Today's patch notes are a summary of updates that have gone out to the website over the past few days.

You can view our previous patch notes for March 12 here.

New Features

Backend

• We have upgraded the framework our site runs on, Django, to the latest 5.x release.
  • We have been running on a much older version of Django and it was no longer going to be receiving security fixes for much longer.
  • Additionally, there are some nice performance and developer improvements to the framework, so upgrading was a no-brainer.
  • This is by far the largest upgrade of our codebase that has ever taken place and has been in the works for a while.
• We have also upgraded our version of Python to the most recent stable version.
  • There have been some huge performance improvement to python over the past couple of years and now we are taking advantage of that.

Editor

• We have updated our editor to a new version for an improved experience on mobile.
  • Our custom plugins for bbcode will be making a return shortly.
• You can now access "templates" in the editor (rubber stamp icon).
  • This is where our "quote bbcode" is going to live going forward. It better showcases the usage of it.
  • More templates for common formats folks post about will be introduced as it makes sense.

Static Assets

• Work has been started on improving our JavaScript and CSS load times.

Articles

• We have a new look for our article pages which includes a sidebar.
• Article listings (View All News) have a new look.

Bug Fixes

General

• Fixed an issue on several pages where pretty lists with selectable icons no longer had their icons.
• Fixed jobs that calculated our hot scores.
• Fixed an issue where people were unable to leave comments.

Hey, so you've probably seen the site is a bit goofy. I'm working on it!

These notes include some updates that have gone out over the past few days.

New Features

Realms

• Joining a realm will now notify you, if you are active on the website, when a new article is published.
  • This is entirely new tech we're testing out.
  • Apologies if you don't get notified.
  • We'll add settings down the line to allow this to be an opt-out feature.

Bug Fixes

Realms

• Fixed an issue where the news listing wouldn't work on the Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch realms.
• Sidebars no longer display the guide headings if there are no guides to display.
• Creating threads now properly displays which realm it's being created in.
• We have removed several redundant realms in favor of more generalized topics.
  • Examples include Zelda, Mario, and Kirby who have had their games condensed into their own realms.
  • For now, we're happy with this and will evaluate again in the future when traffic picks up.

Hearthstone

• Multiclass cards now always correctly import.
  • We've had a long-standing issue in one of our importers that sometimes would ruin classification of multiclass cards. This is no longer the case!
• Saved card packs now display signature cards correctly.
  • Demon, that was an INSANE card pack you opened.

Marvel Snap

• Fixed the realm view so you can now join and talk in the realm.

Legends of Runeterra

• Fixed the realm view so you can now join and talk in the realm.

Mythgard

• Fixed the realm view so you can now join and talk in the realm.

Yu-Gi-Oh

• Fixed the realm view so you can now join and talk in the realm.

Magic the Gathering

• Fixed the realm view so you can now join and talk in the realm.
• All urls are now accessible again after we moved from magic-arena to mtg.

Steps:

- open site

- click on Community tab

- scroll down and click any page number

What happens:

- the main page reloads, with the "News" section active

Expected:

- the main page doesn't fully reload and the Community tab stays selected.

Might also fix the issue where the tab that you were last on is not memorized and reloaded upon going back to the main page from anywhere (News is always the active one currently).

I'm on mobile :)

New Features

Advertisements 

• All mobile users will no longer see the video advertisement.
  • As stated in our March 8 update notes, there are careful considerations to make about removing this. We'll see!

Realms

• We now cache user subscription data!
  • Slightly lower page load times, woo!
• The join realm button now has visual feedback when you have already joined a realm.
• All is now an option under the tags dropdown.
  
  • Previously, users could get stuck on selected tags, now you can reset your state without revisiting the realm page.

Bug Fixes

Realms

• Fixed an issue where some pages on realms had Create Thread buttons that would not work.

Hearthstone

• Deck widget on realm page now correctly displays 8 decks as one would expect. Bye bye empty space.
• Deck widget no longer clarifies that it is Hearthstone deck content.
  • This is an artifact from when we had decks on our homepage years ago. It was a waste of space, now its gone.

New Features

Advertisements

• Mobile users that are logged-in will no longer see the video advertisement.
  • I realize this makes Premium accounts slightly less interesting to have, but the video ad on mobile is just such a poor experience. Everyone is now incentivized to login to no longer see it! The unit makes us a large portion of our monthly revenue though, and over half our traffic is mobile, so we need to be careful about this.

Navigation

• Our navigation has been overhauled to, hopefully, be less awful.
  • Navigation has been a massive problem on the site since our launch.
  • This overhaul changes it so game navigation only appears within the concept of a realm.
• Mobile and Tablet users should always be able to easily access News and Realms.
• The new tech that powers our nav also allows us to more quickly update it since it isn't hardcoded.
• Let us know if you have any issues or have thoughts on the experience. 

