less about card draw and more about combo decks lacking interactivity. Mage Quest is a great example of this - it's really hard to disrupt it because they can play the quest before you can disrupt it (usually - I guess Oh My Yogg! is kind of an option), and can complete the quest and play Arcanist Dawngrasp in the same turn before you can disrupt that because their spells are so cheap. Typical combo disruption would destroy key cards (e.g. with Altar of Fire), but that doesn't do much when they have tons of spells that can complete the quest, and get to draw/play their key cards within the span of a single turn.
The Demon Seed is an absolute menace in Wild, which is pretty unfortunate. But as far as Standard is concerned, my "scalding hot take" is that I actually think it's a brilliantly designed quest. It's a single card that enables a combo archetype focused on Free Admission to tutor out Stealer of Souls/Darkglare/Nightshade Matron, an aggro archetype focused on high tempo self harm cards like Flame Imp to cheat out Flesh Giant, and a control archetype that leverages Soul Rend and Altar of Fire for board clears and disruption respectively, with fatigue as a win con for control mirrors. It's true that not all of those decks are equally successful right now (nor should they be), but all of these archetypes can find ways to use this quest, and I think that's honestly really cool.
To the extent that Quest Zoolock is too powerful right now in Standard, I'm not convinced Flesh Giant is the right target for a nerf. It's a dual-class card, making it less likely to see a nerf anyway, but as powerful as getting a cheap 8/8 is, it's not unstoppable. Any deck that wants to can tech in Big Game Hunter to clear it before it does anything, and there are lots of class-specific answers as well. The real problem, as others have pointed out, is that Battleground Battlemaster's drawback (being a slightly understated 5-drop) is too small a drawback to make it bad. Compare it to Windspeaker - a card that saw very little play - and it's a neutral card with double the effect of a class card for one extra mana. (Obviously it's slightly different - one effect is permanent, the other is an aura, but granting windfury rarely matters beyond a single turn anyway.) I think the only fix for the card would be to drive up the cost - probably to 7 or 8.
I'm not saying that Midrange and Control are the same, I'm saying that the mechanics of Hearthstone lend themselves so much more to Midrange than Control that we shouldn't expect Control to play the same central role in the archetype balance triangle originally defined by MTG. I mentioned the differences in combat rules, but they go well beyond that. In Hearthstone, there's very little you can do to interact with your opponent on their turn (mostly just secrets, which your opponent can often play around). In Hearthstone you always play best-of-1 with no sideboard, which implicitly increases the cost of teching for particular match-ups. (The tradeable mechanic may change that, particularly if it becomes evergreen, but right now that's the world we live in.)
I am very aware of the differences between the two deck archetypes, and I'm not saying that strong Control decks can't exist in Hearthstone, all I'm saying is that Control archetypes don't generally play a primary role in balancing the metagame, and when they do the game is usually far less fun because it means they're over-tuned. Ultimately, my point is that the argument from AngryShuckie that the abundance of good card draw is a problem because it edges out Control is (I believe) wrong precisely because Control doesn't play the same critical role in Hearthstone that it does in MTG. A metagame can be very healthy despite a lack of strong/popular Control decks.
There is a real risk that too much good card draw can make the game stale by making it too easy for each deck to do exactly what it wants in every game - that's a very real challenge for the designers, and a big part of why Quest Mage is such a nuisance. However, I think the complaints about a lack of control decks and an overabundance combo and aggro in Standard feels like an overreaction to a few clear examples of "bad opening day meta," with no particular basis in where we are only a few days into the Stormwind expansion.
It's already the case the majority of Day 1 and 2 combo decks that were terrorizing the metagame are taking a back seat to Handbuff Paladin, which fits squarely into a Midrange/Tempo archetype. Looking more broadly at the data on HSReplay, you've got three different Aggro decks (Face Hunter, Zoo Warlock, and Elemental Shaman), two Combo decks (Quest Mage and Quest Druid), and three Midrange/Tempo decks (Handbuff Paladin, SI Rogue, and Pirate Warrior) all with solid positive win rates. Quest Warlock has fallen off precipitately because unlike Quest Mage it crumbles against aggro, and the only classes that have no representation on that list are Priest and Demon Hunter. It's early yet, and the meta isn't solidified, but I think it's clear that a lot of classes and archetypes are finding success right now.
