Tian Ding announced on his Twitter account last night that it was his last day at Blizzard.
Tian joined Blizzard almost 6 years ago and is leaving the company to join Ben Brode's Second Dinner company which is currently working on a game using the Marvel IP. Tian will be missed by the Hearthstone community as in recent times he was a source of statistical information surrounding Hearthstone's modes that previously wasn't being shared by Blizzard. It was great to see information directly from the source instead of having to rely on smaller subsets of data contributed by the community to a site like HSReplay. Tian also wrote some great blogs which includes an in-depth breakdown of how Mercenaries PVP Matchmaking works and Developer Insights: Smart Deck Builder.
Here are some of the more recent articles we wrote which featured data Tian shared.
- Top Party Compositions and Characters in Hearthstone Mercenaries - The State of High Level PVP
- The Top 1% of Hearthstone Mercenaries PVP
- Best Standard Hearthstone Decks According to Blizzard for Stormwind's Launch Week
It is currently unknown if someone from the Hearthstone team will be replacing Tian's data insights for the public eye. It is also unknown what type of game Second Dinner is working on, though we do know there are many people who used to be on the Hearthstone team working there and there are folks from other card games that have joined the team as well.
We wish Tian, and Second Dinner, the best of luck!
Quote From Tian Ding Today is my last day at @PlayHearthstone/ Blizzard. This is the hardest decision of my life. During my 5.8 years of staying here, I feel honored, humbled and privileged to be able to work with and meet so many incredible people. Co-workers, friends, influencers, community…
To me, Hearthstone has always been my life and love, so today is a really sad day for me. Don't be wrong - I truly believe it has a bright future. Of course I'll still play HS – but this time, I'll just be a happy fan, rather than a dev. Cheers! See y'all in the Tavern!
Thank you all for the kind words – I really appreciate it and it really means a lot to me! Since there are some offline asking for updates, my next adventure will be @seconddinner with some old and new friends doing some fun Marvel games.
Comments
Si second dinner even doing any Game now?
Back in July they announced that they were hoping to announce within the next year!
https://outof.cards/second-dinner/3062-ben-brodes-second-dinner-is-hoping-to-announce-their-new-game-in-the-next-12-ish-months
Well that sucks. I truly enjoyed the bits of statistical data from Tian, as an official source. We didn't have such official insight into data for years.
Team5 improved communication lately, so lets hope that other dev takes his place to engage and communicate with community.
I wish Good luck for Tian, SecondDinner can be less stressful place to be right now, far away from Activision Blizzard recent shit-show.
I see that he joined Blizzard around when I started playing HS, somewhere at the start of 2016... interesting.
Never knew he or his data existed