Great game. It's basically Katana Zero (another awesome indi game), but in 3D. There's also a sequel out there that I didn't really get into because it features bike levels and I hated the one in the free demo.

I actually randomly found that game a bit over a year and this is the only Idle game I know that I would describe as worth playing. The biggest plus in my book is that it has no microtransactions or ingame ads whatsoever. Well, I guess there are 2 5$ expansions by now, but it's not like your are running out of stuff to "do" without those. There's also quite a lot of complexity if you are looking for that. Especially the township passive "skill" (that I still havn't gotten into), which is essentially a second idle game within this idle game.

20$ for 30 packs, 5 random skins (2 of which are for legendaries) and 2k coins? A shame that they stopped developing that mode, otherwise I would have almost definetely bought that bundle. And I'm someone who used to succesfully grind the living hell out of that mode instead of purchasing anything with ingame or out-of-game currency.

This looks like Pony Island X Inscryption and I'm all for it.

I think they announced somwhere that they are adding the dust refund with the next hotfix.

Apprentice Ranks were added a couple years ago. They are essentially 50 ranks before bronze 10 where you can't loose stars and gain packs every couple ranks.

All of these changes look like the try to improve the new player experience (again). If this isn't a setup of a future steam release, then I don't know what is. Well, that or a 3.0 re-release, but let's not kidd ourselfs here.

I don't really get why they didn't save the expansion announcement until today. Sure, they would have to release the expansion a couple weeks later, but the HS side of the Blizzcon would have been a lot more exciting. Plus announcing a expansion without releasing a cinematic at the same time just feels weird.

This was actually the deep dive panel. The Ow2 What's Next Panel is scheduled for tommorow 9:30 pm CET.

Yeah, the marketing wasn't really clear about that at all. They did label it "early access" in the release date trailer, but that term was never mentioned again in any other promotional material (or elsewhere) afterwards. I guess you could call season 6 the offical launch with how much it added to the game, but that update was never called "full launch" or something like that from any offical source as far as I know.

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Overwatch 2, which promised to launch with a PvE mode but officially launched this year…

Blizzard released two games this year: Overwatch 2…

Overwatch 2 actually launched last year on October 4. 2022. Though there is still a second confirmed Blizzard launch this year with Warcraft Rumble.

Just leaving some of my thoughts here, because I got nothing better to do:

Hearthstone:

I'm excited for the for the expansion cinematic. There is a lot of potential for a really cool western song here. Reno will surely also play a role there and I expect them to announce him as a card during Blizzcon. As for the new gameplay demo, I have no idea what it could be. They just released a new format and a new/reworked feature (like the new event system from last year) isn't really something you could make a demo for. So maybe it is another pve adventure. Part of the reasons why they stopped doing regular adventures was because Mercenaries was supposed to become the primary pve platform. Accoarding to leaks the game was internally axed during last summer, so a new adventure would fit into the timeframe, since the devs are planing one year ahead.

A small part of me still hopes for a relaunch, but I feel like the final update for it was supposed to be exactly that, but they gave up along the way.

WoW:

I don't play it, so I can't comment on it, but at least a cinematic should be a given for Blizccon.

Diablo 4:

Season 2 just launched, so I don't expect many details on the next one. Maybe a teaser at best. Instead I expect them to talk about their goals for 2024, aswell as the first content expansion that's already confirmed to be in development. There have been leaks about it, but they sound too much like what people want to hear for me to belive them. Oh, and a Cinematic of course, because you know, it's Blizzcon.

Overwatch 2:

Many people are speculating that the next hero will be Mauga, a character that first appeared in the origin comic of Baptiste. I really hope that it's really him. Not because I care about the character, but because reading new hero speculations gets boring, when people constantly bring him up.

I also expect them to release a trailer for the next chunk of Story missions for 2024 and maybe also announce a new event mission. The roadmap of the current Season is also suspiciously empty during the second half, considering that they had some kind of ingame or out of game event every 2 weeks during the last few seasons. They already did a surprise announcement for a crossover event that will start next week and I fully expect them to announce more stuff that are going to launch throughout the rest of the season.

