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.

I don't see it that critically. The Spotlight Cache changes might have been controversial, but I think it's a good change. Not only do I get more than 1 new card a month with it (compared to before). While chasing cards I do want, I also get cards that I would have never purchased with Tokens and I still have fun experimenting with them. I guess the main thing people dislike is that you have less control over what cards you get, but I think that's the great thing about it.

The living Tribunal for example was seen as a generally bad card on release, so many people didn't purchase him with Tokens. Then he was in the Spotlight Cache rotation together with Jean grey, which many people wanted (and ironically turned out to be pretty meh), so naturally many people also got the living Tribunal and more people played with it. And it turned out: he's actually pretty good and a lot of fun on top of it. Hell, I even reached Infinite and won an infinite conquest with him. All of that didn't happen when he released under the old system.

As for the balance changes: I see where people are coming from, but I don't have a problem with it. Sure, it never feels good when cards you own get nerfed, but what's the alternative? Not nerfing strategies that are too good? Or even worse: not nerfing cards with big synergy potential that are indivitually so good that they are still played in a variaty of strategies, even if the card has nothing to do with it. Not doing either of that is the perfect recipe for extremely fast powercreep.

I've also seen people complain about them nerfing old instead of new cards when it comes to problematic strategies. Sure marketing, money etc. may or may not have something do with that. Neither of us can do anything other than guessing on that part. But it still seems reasonably to me from a player/meta perspective. Nerfing cards generally discourage people from experimenting with them and I'd rather have people experiment less with old cards (that people already experimented with a ton), than with new cards.

Take the controversial recent Collector nerf for example: Collector was nerfed specifically because of its synergie with Loki, which was released only a week before the nerf. They could have given Loki the -2 power nerf instead of the collector and the decks strength would still roughly be where it is today, but it would also ensure that Loki would never find a place in any deck that does not involve the collector. I don't want to discuss how succesfull this specific change was, but rather the idea, the concept behind it.

Lastly, and that's really nothing against you, but I don't like how inflationary the term "cash crab" has become. A cash crab describes a game that was cheaply made for the sole purpose of making money and that's usually following a current hype. Take the thousends of Battle Royale games that suddenly appeared during the big hype for example. Usually made within just a couple months using mostly existing, purchased, or quickly made assets and then abondend a few months after release to start working on the next game. There's even a whole genre for that on the mobile market called "hyper casual games" with companies that are releasing multiple games a month, sometimes even per week, in the hopes to make the next Flappy Bird. Not agreeing with a monetization does not make a game automatically a cash crab.

I know that this is a lot of text and I don't blame you or anyone else for not reading through all of this. It's just that these thoughts have been in my mind for a while now and for some reason I get especially "talky" after I wake up.

Feels good to be able to play Renolock and Dragon Priest again, even if they aren't the best decks out there. Now if only the format didn't remind me of my jade druid ptsd.

His Hero power is "2 mana: Give your hero Divine Shield. They gain +2 Attack and Windfury this turn".

Getting Flashbacks from the Ironwood Golem reveal. When they were supposed to reveal the card they instead started a tournament and after every round (most of which were control mirrors) they revealed a fraction of the card and talked about it for 10 minutes. It took almost 2 hours until they revealed everything, and the card wasn't even interesting in the slightest.