Of course, you'll note that none of the archetypes I mentioned are strictly control decks, even though that very lack of control is called out as the central problem with too much card draw. To be frank, I think the idea that Hearthstone lacking traditional control decks is a problem reflects an overly dogmatic reading of the traditional Aggro > Combo > Control triange. It's a great tool for thinking about how archetypes interact, but it was always intended as more illustrative (because in any given match-up, your aggro deck might have to be the "control" rather than the "beatdown," etc.), and its MTG roots make very clear that it isn't a perfect tool for Hearthstone. MTGs rules about attackers and blockers create a fundamentally different control experience, while Hearthstone is designed to produce a faster gameplay experience that's intended as a mobile-first experience.
Because Hearthstone has always been a tempo game first and foremost, I think it's natural that Midrange/Tempo decks replace Control most of the time in that triangle, which makes pretty clear that today's distribution of archetypes is actually pretty healthy. In fact, when I think back to metagames with prominent traditional control decks, those metagames were typically awful. Control Mech Warrior around Rise of Shadows is a great example of this - it was typical that these decks would generate 30+ armor in a game, leverage Archivist Elysiana to extend their deck, and drag any even remotely slow game into fatigue (and potentially to the 90 turn cap). That was a miserable time to play the game, even if you love traditional control decks, because every game felt super samey and super slow.
You could just play Handbuff Paladin - it currently has a crazy high win rate against a wide array of decks, including most quest decks (even though everyone seems to want to spend their time hating on Quest decks).
Okay - I must have missed that Q&A or wherever that was originally posted, but it does seem like other shuffles (outside of the Trade mechanic) ought to treat them like any other card.
I've been playing Handlock in wild and recently noticed that shuffling tradeable cards back into the deck (either via effects like Plot Twist or trading) doesn't seem to remove cost reductions on the card. I'm not sure if other buffs would also persist, but that certainly seems wrong.
I tend to think that Mage is actually a big part of what's enabling Quest Warlock decks. Both offer uninteractive win conditions, and both feature tons of card draw, but current incarnations of Quest Warlock are dramatically more vulnerable to aggressive strategies. You can see this a lot in Face Hunter/Quest Warlock matchups - the deck collapses because because by the time they get Stealer of Souls + Draw online, their health is too low to play any of the cards they draw.
The health costs of cards is a big part of it, but there are other weakpoints in Warlock that Mage lacks. School Spirits is okay as AOE, but Mage has Fire Sale when they need to answer wide boards, and for solitaire match-ups they can just trade it away. Warlock can reduce the cost of cards in hand over time with Runed Mithril Rod, but Mage gets to reduce the cost of literally every card in their deck with Incanter's Flow (a fact that would matter less if they had worse card draw). Warlock is fundamentally a combo deck that relies on several key demons to cascade into its win condition, so you can disrupt them with a fair number of cards (e.g. Glide, Star Student Stelina, Mindrender Illucia, Felsoul Jailer, Mutanus the Devourer). Mage, by contrast, just needs to run a bunch of goods spells (as that naturally gives them lots of access to different types) along with burn for the end game, making it pretty easy for them to play around the few counterplay options that are available (e.g. Oh My Yogg! and Counterspell, and to a lesser extent Cult Neophyte and Ogremancer)
I agree that there are probably other offenders who also need to be weeded out of the organization, but I don’t think it’s right to suggest CEOs are regularly used as fall guys, as that implies a certain level of blamelessness when PR is bad. Even if we ignore the allegations that Brack did nothing despite knowledge of the harassment, he was the leader of an organization whose culture allowed for pervasive harassment. That demonstrates (at minimum) a lack of leadership, which means he has some responsibility for what happened by virtue of being bad at his job. He doesn’t need to have been an active participant in harassment for that to be true.
