We're only a few days away from Scholomance Academy launching on August 6. With that in mind, I thought it'd be interesting to take a look at cards that were tremendously hyped up during release, but for some reason or another, didn't perform quite as well as people initially thought they'd be.
For the most part, I won't be going too far into why they were misjudged as being better than they actually were. Now there are many cards during every reveal season that are hyped up as being good but end up not performing as well as expected, but I'll be pointing out what I consider to be the most noteworthy examples in the game's history.
To many long-time players, Troggzor the Earthinator is the most classic example of a card that was hyped up into oblivion, but ended up not seeing much play and eventually fell into relative obscurity, with people only really remembering it because of the initial hype.
Stopping your opponent's spells and getting growing minions surely has to be good, right? Well, it wasn't that hard for people to clear it with only 1 spell if they really needed to use one at all. The Strong Bad reference will surely give this card brownie points to some though.
Anduin's father. Significant lore character. Okay card.
During the reveal season for The Grand Tournament, Varian Wrynn was hyped up as being one of the strongest cards ever made. It basically made number 1 on the list of nearly every person ever.
In practice however, he ended up flopping, leaving him without much play. Cheating out Grommash Hellscream or Sylvanas Windrunner is definitely amazing, but it's inconsistent and back then, harder to build your deck around. It was only in Whispers of the Old Gods did he finally start seeing some competitive play in Tempo Warrior.
I originally had Hallazeal the Ascended at this spot, as he was an extremely cool card that many people (myself included) thought would be really good, but from personal experience, I can tell you that I definitely had some problems getting him to work.
But in the end, I decided to go with Cho'gall. Cho'gall was basically hyped as being "the next Dr. Boom". His Battlecry would be really strong with Siphon Soul and ... no other Warlock spell at the time. This was basically his problem. He only had one good target, and it was one that not everyone would run. So he quickly fell out of favor. Team 5 effectively indirectly took note of his shortcomings when they made Bloodbloom in Journey to Un'Goro which was a much better card.
The card that single-handedly made Lifecoach quit Hearthstone in favor of Gwent, as soon as the card was revealed. Not even released yet at that point.
The Marsh Queen was quickly hyped up to be the best Quest in Journey to Un'Goro. It didn't really work though. Perhaps because having to play and draw so many 1-drops is bad when you want to draw bigger cards (and in a class which struggles with card draw), or the Reward simply wasn't that powerful? I can't say for sure.
Chameleos is another card that's really cool, and I feel bad about putting it in this article. But let's be real. We can all admit we were wrong on this one.
Chameleos has since been used as an example that people tend to overvalue information of your opponent's hand/deck. This isn't to say that isn't good. It is good, but it's nowhere near as good as people believe it to be. In theory, Chameleos is effectively a Mind Vision that just sits in your hand until you get the perfect card and your opponent doesn't even know that you're holding it. This however requires you to hold it in your hand for multiple turns hoping in vain that you get the card you want which may or may not even be in your opponent's hand.
As much as I love Chameleos for how cool of a card he is, he just simply isn't good enough in a competitive format.
Finally, our first non-Legendary card of the article. Upon being revealed, Revenge of the Wild was considered an amazing Hunter card in a sea of mostly amazing Hunter cards. It actually received the highest community voting score out of every card in the entire expansion.
Needless to say, it didn't really plan out the way we had envisioned. It requires a specific board state of a lot of killable Beasts that are powerful enough that you want to bring them back to life.
Ah, who could forget about Madame Lazul? She appeared in the trailer for Whispers of the Old Gods, and she was the one who banded the League of EVIL together. She also appeared as a card (and a hero) in Rise of Shadows. Just, not as good as we all thought it would be.
Madame Lazul is in a similar boat with Chameleos. We (myself included admittedly) overvalued information of the opponent's hand and thought this card was going to be great. It's even faster than Chameleos since you just play it and see 3 cards in your opponent's hand. She's not that bad, but she's definitely nowhere near as good as the consensus believed she would be.
Next time we see a new card that gives you information on your opponent's hand, be careful not to overjudge how good that effect is.
Feast of Souls is a card that is very interesting to think about why it's here. It was commonly believed that it would be immensely broken. After all, with Coordinated Strike or Command the Illidari, you could draw several cards and deal lots of "pinging" damage. This however proved to be too impractical as other card draw options ended up being better and more consistent. In retrospect, perhaps it would've been extremely hard to accurately judge an entire new class being added to the game?
And that would be it for this article. Stay tuned because next time, we'll be taking a look at the opposite end of the spectrum and talk about cards that were predicted to not be very good, but turned out being a lot better than we initially thought.
Comments
Glad you enjoyed the article. Lady in White was indeed overhyped and would be eligible for the list.
I didn't mention this in the article, but I limited myself to a maximum of one card per set, and I figured Chameleos would be a better choice for the Witchwood spot.
You skipped some sets though, I don't see any cards from Boomsday, Uldum, and Descent of Dragons. Is it because there weren't that many overhyped cards in those sets? There were people losing their minds over Bazaar Burglary and Sir Finley of the Sands in Uldum, both of which didn't see much play, though the latter was due to Paladin having a pretty terrible set. (It was still viewed the strongest of the new Explorer cards, though).
In Descent of Dragons, Nozdormu the Timeless caused quite a stir during reveal season, though that could be attributed to people feeling unsure how powerful he really could be (turns out he wasn't, really).
Anyway, keep up the good work! I'm loving the variety of interesting content on this site.
Yeah, not every set had a card that was really significant to put on the list. I suppose Bazaar Burglary could've made it, but I wasn't sure how overhyped it was compared to the other cards here. I also tried to get this out before Scholomance came out, so I did work a little bit fast.
And you're right about Nozdormu the Timeless. It caused a ruckus when it first revealed because everyone thought the mana crystals would be full. After it was confirmed that the mana was empty though, the hype mostly died out to "it's good in the right deck".
Many of the usual traits of poor cards;
- Cost over 6 and has no taunt or rush, and the effect doesn't win you the game
- Trying to make hunter any other archetype other than aggro or midrange
- Trying to make priest a tempo class (cross my fingers its going to work this time)
- Good cards that can only be good in a poor deck
- Inconsistent
I fall to many of the same hype traps myself. Unfortunately, its sometimes difficult to remember that a good majority of standard games will probably be against some form of aggro deck.
I think there are even more cards, on top of my head Frizz Kindleroost was so overrated and it should be in the list
There are definitely several other cards that would be eligible for the list. However, I decided to keep the list to a maximum of one card per set and try to use very "significant" examples in the interest of keeping the article at a reasonable length.
Troggzor the Earthinator and Varian Wrynn (basically every 7+ mana minion at the time) was killed by Dr. Boom, so it's not really the community's overhype.
Who ever hyped Feast of Souls while Skull of Gul'dan existed? I guess skull was revealed later but still, feast is way worse than even Battle Rage.
Proud that I gave a 1 to Chameleos, Revenge of the Wild and Feast of Souls. My biggest miss was thinking Bazaar Burglary will be the top tear. Well, it still has some chance, especially this x-pack. Madame Lazul sees play now in Scam Priest.