In a post late last night, Blizzard has addressed the elephant in the room - the disappointingly low-effort cosmetic heroes that have recently been added to the game.
- Scholar Jaina and Horseman Uther will both receive new voicelines in the future.
- There are future heroes that will similarly not have custom voicelines. These will also be addressed in a future patch.
- The reason for the delay is due to how long it can take to record voiceovers.
This has been a very hot topic in the Hearthstone community since we reported on Scholar Jaina's lack of custom voicelines a few weeks ago. Blizzard says they wanted to release skins at a faster pace than usual to give everyone more visual customizations in the game but missed the mark.
Thoughts & Analysis
The only problem I see here is they have not addressed whether or not Scholar Jaina is going to make a return to the shop after she gets new voicelines. There are likely many players out there who would have enjoyed having Scholar Jaina at their sides provided she actually released with new voicelines but opted to skip over the purchase when news broke that it wasn't what they thought it would be.
This is also a problem with Horseman Uther, who currently doesn't have custom voicelines but rather a filter placed over the default Uther ones. Although you can still purchase Horseman Uther, and will be able to for the next couple of weeks, buying a product without knowing what the voicelines will be or what they will sound like is problematic.
Blizzard should bring all these heroes back into the shop when they are completed and everyone can judge for themselves if they want to make the purchase. Making these products time-limited one-time-deals to sell more of them due to creating a fear of missing out is am incredibly lame tactic. Hopefully, this is something they have already planned, but if so, why not announce it? Yes, they'll remove some of the FOMO with their current and upcoming hero offerings, but at least it will allow everyone to know they will be able to make an educated decision.
I also have concerns that a very large portion of the Hearthstone player base is not going to ever see this news since it was locked away in a forum post with minimal visibility. At the very least, this should have been blog announcement content, like a lot of the other stuff that only makes it to their forums. In a more ideal setting, Blizzard would add some form of a news tracker to the game client so players on mobile that don't look at community sites that are covering the news have a chance to know too. We're talking about money here which really changes the conversation.
What are your thoughts on the whole deal?
Blizzard's Original Response
Quote From Kerfluffle We wanted to update everyone regarding our new hero skins, particularly Scholar Jaina and Horseman Uther. We are planning to add unique voice lines, start of game voice lines, and a couple other special voice lines to both Scholar Jaina and Horseman Uther in a future patch. We’ve taken feedback on board regarding emotes for those and upcoming hero skins. The next skin, which will be released shortly, has new emotes for all 6 regular board interactions and a few other commonly played lines as well. There will be hero skins in the next expansions associated with their corresponding Book of Heroes chapters that will not have unique lines at launch, but we plan to add them as soon as VO recording allows. Stay tuned for updates here.
Adding context as to how we got here: We started out with the idea of adding skins for our classic heroes that allowed us to get more options for visual customization into the hands of our players at a much quicker than normal pace. We’re confident in the idea behind these skins and they’re already seeing a lot of use within the game. However, we missed here on painting a clear picture of the difference between these skins and the alternate heroes we’ve done in the past, that include all sorts of unique audio and visual effects. That’s something we should have gotten across better and want to ensure that we address in the future.
Comments
As I said in response to Thraxus above, they weren't saying they were going to get around to it later. They said they had intended them to not include new voicelines (as one of the differences between these skins and alt heroes), and are now changing that approach because of the backlash.
They could have worded it more clearly, but the whole thing does amount to "We heard your feedback and are making a change".
Thanks. You are right - I didn’t read their announcement clearly enough.
"In a more ideal setting, Blizzard would add some form of a news tracker to the game client so players on mobile that don't look at community sites that are covering the news have a chance to know too."
Blizzard should just publicly endorse OOC then, and tell folks to come here to stay up on the news ;)
Wouldn't that be grand!
I wonder why they fall for this kind of junk releases with cheap design that are bound to trigger uproars.
On the other hand, I see this Scholar Jaina often enough already, and I doubt people can properly value things, which in turn makes Team5 confident even with cheap content...
I mean, what is even the point of buying this Scholar Jaina, even if they update voice lines? Golden Jaina or Fire Jaina are better and cooler in any aspect. Yet people buy this Scholar Jaina.
All due respect ofc, anyone can like whatever and do what they want with their money, but if you buy anything, expect to be offered junk at some point...
Ain't that kind of subjective? I prefer Scholar Jaina because I like Warcraft III, and I liked Jaina's character before they edgified her.
Scholar Jaina has little to do with wc3. Also, look at 3D models in wc3.
It is generally subjective, but Scholar Jaina is just a random human girl. It's not even particularly flavourful as a mage "scholar"...
I bought it, and I knew what I was getting for my money. Personally, I’m not a fan of the standard Jaina image but I am fine with her voice lines, so it worked great for me!
The common wisdom is that anyone who would pay money for this “animated gif” is a sucker. Meanwhile, if you look a few days back in the newsfeed, you’ll find a bunch of people who are excited about the opportunity to spend $3 on a card back - a much smaller gif that you don’t even get a clear view of for most of the time. Personally, I get so many free card backs that I’m not too interested in paying to expand that collection.
I’m not saying I’m right and the others are wrong, of course. This is completely a matter of opinion, and I have no problem if others want to buy different cosmetics than me. But if you’re seeing this skin often in your games, you can assume that those players are probably happy with their purchases.
Great they are addressing this. I don't buy bundles or cosmetics, but a lot of people do and they should get proper value for their money.
I'm slightly confused why this wasn't done from the outset. Sure recording VO takes time, but they already recorded quite a lot for the solo content - would it really have been problematic to record standard hero lines too? If people are spending real money, and will spend many hours playing 100s/1000s of games with the hero, I think they should have put in the effort.
Still points to them for sorting it out. Hearthstone has historically had a really high production value and I hope they always strive to keep it as such.
I think it's great to know they atleast are willing to listen to the feedback provided by the community.
I also think that these bundles should return if they get the new voicelines. It's not like blizzard is going to lose anything by adding them into the shop for a week or 2.
The only thing they could hurt by doing so is their short-term quarterly profits. I highly doubt we're going to see the new voicelines this year which means expected profits to be made during this last quarter will be less if they announce that people can simply wait.
I'm sure if they end up not doing it, community pressure will force them to change their minds. I'll help fight that battle if we need to.
I agree, well said flux.
Very cool:) Flux, hero of the people 8-)
There's a saying in the tech world: "Don't buy a product for what it promises it'll offers later, buy it for what it offers now".