My initial reaction was pretty tame because all I heard was the announcement trailer. I didn't read it in depth.
But this line in particular is a sucker punch:
Quote From Blizzard
All Hero Powers and Treasures added after Duels: Early Access can be unlocked by meeting a variety of criteria associated with your Collection. For example, unlocking a new Hero Power may require owning a corresponding Legendary card. Or to unlock a specific Treasure, you might need to own 30 Epic cards from a given set.
Hero powers locked behind having specific Legendaries? Treasures locked behind having 30 Epic cards from a given set? That isn't even in the ballpark of 'could be free to play, if you want to make it work.' That is strictly pay-to-win. Just how many packs do you need to purchase to have 30 Epic cards from a given set? Those things don't drop like rares do!
I feel gross. This feels gross. This makes me not want to play any longer.
Minisets are concerning. What's the right thing to do? Spend your gold on packs at the start of the expansion, or wait until midway through when the full set is actually available?
I mean, it seems pretty clear what Blizzard's goal is: "you will give us lots of money up front, and lots more money later." Sure, they're a company, this sort of thing is what companies do... But I know that lots of players have been complaining about the price of playing this game. Feels like they decided to, uhh, not back down in that regard.
So it is, effectively, an Arena format with single-player content added onto it, in the structure of the Saviors of Uldum interface and progression, and is strictly pay-to-win: while there is a great deal of RNG, the player with the better collection gets to create the better starting 16 cards for their deck.
I think criticisms of 'pay-to-win' are a little shallow; on the one hand, it puts a price barrier against playing; on the other, it incentivizes players to collect more cards and try new sets, which is probably a good thing for long-term game health.
(If Hearthstone and 'long-term game health' is even a thing at this point.)
I don't know... Between this and the mini-sets which they're implementing, it feels more and more like they're being pressured to monetize. It's frustrating for those who were complaining that Hearthstone was already too expensive. I don't think it's going to get any better in that sense.
Your response, having run it through Google Translate:
Quote From Author
I can not agree more with you.
Let's review.
They took us from the Expansion / Adventure alternation to 3 Expansions per year
They told us that adventures would not be published and have made us pay for different adventures after LoE
They implemented the legendary class doubles
All the 'helps', legendary, and now epic, not repeated, are a great boost for collecting, but worthless for the f2p that opens between 60 and 80 packs per expansion.
They modified the rewards (missions) at the beginning of this year without saying anything in the patch. Nauseating. A minimum of 5 less envelopes per semester.
They have created double cards that make the game more expensive without at the moment hearing the criticism that it should from streamers, monitoring websites, even from HS mathematics.
They launch the probe balloon of a disastrous Battlepass, and now they are trying, as you said, to calm the waters to continue their path, that of extortion.
They are bringing seasonal cosmetics to the store, all aimed at fundraising, without giving anything to dedication to the game, without adequately rewarding the time that some players dedicate to this game, their visibility, deteriorated, but still more so of not having the support of all of them.
I don't know what will happen but I do know what I would like to happen. I would like Reddit to boycott the game if the actions they carry out are unethical, if they stop being a f2p game to become a time extortionist or a p2w; stop playing, see who needs whom.
I know, I know, utopian and not very possible, although for a long time they have not had my time, the essentials, not a second more.
It's a good thing that this is intended to happen over a period of a couple weeks, because I can't see these changes doing much to impact DH's power level...
The first several years without this guy in the game was only a setback!
Seriously though, you've see the decks, I've seen the decks, this guy is bonkers. Crazysauce. Incredible value. And he broke Wild within 24 hours of launch.
He will continue to break the game for years to come.
Sure, neutral resurrection is pretty valuable as an effect. Kel'Thuzad has it, and we don't see it terribly often. But the egg is terribly vulnerable after Al'Ar dies, and it's hard to proc the deathrattle multiple times, especially as Al'Ar has to die first for it to be resurrected...
The value of this card comes in your ability to fulfill its condition without destroying the board in the first place.
Since Magtheridon itself destroys the board, then playing this and a board clear is less... useful... than just playing a board clear. Unless you specifically want the 12/12 body. But as we've seen with playing Deathwing, a 12/12 body isn't really worth it if you destroy your board or lose your win condition in the process...
Theorycrafters are already salivating over this card and easy ways to enable it. And I'm sure that those are coming, especially in Wild and as time goes on. But for now, it's looking pretty overkill.
If Dormant cards are good, then this card will be a staple of the set.
