My guess is that they want to get them out of the way, so they don't distract the focus from an upcoming Patch. There are only 2 months left until the next expansion (actually only 1 month, because there won't be big updates between the announcement and release) and we are still expecting the Mercenaries mode, new Duels heroes (seriously it has been in "season 1" for over half a year now)  and the fire-festival for this expansion.

Wonder if the timing was on purpose, considering that they just wild-banned stealer of souls.

git gud (lolololol)

"maintain its current...function in standard"

maintain: to continue to have; to keep in existence, or not allow to become less

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/de/worterbuch/englisch/maintain

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is that the mini-set was announced just days before it was released, and it takes something like 4 weeks of completing 13,000 xp of quests per week to earn 2000 gold

Technically speaking they announced the mini-set in february as part of the roadmap, or even earlier as part of the Darkmoon faire expansion where they said that every future expansion will get a mini-set. That's like saying that you only have 1 month to save gold for the next (normal) expansion, because they don't release the trailer sooner.

But the quest should only be available for 24h, which is a tech they don't have or atleast havn't used before.

It's probably similar to the hysteria desaster earlier this year. They knew that such a deck would exist, but weren't sure about how powerfull/consistend it would be.

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I don't think I've ever played a game in the "roguelike"

If you have ever played a dungeon run, then you did. You are probably refearing to rogue-lites because of the perma-progression.

Because A: they see hearthstone as an platform for card games now and B: because battlegrounds has more similarities with constructed than some people make it out to be. Mainly the Heroes with hero powers, the characters, the UI, the Keywords, the Mana system and how the attacks works. Also, why make it into a seperate game in the first place? It already has it's own dedicated team, benefits from Hearthstones QoL changes and allows the player to quickly switch between modes.

It also doesn't have enough content for it to be it's own game. Like, how would the main menue look like? "Play" , "buy the perks", and "Quests"?

considering that the mode has been delayed once, is in the works for over a year now, has it's own team that focused on shipping it and that the survey includes an potential store description? I'd say that the odds are looking good. They are also releasing 3 book updates this month which indicates an big update for july.

They are constantly repeating this vague gameplay description since they announced the mode.

"Deal damage with a twist as you and your opponent queue abilities and select targets, then sit back and watch the right unfold"

they would not have said it if they weren't sure about it. You can also monetize it through other ways like XP booster and or payed runs with extra rewards.

There are so many more new things here than you might think from first looking at it!

1. "Expand Your Village:" Seems like a big part of the mode they havn't talked about it. I wonder how it will impact the gameplay

2. Seems like you could share your seed, otherwise the wouldn't show it to you. I can already see how people fight over what code is the hardest

3. It looks like every level will either upgrade your health or attack.

4. Also did you notice the different Icons for the left stat? Seem like there will be atleast two different attack types (I'd guess physical and magical, possibly more) EDIT: Those Icons can be found at the bottom middle of the merc Keyart. I'm 99% sure that there will be 3 attack types

5. The Image on the top left also reveals some new art including Eudora and an WIP Shadow Orc (?). I don't know who he is,I'm not deep into the WoW lore

6. The HP like Icons in the middle seem to be the attacks of a single character of which two are on cooldown.  But now I do wonder where you can see the qued up attacks

7. I'm not sure what the numbers above the attacks mean. Like really, no Idea

8. The gameplay background is the same as the one for the map from the looks of it. Maybe there will be a fluid transition between those two, similar to how "Trials of Fire" (a different game, not "Trials by Felfire") handled it.

9. There also seems to be some attacks that can shuffle something into your deck. I wonder how you make this work in a non-deckbuilding gameplay. Maybe an "charge up" attack?

10. Each level seems to impact atleast one stat. Also notice how there will be merc exclusive types like "Dreanai", "Orc" and "Human"

11. One thing that confused me for a while was the "Encounter" bar on the right because that image was nowhere to be seen on the map. Now I'm certain that you can pre-view already won fights and the dev then just scrolled up the map to show how the boss looks like.

All in all this makes me super exited to learn more about the details of the mode. Though I do have to say that I'm a bit dissapointed on the mercs ingame frame. They seem so tiny compared to how important they are. The fact that there will never be more than 3 on the same board size should leave enough room for improvement.

The next Sets will definetely include some Spell-school synergy similar to minion tribe synergy. There is no way they would update every past, current and future cards and then never use them again.

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True, it had been listed as a 'new game mode' in both the Year of the Phoenix and Gryphon schedules

That's not 100% true. There are some differences between the mode in the two Roadmaps:

- unlike Duels, they revealed the second new game mode as part of the last expansion (it was "Spell locked" before). Which means that they weren't sure if they could make it in time (which turned out to be true)

- They never really talked about the new game mode in the Year of the phoenix, but announced it together with an gameplay description for the Year of the gryphon

- The mode was just called "new game mode" in the Year of the Phoenix Roadmap, but "Mercenaries" in the Year of the Gryphon one and is there planned for the first phase (aka this expansion).

Last but not least it's also important to keep in mind that the mode has been in the works for well over a year now and has been silently delayed once already. I can't imagine them delaying  another time when they already felt comfortable announcing it. Plus the merc team is currently entierely focused on shiping the mode accoarding to the Q&A.

There are still 2 months until the next expansions. It's probably launching as either part of the fire-festivale or next expansion's pre-purchase.

Nope, that option is currently still available. So either they disable it with the patch or it's just an alternative way for people who don't know how to make a second account can't convince anyone to try out HS.

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Do note that at this time the patch is NOT live and is NOT available to download.

Now I'm curios, how can someone datamine something that isn't available? Is there someone who leaked an internal build?

I'm not a fan of people saying "We didn't got X during the Brode Era". Like yeah, there are probably some things Brode probably was against, but some people (not direcetly tarketing you) are acting as if there were no new features during that time. I mean, just think of Tavern Brawls, Arena, standard/wild, Adventures, 3 Expansions per year, Quests, Hero Cards, Events, Dungeon run(s) and more. Brode definetely wasn't against innovative new things.

It's also not like the dev team instantly started making all those features once Brode was gone. The reason why the content output improved so much is actually relatively simple: Because the HS dev team increased a lot. I can't remember the source anymore, but I'm 99.8% sure that the dev team currently contains of around 100 people which is twice as much as it was during the WW. They would have never done things like: Battlegrounds, Reward Track, mercenaries etc. without slowing down the card releases if they still "only" had 50 devs, even if Brode would have left earlier. The same also goes for low priority features like buying skins directly with gold, though monetization certainly plays an role there.

I know this reply went a bit off-topic, but it just annoys me when people(again, not directly targeted at you) act as if Brode was "bad" for the game without considering the other factors.

Sry, but I just had to say this at some point. I hope this didn't came agross as agressive or something like that.

More like a gold sink for those who want it. Also having the option to buy them anytime is always better than not having it. I see nothing wrong with this feature.