I guess we're doing these later now, thanks to my unpredictable and probably worrying sleep schedule. Ah well, it's not like I have anywhere else to be anymore, am I right? God, I would kill for a McDonalds right now... I don't even like McDonalds that much...

In this week's Conversation, we look to the advantages of getting your study on.

Fire When Ready

Congratulations to LutriSpellcaster, who won the WCDC with their Siege Engine!

As always, they'll be in charge of coming up with next week's theme, so look forward to that!

Apply Yourself

The Fan Community Spotlight focused on a learning environment this time, taking a look at Phonix's "Ascella Academy" set.

This set, themed around a school for various disciplines that are just a bit more magical than usual, taps into the wackier side of Hearthstone to great effect. Not that the cards are more silly than normal; there's just less fantastical stakes and more grounded, relatable ideas than normal.

Who among us hasn't had a bout of Procrastination, or the dreaded Writer's Block?

Not that it's all real-world applications, of course. I'm not sure I could Conjure something no matter how hard I tried, but that's exactly what the Keyword has you doing.

 

Check out the full interview and full set by clicking the link above!

I Need Information, Stat!

This isn't going to be a long section (I hope) like some of my other dives into the Transparency Report - from this article, or this one, or even this one (kind of) - but just something I wanted to bring up in case anyone was feeling discouraged by the score they received in a previous competition.

It was brought up in the Discussion Thread of last week's competition that no entry has ever received more than a 4 overall in score, and that many entries don't even breach a 3. This is a little trick of the numbers that can often confuse people, through no fault of their own - it's rare that you need to interact with averages like this in day-to-day life, so understanding them isn't something intuitive to most people.

In order to score over a 4 on average, an entry needs to receive a disproportionately large number of 5-star votes - after all, 5-star votes are the only thing that can push you higher than 4. How many votes, though? This is what isn't always easy to understand, and the answer often doesn't seem intuitive to people.

Let's say an entry does overwhelmingly well - 100 5-star votes, and 25 of each of the others. That's clearly an outstanding performance, right? And yet, the average it receives is a 3.75. 80 votes for each of the top ratings and 20 votes for each of the bottom (with none for 3-stars)? 3.90 average.

To take an even more extreme example, let's say that 100 people vote on a card, and overwhelmingly agree that it is perfectly average - 3-stars. Maybe it wasn't quite worded right, maybe a bit too powerful or not powerful enough, whatever. 99 out of that 100 give it 3-stars. But then mean old ShadowsOfSense comes along. "This card isn't a Turtle!" he says, laughing handsomely, "I shall have to mark it down for that! One star!". That card, the perfect 3-star card, is now a 2.98-star card.

It can be hard, looking at a card you created and seeing it rated something like a 2.8 out of 5, knowing that 3 would be an 'average' score. Just remember that it isn't always that simple, and that people don't necessarily vote in the same way you do; some people mark up, some mark down, some care a lot about grammar while others prefer balance and still others would focus in on flavour. Look to the votes you received, look at the spread of them - maybe that 2.8 still got 20 people to give it 5-stars.

Receiving an 'average' vote doesn't necessarily mean you designed an 'average' card. In fact, I'd say most of the cards we get in are pretty above average.

Allies and Enemies

We're going recruiting for new talent in the WCDC this week! What better place to look than the Hearthstone Solo Content? Click the banner below to learn more.