I don't think that Dormant cards are particularly good, though. Certainly not reliably enough to justify putting it under for two more turns, unless for whatever reason the effect justifies the sacrifice.
But Maiev can also be used to nuke things, to eliminate taunts, to silence effects... Yeah, she's pretty flexible. You might see this in a lot of decks for that reason alone.
Like most utility cards and legends, this is much more potent in Wild than in Standard. Hunters and Cubelocks adore this card.
In standard, though, this is useful for playing around things like Doomsayers and other board clears, though it's high-risk against classes that feature silence effects like Priest and Demon Hunter.
This is much more crazy than the Rot card, because this one actually does copy itself in its entirety. Which means that things could get out of control pretty quickly if this gets buffed. You are going to see buffing jank in Wild that does exactly this and it could be pretty good, especially with magnetic effects going off on it. Maybe it could serve as a win condition for Paladin's Making Mummies quest?
Suggestion: this card will backfire on you much more often than it works in your favor.
The decks that don't run spells will play around this card, and the decks that do run spells will wreck your face, because they won't be as reliant on minions that this could benefit from damaging.
It's a nifty one-of for a niche effect--as so often, epics are--but I don't see it becoming a staple. You'll find it a healthy inclusion in demon discover pools or other generation effects. But it's not a buildaround, as much as some might argue it is.
10 mana 14/14? Solid. If you can avoid transformation effects, hexes, polymorphs, devolves, silences... otherwise, it's a wasted turn. A vanilla 7/7 is basically a slightly bigger Boulderfist Ogre, and we all know how good those are.
As others have stated, it copies the stats, not the effect. So this dies to removal, as the saying goes.
That said, I've toyed for years with a deck that uses end-of-turn effects to generate crazier board states, so this will probably pretty easily go in that deck. Definitely won't put it over the top, but it'll be fun to try.
Basically a zombie plague sort of effect. This spawns more of itself, slowly but surely disrupting the game.
I've seen people run disruption-oriented decks, what with warlock's Chaos Gazer, among others. This will find a place in decks like that. Whether those decks are any good is something else. Big Priest in Wild fears this card.
Requires silence to get much value out of it, especially in constructed. Or you can use this with Rez effects to establish firm board control while other things tackle the face. But there are other, more functional cards in the game that can do both. Why run this?
Use it for arena or Heart of the Sunwell tavern brawls, probably not anything else.
It's a bit slow, but if you can get it to stick around, you might be able to do some sort of wombo-combo with the new Warrior board clear that procs until something dies.
But with taunt, a relatively low power level, and a seven mana cost, setting that combo up is probably unfeasible.
It's a pretty meh card. There are better deathrattles than just dropping stats, especially when you're sitting on six mana. (Khartut Defender, anyone?)
If you have Cairne Bloodhoof, you will never run this card.
My initial reaction was pretty tame because all I heard was the announcement trailer. I didn't read it in depth.
But this line in particular is a sucker punch:
Hero powers locked behind having specific Legendaries? Treasures locked behind having 30 Epic cards from a given set? That isn't even in the ballpark of 'could be free to play, if you want to make it work.' That is strictly pay-to-win. Just how many packs do you need to purchase to have 30 Epic cards from a given set? Those things don't drop like rares do!
I feel gross. This feels gross. This makes me not want to play any longer.
Minisets are concerning. What's the right thing to do? Spend your gold on packs at the start of the expansion, or wait until midway through when the full set is actually available?
I mean, it seems pretty clear what Blizzard's goal is: "you will give us lots of money up front, and lots more money later." Sure, they're a company, this sort of thing is what companies do... But I know that lots of players have been complaining about the price of playing this game. Feels like they decided to, uhh, not back down in that regard.
So it is, effectively, an Arena format with single-player content added onto it, in the structure of the Saviors of Uldum interface and progression, and is strictly pay-to-win: while there is a great deal of RNG, the player with the better collection gets to create the better starting 16 cards for their deck.
I think criticisms of 'pay-to-win' are a little shallow; on the one hand, it puts a price barrier against playing; on the other, it incentivizes players to collect more cards and try new sets, which is probably a good thing for long-term game health.
(If Hearthstone and 'long-term game health' is even a thing at this point.)
I don't know... Between this and the mini-sets which they're implementing, it feels more and more like they're being pressured to monetize. It's frustrating for those who were complaining that Hearthstone was already too expensive. I don't think it's going to get any better in that sense.