Realms

• Introducing Headers and Avatars!
  • Each realm can now have a custom header image and avatar - and the header images aren't hard coded!
  • We no longer have to wait for Flux to deploy the site to change the Hearthstone header image for a new set or event!
• Introducing the Join button
  • You can now "subscribe" to a realm by Joining it. 
  • This will matter more down the line, for now, get ready by joining realms you care about!
• Create Thread button should be easier to access.
  • We've moved the button so it can be accessed in a common location on all devices.
• Characters?
  • By being a member of our site, you're a character in the Out of Games universe.

Hearthstone

• The card pack opener now supports signature cards.
  • We've added in last year's expansions!
• The card pack opener can now have "fun" packs.
  • No longer are we limited to packs that exist in Hearthstone proper.
  • Our first pack, the 10 Years of Hearthstone pack, is now available to be opened.
  • Fun packs have higher than usual appearance rates.
    • Down the line we'll update the leaderboard to have a fun and a normal leaderboard. Fun packs are about to overtake it.

Bug Fixes

Navigation

• Removed the extra News and Realm links on the profile bar when they already exist in the nav.

Realms

• Create Thread button now appears on mobile.
  • Sorry about that oversight!

Notifications

• Fixed an issue where we had debug javascript on the notifications listing.
  • Nothing to see here!

Hearthstone

• Discuss this Card links will now correctly appear across the site. [March 3]
• Tavern Crawl now works with realm threads.

Known Issues

Homepage

• Clicking on the pagination on the homepage community section reloads the page and forces you to see news content.
  • This is a mobile issue, due to the way our "tabbed content" works. Currently working on a solution.

Hearthstone

• The Hearthstone realm navigation is not 1:1 with our previous navigation.
  • Currently working on still adding stuff to the navigation. Your patience is appreciated!

Coming Soon

• Custom Feeds featuring your realms!
  • Click the Join button on any realm on the site to prepare for this update.
• Voting on realm threads.
• Hearthstone Puzzles
  • We have a couple of things we need to fix before we bring this back - if you saw it you know what we mean :)
• Poll threads in realms.
  • A bit further down the pipeline but they're coming!

New Features

Realms

• You can now filter threads in realms by tags.
  • Perfect for those card reveal threads on the Hearthstone realm!
• Tags can now be seen on each thread's listing item.
• Recent and Top guide content now appears on each realm sidebar.

Bug Fixes

Infrastructure

• A couple of weeks ago we had some unexpected site downtime.
  • We had another brief outage, though planned, last week, to address a configuration change.
• The underlying issues have been resolved and over the past couple of weeks things look stable.
• We've also noticed a large reduction in error rates on the site with pages failing to load at times.

Hearthstone

• Whizbang's Workshop correctly appears where it should.
• Threads once again get created during card reveals.

Realms

• Unpublished article content no longer appears at the top of realms.
• Fixed an issue with new threads not being assigned tags.
• Pagination of threads has been fixed.

General

• Fixed an issue where staff nuking spam accounts weren't deleting realm threads.
• Logout and login pages no longer have styling issues.
• The homepage caching of our threads block works as intended.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where pageviews were not calculating correctly.
  • This was not a wide-spread issue, any missing data for views is lost.
• Hearthstone deck listing now loads properly.
  • This was particularly annoying to track down the root cause of the problem.
• Guides that were previously broken now load correctly.
  • Those are some great looking Warcraft Rumble guides, link!
• RSS feeds from the old site now work again.
  • RSS clients must be able to handle redirects.
  • If your RSS client doesn't, update the url to include "realms" in the path. Example:
  • https://outof.games/hearthstone.rss -> https://outof.games/realms/hearthstone.rss
• Comment links work again.
  • The site was getting a bit confused about which type of thread it wanted to go to. 

Features

Realms

• Introducing realms, the evolution of our portal system.
• Realms are your destination for each and every video game.
• Our highlight of realms is to focus on community discussion.
  • Share links to keep the community informed.
  • Participate in regular chatter by creating text threads.

Realms are our evolution of portals and forums. Our forums were difficult to navigate and ultimately,  spread too thin so they looked more inactive than they were. We're hoping to make it easier to join in on discussions via our realms.

Activities

• Word searches join the site as a core feature.
  • No longer are these news articles we create just to serve as a word search.
• You can find the most recent activities at the bottom of the homepage.

Homepage

• No longer just for news articles!
• We now feature articles, our latest opinions, and reviews prominently on the main page.
• Featured content appears at the very top of the home page in a carousel so we can highlight very important news.
• The most recently updated guides also make an appearance on the homepage.
• Activities are joining the site for the first time and can be found at the bottom.
• The new right-side column puts a focus on the community of the website.
  • This showcases our new realms system.
  • All recently updated threads in all our realms appear in this feed. 

