A new Hearthstone patch hit during the madness of yesterday's expansion reveal - Saviors of Uldum. Here's everything you need to know about the patch with the official notes being available here.
Uldum Pre-Order Available In Client
The patch brings us the pre-order for Saviors of Uldum in-game.
- For $49.99 USD you get 50 Saviors of Uldum packs, the Elise's Journal card back, and one random Golden Legendary from the set.
- For $79.99 USD you get 80 Saviors of Uldum packs, the card back, Golden Legendary, and the new Druid Hero - Elise Starseeker!
Fire Festival
The Fire Festival is going to return this year and with it we're getting some quests and a special tavern brawl / adventure hybrid called Blackrock Crash.
- There is a chain of 7 quests that rewards 7 Card Packs and 400 Gold.
- Rakanishu appears to be involved with this year's festivities.
- The cosmetic fireworks are returning!
Here are all the datamined Fire Festival quests as they are given to you. Keep in mind datamined information can sometimes not be entirely accurate.
Quote From Out of Cards
- Welcome to the Fire Festival! - Play 3 Games.
- Rewards: 200 Gold
- Happy Fire Festival! - Play 30 Cards.
- Rewards: 1 Witchwood Pack
- Happy Fire Festival! - Play the Tavern Brawl 3 Times.
- Rewards: 1 Rise of Shadows Pack
- Happy Fire Festival! - Play 5 Mechs.
- Rewards: 1 Boomsday Pack
- Happy Fire Festival! - Draw 50 cards.
- Rewards: 1 Rise of Shadows Pack + 1 Rastakhan's Rumble Pack
- Happy Fire Festival! - Take 25 turns.
- Rewards: 1 Rise of Shadows Pack + 1 Boomsday Pack
- Happy Fire Festival! - Play 3 games.
- Rewards: 200 Gold
Card Art Censorship
UPDATE: Hearthstone's Dave Kosak talked about the art change with PC Gamer.
Quote From Dave Kosak We went back and really just brought everything up to our standards.
It wasn't because we were looking at ratings, or international [regulations], or anything like that. We really just wanted our artists to feel good about everything in the set.
[We] wouldn't print those same cards today.
Following the Jaina art change earlier this year which changed her outfit to include a camisole, another round of card art changes have come to Hearthstone. This art update further reduces sexuality of some of the art pieces, completely changing the characters in some cases, and removes blood from some cards.
Sexuality Focused Changes
- Succubus renamed to Felstalker, a completely different character.
- Mistress of Pain renamed to Queen of Pain. Less leg showing, no longer looks seductive.
- Windfury Harpy is now more covered up, different pose.
- Secretkeeper now has a frontal post, no more behind.
Blood / Gore Focused Changes
- Eviscerate no longer shows blood, uses old art. (Especially noticeable on golden version)
- Bite new art, higher detail. No longer biting into anything, just showcasing sharp teeth.
- Deadly Shot is now a ballista shooting an arrow.
- Headcrack showcases a slingshot with a ball on fire instead of a character being smacked in the head.
How do you feel about the changes? Are there any cards you think could be next?
Here they are in a gallery format with the new art on the left and old art on the right.
Quote From Fluxflashor We're no longer being factual, this is an opinion. You've been warned.
I suspect all the changes are due to Chinese regulations being slapped onto gaming. Blizzard is being forced to make changes to the game so they can continue to publish Hearthstone in the East. What I fail to understand though is why they can't pull a The Skeleton Knight and have different artwork depending on where you're playing the game. This is done heavily in World of Warcraft which censors almost all the skeletons in China while everyone outside of the country gets Undead in all their glory.
If China isn't the reason for the changes, it would be nice for some transparency from Blizzard letting us know why they're taking the time to go back and update old art.
Undead in World of Warcraft, World vs China (Source)
The Skeleton Knight in Hearthstone, World vs China (Source)Succubus I understand more than the others that received changes, even if it doesn't sit well with me since they still are everywhere in World of Warcraft, you just can't really localize a seductress. Which actually asks the question, why is this stuff okay in World of Warcraft but not Hearthstone?
On a positive note, the new art does look quite good on Secretkeeper, Windfury Harpy, and Queen of Pain. They look like cards that will kick some serious ass and they're much more detailed.
Card Changes - Consistency Update
Quote From Blizzard Pilfer: We’ve updated the card text and functionality for Pilfer to match the recent changes to other “Burgle” cards currently available in Standard.
- Old Text: Add a random card to your hand (from your opponent's class).
- Updated Text: Add a random card from another class to your hand.
Multi-Target Cards
We’ve updated the following multi-target cards to function even if there is only one viable target on the board. These cards will now also properly trigger when played by random effects such as [Hearthstone Card (Yogg'Saron, Hope's End) Not Found].