Warcraft, not Arclight, Rumble:

It's a game launch, so surely it's going to come with a cinematic and gameplay trailer. The game is also still missing the raid/coop pve content that was announced for a year ago, so I definetely expect them to talk about that. Some content creators supposetly already tested the new modes, so it can't be that far off. Though I don't expect them at launch, because they just released a new update. It's probably going to be part of the first major post-launch update or something like that. I was always hoping that Warcraft Rumble would not become a live service game, because the current game already feels pretty complete, but I never truly belived it.

I really enjoyed these past twist formats, though mostly because of the lower powerlevel. It's refreshing to see minions survive for more than one turn. I also have a lot fun by experimenting with failed archetypes of the past. Turns out Krul the Unshackled is actually a decent card in the current format. The current queue times are also quite surprising for me. I rarely have to wait for more than 30 seconds to find a match.

In the end I too expected more crazy "twists" for that format, but right now I prefer it over standard. The less swingy nature of the current and last format just feels right to me.

Various devs did mention the 4 expansions per year idea every now and then for over 2 years. I think the last time they said that the dev team is pretty evenly split between keeping the 3 expansions + 3 mini-sets vs doing 4 Expansions per year.

I personally like the Idea of mini-sets, but I don't find it very exciting to only be able to add a few new cards to my decks and potentially don't even draw them for the next couple games.

So far all of the event images were reused from various aspects of the game. Could this mean that there is going to be a headless horseman card/skin in the next Expansion?

They didn't say "next big patch", but "next scheduled balance patch". The content of expansion announcement patches are usually logged in longer in advance than for other patches, because it's harder too delay a whole expansion announcement. The mass pack opening feature for example was announced over a month ago.

I'm too lazy to look the sources up again, but there were definetely more leaks than that in recent times

• Ashes out Outland - DH class release, expansion theme and Priest classic set rework got leaked (probably the biggest leak in history)
• Scholomance - a croped out version of Voracious Reader got leaked (and I think later used for an esport promotional or something like that)
• Darkmoon - nothing
• Barrens - nothing
• Stormwind - The entire Mercenaries release cinematic got leaked before the official announcement
• Altarac - Bearon Gla'shear aswell as the return of Hero cards and Guffs effect got leaked
• Voyage to the Sunken City - The logo and theme got leaked by a non-english hearthstone account
• Castle Nathria - nothing
• Lichking - Deathknight class release got leaked long before the announcement
• Festival - nothing
• Titans - nothing
• Showdown in the Badlands <---- You are here

Out of the expansions I listed here 58% were part of or included some kind of information leak.

I'm honestly kinda scared if they are going to announce the next expansion before Blizzcon. Blizzard did a similar thing for HotS where they announced Deathwing as a playable (and extremely cool) Character just a couple weeks before Blizzcon. This meant that for Blizzcon they would either announce:

• Something even bigger
• Nothing at all

Spoiler: They didn't announce anything for HotS during the entire Blizzcon. I'm not even sure if they even mentioned HotS there.

If they really announce the next expansion before Blizzcon, then I hope that they have "something even bigger" ready for Blizzcon. At least the potential is still there, with one hidden "Spell locked" left on the Roadmap. Though the last time they had something even bigger than a constructed expansion (Mercenaries mode) it didn't end too well.

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• 535 Pieces
• Retails for $74.99 USD

I'm sorry, but what? This has to be a typo. Well, maybe not. After all it's the same company that thought that this 124 pieces set is worth 40$

Quote From linkblade91

but given Blizzard's recent track it might be an unplayable mess for all I know...

I played the closed beta and this is not how I would describe my experience with it. It's essentially Clash Royale, but with a huge focus on pve and a lot more depth with the customization options and different boss mechanics. I went through the entire campaign without ever getting to a point where I had to grind for weeks or spend Money to progress. The game also has a lot of charm from its machine UI, over the skylander like (lol, does anyone remembers Skylanders?) Minis to the level up animations and talent poses they have.

It's a pretty fun game if you are looking to waste a couple minutes every now and then.