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where create thread page didn't correctly display forms.
• Fixed an issue where the front page carousel wasn't linking to articles correctly.
• Fixed the "More game Guides button on the homepage.
• The Out of Cards logo no longer appears in our mobile header.

Known Issues

• Achievements are not firing for activities.
  • There are new "completed x activities" achievements that aren't firing and have been removed temporarily.
  • If you complete any activities while these aren't working, you will not have credit for their completion afterward.

Soon

• Subscriptions to realms!
  • Customize your site experience and see what you want to see.
• New navigation!
  • Realms will have their own navigations we can further customize on a per-realm basis.
• Hearthstone Puzzles
  • We have a couple of things we need to fix before we bring this back - if you saw it you know what we mean :)
• Image threads in realms.
  • Image style threads already work if you use an image link as a link thread.
• Poll threads in realms.
  • A bit further down the pipeline but they're coming!

I have been on Out of Cards since it's creation, migrated from Hearthpwn after that whole fiasco. i admit i have never been an active member of this community with little posts and interaction. But i have come daily or weekly for some years now and.... well no kind way to put this. Site feels dead. Whole of it, Out of Games, not just the card part. Vast majority of news articles have 0 comments or 2 or 3 at most. Forums are inactive with the Recent Posts window showing threads that have last replies from 2 days ago to 2 weeks ago.

So, if it's not too bold or rude of me to ask, i want to know how things look from the dev side of things. What the site staff thinks and feels about the current status. I hope it's just me and things are actually going good, i like this place a lot.

Hello there, hope everyone is having a great day. I have a feature to suggest, as titled:

• Can there be a deckbuilder page related to YuGiOh?

I have been playing YuGiOh - Master Duel since January 2023 and decided I would like to share my brilliant ideas here, especially with Treasure Panda. It might attract influx to the website because other YuGiOh related websites have crappy UI when it comes to deckbuilding and sharing, which can be a good consideration to add a "Deckbuilder" section within YuGiOh. I mean, even copying one from Hearthstone in this website and calling it a day should work like a charm to me because editing guide UI after picking cards within deckbuilder is perfect that no website can match to be honest.

I hope it will be considered to be added because we have deckbuilder of these games in Out of Games, so why not for YuGiOh as well:

• Hearthstone
• Runeterra
• Mythgard
• Marvel Snap

Thanks for reading and have a good day everyone.

As of this writing, the card back gallery is updated through May 2023, and we are on the doorstep of August 2023.  It'd be nice to see this updated.

https://outof.games/hearthstone/card-backs/

Thanks for your continued efforts in making this site awesome!

I was just randomly browsing the site for the first time in a couple weeks, and I opened a Nifty thread, and it says Banned under his name.

Is that for real?

Hi, it occurred to me several times in the past and today still that most of the Hearthstone decks on this wonderful community site are added by the same handful of people over and over again and very frequently. I am not going to name names here, nor do I really have to because it is pretty obvious which members are doing this (just look at the frontpage). Also, the reason is most likely to generate traffic to their streams/videos/channels.

Somehow this does not feel right/fair, but I am not even sure this is the best way to describe it. There are no restrictions set into place to limit this behavior and I am not even advocating for it, but I am just wondering about your opinion if you have any.

Cheers!

Here's a list of the games that might give some traction if featured, at least according to my tastes:

Battle brothers, Wartales, Rimworld (+mods!), Jagged Alliance 3 (upcoming), Spaceborne 2 (very active dev and complex game), Age of Wonders 4, Humankind, Distant worlds 2, maybe other Paradox titles.

Curious to see what other people like :)

Just an FYI, the main game page for Hearthstone still has all the March of the Lich King links above the latest article post.

Howdy fellow users of Out of Card,

During the last Winter Holiday event, I was one of the lucky winners! On top of the amazing price of 1 free month of premium service I won, I was also sent a nice goodie bag. Today, I wanted to showcase my price to you all, as well as extending my gratefulness and appreciation for all the hard work OoC's staff is doing year round. Without further ado, here's the content of the package that was sent to my door:

OoC Stickers, OoC Enamel pins & HS cup holders

Thank you Out of Card 

Many diamond card animated images are missing from 2022 and later. Only cards up to Alterac Valley have diamond images.

Just wanted to theorycraft a DK deck.

Not sure if this is possible with how the bbcode rendering works but I find it frustructing to hover over a Marvel Snap card and only see the image with the cost and power of the card.  I do not know enough of the Marvel Snap cards yet to know what the ability of the card is without clicking through to the specific card page which breaks up reviewing a deck list or reading an article.

It would be nice if the card's associated Ability text could be rendered below the card's image as well.