Thank goodness. I was worried there. I guess I'll hold off on my expectations for another month!
Your response, having run it through Google Translate:
It's a good thing that this is intended to happen over a period of a couple weeks, because I can't see these changes doing much to impact DH's power level...
The first several years without this guy in the game was only a setback!
Seriously though, you've see the decks, I've seen the decks, this guy is bonkers. Crazysauce. Incredible value. And he broke Wild within 24 hours of launch.
He will continue to break the game for years to come.
It's too much work for too little payoff.
Sure, neutral resurrection is pretty valuable as an effect. Kel'Thuzad has it, and we don't see it terribly often. But the egg is terribly vulnerable after Al'Ar dies, and it's hard to proc the deathrattle multiple times, especially as Al'Ar has to die first for it to be resurrected...
I just don't see it working terribly well.
The value of this card comes in your ability to fulfill its condition without destroying the board in the first place.
Since Magtheridon itself destroys the board, then playing this and a board clear is less... useful... than just playing a board clear. Unless you specifically want the 12/12 body. But as we've seen with playing Deathwing, a 12/12 body isn't really worth it if you destroy your board or lose your win condition in the process...
Theorycrafters are already salivating over this card and easy ways to enable it. And I'm sure that those are coming, especially in Wild and as time goes on. But for now, it's looking pretty overkill.
If Dormant cards are good, then this card will be a staple of the set.
I don't think that Dormant cards are particularly good, though. Certainly not reliably enough to justify putting it under for two more turns, unless for whatever reason the effect justifies the sacrifice.
But Maiev can also be used to nuke things, to eliminate taunts, to silence effects... Yeah, she's pretty flexible. You might see this in a lot of decks for that reason alone.
Like most utility cards and legends, this is much more potent in Wild than in Standard. Hunters and Cubelocks adore this card.
In standard, though, this is useful for playing around things like Doomsayers and other board clears, though it's high-risk against classes that feature silence effects like Priest and Demon Hunter.
Much like EMP Operative and other such tribal-hate cards (Remember Hemet Nesingwary?), this card requires a tribal-centric meta to see play.
Tribal centric, not just a deck or two featuring tribes. If a given deck is not tribal, then this card is a waste in that matchup.
This is much more crazy than the Rot card, because this one actually does copy itself in its entirety. Which means that things could get out of control pretty quickly if this gets buffed. You are going to see buffing jank in Wild that does exactly this and it could be pretty good, especially with magnetic effects going off on it. Maybe it could serve as a win condition for Paladin's Making Mummies quest?
Suggestion: this card will backfire on you much more often than it works in your favor.
The decks that don't run spells will play around this card, and the decks that do run spells will wreck your face, because they won't be as reliant on minions that this could benefit from damaging.
It's a nifty one-of for a niche effect--as so often, epics are--but I don't see it becoming a staple. You'll find it a healthy inclusion in demon discover pools or other generation effects. But it's not a buildaround, as much as some might argue it is.
10 mana 14/14? Solid. If you can avoid transformation effects, hexes, polymorphs, devolves, silences... otherwise, it's a wasted turn. A vanilla 7/7 is basically a slightly bigger Boulderfist Ogre, and we all know how good those are.
As others have stated, it copies the stats, not the effect. So this dies to removal, as the saying goes.
That said, I've toyed for years with a deck that uses end-of-turn effects to generate crazier board states, so this will probably pretty easily go in that deck. Definitely won't put it over the top, but it'll be fun to try.
Basically a zombie plague sort of effect. This spawns more of itself, slowly but surely disrupting the game.
I've seen people run disruption-oriented decks, what with warlock's Chaos Gazer, among others. This will find a place in decks like that. Whether those decks are any good is something else. Big Priest in Wild fears this card.
Requires silence to get much value out of it, especially in constructed. Or you can use this with Rez effects to establish firm board control while other things tackle the face. But there are other, more functional cards in the game that can do both. Why run this?
Use it for arena or Heart of the Sunwell tavern brawls, probably not anything else.
It's a bit slow, but if you can get it to stick around, you might be able to do some sort of wombo-combo with the new Warrior board clear that procs until something dies.
But with taunt, a relatively low power level, and a seven mana cost, setting that combo up is probably unfeasible.
It's a pretty meh card. There are better deathrattles than just dropping stats, especially when you're sitting on six mana. (Khartut Defender, anyone?)
If you have Cairne Bloodhoof, you will never run this card.