Tavern Brawls Now Active All Week
Quote From Blizzard Downtime for Tavern Brawls has been reduced to 1 hour per week. Tavern Brawls will now begin every week on Wednesday at 9:00 AM PDT and end the following Wednesday at 8:00 AM PDT (times and dates will vary by region).
Comments
The old Secretkeeper had such a twisted and deformed pose, I never liked her.
The new one looks dope!
I can't stand the PC culture. These cards are art and they're what the artist wanted then to be so I say leave them alone.
To be fair, artists can draw whatever, but Blizzard doesn't need to keep it in their game. If they want to pivot more towards family-friendly and away from the darker and more mature WoW source material - which they seem to have done pretty consistently for a while now - then they can.
I think Bite, Deadly Shot, and Headcrack got changed to shittier art the change to eviscerate is so minor it doesn't really matter and the rest of the cards have better art now than the old art. I don't really care if the art on the cards becomes less sexualized or becomes censored or whatever. The card still functions the same and as an adult if I want to see art like that I can go find it. I don't need it in the game.
So basically 4 mana 7/7 00 = Overload: (2)
Woo! Pilfer buffed!
I get modern opinion. I get dealing with gratuitous sexuality. But sheesh, talk about overkill.
Maybe I'm the weird one. I'd figure that if boobs and butts are a big deal.. just add more bare chested dudes and guy butts. Don't kill the Succubus. Make an Incubus.
Done is done. And ultimately it really doesn't matter much. It certainly doesn't change the game. Just.. this strikes me as silly.
They could certainly add more sexualised men, but that's a quick way to get their rating changed. To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure how they've hung on to a PEGI rating of 7 (as in, suitable for ages 7+) with everything in the game. Even the ESRB has it at Teen.
This is far from overkill. Really, it's weird that they changed so few cards - as many people have pointed out, there's far worse offenders for both Boobs and Blood. At a guess, we maybe haven't seen the last of these kinds of art changes; they're just waiting for new art to come down the pipeline.
I can see where you're coming from. While Dave Kosak has said in the intervening span of our posts that it wasn't about ratings, I'm kind of glad. I don't really know how accessible this game is to a kid in that age range, and I have one. They can follow the game.. kind of. But tactical nuance is lost and that's kind of a big deal beyond the most casual level of players
The only real loss in terms of art quality is Headcrack. Truth be told, the old art was actually wasted on an underused cards.
The others may be less sexy now, but are equally good, or even clearly better than the old ones.
As for the reasons, they sound obviously silly, but heh, welcome back Puritanism I guess...
These are exactly my same thoughts
One of the cooler cards in my collection was the golden Headcrack. The dark theme with the bashed skull was incredible!! I will miss that.
Although I'm not a big fan of cartoonish style art (this is not Yu-Gi-Oh! For God's sake!!!), the old Bite art was too coarse.
About the sexualised ladies, I like the newer ones.
I highly doubt the art changes had anything to do with China or even censorship at all. Secretkeeper, Queen of Pain, and Windfury Harpy are still pretty skimpy (Secretkeeper and QoP even more so now). It's probably because of art evolution. Hearthstone has gotten progressively cartoonier over the years, and a lot of the borrowed TCG art really didn't fit that. They want to keep the world consistent, and literal sex demons don't fit that anymore. I mean, why hit Mistress of Pain with some... LEG! ... and not Silver Hand Regent's extremely visible nipples - they wanted to remove succubi from the game because of the connotations.
For the record, traditionally it's the West that gets censored nudity and outfits and relatively uncensored violence, while the rest of the world inverts that. China certainly has no problem with skimpy video game gals. This is a blanket change, not a market appeal.
Also, this has been said to death but I really love the new art. It's so much more dynamic for the most part. The only weaker ones are Headcrack (doesn't even look like the same card) and Deadly Shot (it's cute that they changed it to the ballista firing the same bolt from the old art, but it looks a little flat).
Except they did this already before because of China. Skeleton Knight was just one example. The fact that players from China play on other servers is enough for Blizzard to now to take the extreme step to censor cards on all servers.
I really love the Tavern Brawl change! Some of the better brawls ended too soon.
"Downtime for Tavern Brawls has been reduced to 1 hour per week." - technology has arrived, boys :D we needed to wait only 5 years :)
I never understood why it needed to end on monday. I even missed few brawls because of that, but now i'm happy :D
I like most of the art changes, so I'm not as bothered with the situation as I might have been otherwise.
I ll miss the secretkeeper's ass
The Deadly Shot art is so bland.
That's the only one I'm bummed about. The old art was REALLY good. RIP in peace.
Yeah, it is by far the worst art in the game. I'm not even saying that to be funny, it's so bad.