I agree that it doesn't make sense to add the playable races as tribes because of the presence of "profession" tribes like Pirate. (They'd have to be more like MTG and have a type and subtype to make those work together). But with respect to undead, Dean Ayala has already said it makes sense as a tribe. I think the way you square that with playable races is by calling the playable undead "Forsaken" rather than "Undead." The former is the official WoW name for the race, while the latter is something of a holdover from Warcraft 3 race names.
That would probably lead to some confusion around which cards get an Undead tag, but it would suit the idea that playable WoW races aren't tribes.
I agree that the job of the courts is to punish this sort of thing, but I don't think that means customers have no role to play. It's certainly true that court can have a much larger impact than any individual in terms of punishing Blizzard, but a large, unified group of consumers can exert a lot of power too. That's the basic premise of any free market economy - that businesses which are bad (produce bad products, abuse workers, etc.) will be punished by the market rejecting them.
I'm sympathetic to the view that this premise puts too much burden on individuals to punish massive corporations, but I think you can find plenty of examples where corporate malfeasance is only punished with a slap on the wrist by courts, so it's not like that route is consistently effective. Moreover, there's no shortage of people online who regularly complain about Blizzard being strictly focused on profits above game quality (at least as far back as Activision's acquisition of them). The Warcraft 3 Reforged fiasco is a great recent example of this, and the tone deaf responses from corporate leaders in the wake of this scandal highlight how their priorities aren't really on fixing the company rather than saving face. Hitting them in their wallet via boycott sends a strong market signal that their consumers want to see change in their behavior.
I don't want to sink the whole company. I agree there are lots of innocent people (and even victims) at Blizzard who deserve a better workplace, not a bankrupt employer. I have enjoyed playing Hearthstone for years, and I don't want to see it gone because I really don't think other CCGs in the market can replace it (I have soured considerably on LoR, and as great as MTGA is, I think its complexity means it can't fill the same fast-paced space that Hearthstone occupies).
But that doesn't mean I don't want to send Blizzard a message that makes clear that I want to see them make meaningful changes to their corporate culture. A boycott doesn't need to mean "destroy this company by taking away all their revenue." It can simply be a protest that shows Blizzard that their customers are willing to hit them where it hurts.
After mulling it over for a while, I've decided to stop paying for anything in Hearthstone (and any Blizzard games writ large), and just going totally F2P. That leaves the door open to spending more on the game if Blizzard can show meaningful change, while not cutting out a product that I enjoy a lot.
Over a long period of time (and assuming you either always buy Tavern Pass or never buy Tavern Pass), there shouldn't be much of a difference from a value perspective.
That said, I think the case where it does make sense is if you're F2P. Extra levels early translate to more stuff on day 1, which is much more impactful for F2P players who don't already have loads of packs to open from purchased bundles.
Good luck to everyone who enters!
I certainly hope my question didn't read as an attempt at coercion. I'm just trying to start a conversation that I was surprised wasn't already happening on this forum.
Haha, I'm perfectly calm. It's just something that's been on my mind, I was generally surprised that this discussion didn't seem to be happening already. It's fairly common for bad behavior from corporations to be met with boycotts, but perhaps it's fair to say that the legal ramifications of this will dwarf anything a boycott could do.
You're right that nothing has been proven in a court of law, but the stories surfacing from former Blizzard employees about this stuff has convinced me regardless of what the court says. (That certainly means I'm unfit to be a juror, but I don't live in CA, so that's entirely moot.)
I certainly can't speak for everyone, but I haven't yet pre-purchased the expansion (I typically wait until the final card drop before deciding whether buying is worth it). Obviously if you already have, the impact is financially negligible. But there can be PR impacts from public boycotts that extend beyond financial impacts.
This is a question I've been grappling with, and haven't really resolved yet. Particularly with a new expansion coming up, this seems like a moment where the fans can really make an impact and help support the cause of a just and equitable workplace for Blizzard employees.
The Gloria Steinem namedrop makes the whole thing ring super fake. Maybe J. Allen Brack did honestly have this unverifiable conversation between him and Bobby Kotick where he brought her up, but the whole thing reads as "Of course I'm a feminist because I can Google who Gloria Steinem is."