Yesterday, we were supposed to have a final reveal stream for United in Stormwind. However, due to the lawsuit that hit Blizzard last week, it has been canceled, but the entire team has stayed radio silent. To be completely honest – I fully understand canceling the stream
Luckily, we have learned a few things – one from official source and the second one from multiple streamers, but most notably Trump.
First things first – ever since yesterday, multiple streamers have been confirming that the live theorycrafting streams will be happening. Multiple pro players are getting early access to the new cards and play among each other trying to figure out what’s good and what isn’t (they don’t solve the meta or anything like that, obviously, and often focus on meme decks). We know that those will begin today (Tuesday, July 27) at 9 AM PDT / 18:00 CEST, it was confirmed by multiple sources.
While it was kind of a given that we’ll get to see new cards then (because hey – streamers will play them, so they can’t exactly be hidden no more), most of the streamers have stayed silent about card reveal themselves. Luckily for us, Trump also said that all of the cards should be revealed at the same time (Source). It means that we should get to know all of the cards around that time – 9 AM PDT / 18:00 CEST. No matter if they will get showcased by the streamers or dumped on the official card list, as soon as they are revealed, I’ll be posting them on our website and social media.
The second part of the news comes from a reddit comment by Iksar. In the comment, he explains that the reason why they’ve decided to not go forward with things like streams or card reveals is that it’s not a good time to celebrate. Instead, they need to find a path going forward and make their work a better place. However, he mentioned that all of the current plans are in place – expansion launch and other developments won’t be delayed. By “other developments” he might mean a patch that’s supposed to come out later today – adding Battlegrounds hero portraits and (most likely) all of the expansion’s data.
Our focus has been on supporting each other and planning action for how we can make our work a better place for everyone. Something we’ve clearly failed at in the past.
Having any celebration is a hard sell right now. I can assure you the only hesitation we have with moving forward with things like streams or card reveals is out of the respect for our co-workers. This is an incredibly important time to reflect and make sure we chart the best path forward. There is no gag order, no legal team telling us what we can and can’t say. Our focus is simply on each other right now.
All that said, we still care about our work and are still passionate about delivering a great game. It’s the whole reason most of us are here in the first place. We don’t have plans to delay our launch or push back further developments. We are just taking time to make sure we get this moment right.
While I completely understand why they’ve decided to drop the card reveal livestream, I just wish that Blizzard would communicate it better yesterday. Many players were waiting for some kind of info and didn’t know what to expect going forward – including rumors about United in Stomrwind being delayed etc.
I wish the entire Team 5 good luck and hope that everything works out well for them in the end (and assuming the harassment also happened at that deparment – all perpeatuators will get harshly punished).
The cards are all released on the Hearthstone website now.
I took some time and read all the news regarding the lawsuit. And boy I was shocked. It’s getting worse and worse. And the trend is uprising.
A) Players has started cancelling their WoW subscriptions, the one who subscribe more than 3 months are doing sit-in to demand justice and changes.
B) Gaming news like The Gamer and some other has stopped reviewing all Blizzard games.
C) People has started petition demanding the culprits behind this gets fired and punished.
D) Twitter and Reddit’s still keep getting update with more people start to open up to their past story about their harassment.
And last one I got is,
E) Hundreds of company’s employees have started to speak up condemning their company’s response. And literally not doing any work in current time.
I just really hope this does not making Hearthstone into a fail state with all the conflict within. But I’m a pessimistic person, and I believe that, if a big company can make a mess this big, it will affect everything inside.
I do believe I have to say sorry if I pour my heart content here. It’s out of topic really. But I believe everyone deserves an update, and if big changes are coming, it’s for the best.
But right now, they really messed up big time. Period.
Thanks for your though! I would like to talk about this with more Hs players… I feel like I can not continue playing the game as before… I Would like to think that Hearthstone is not going to be affected but Blizzard made A LOT OF THINGS wrong…
Yeah, while Hearthstone doing well so far is a good sign, but no one can predict the future when the ‘main house’ where Hearthstone stayed is burning and in chaos.
Last thing I’m gonna add, the one thing that people are missing in this whole situation is that filing a lawsuit is the last resort. California state will do everything it can to resolve the issues before ever drafting a lawsuit. Blizzard let it get this far is beyond me. And I think it proves that Blizzard was letting the fire burning for as long as 2 years (of investigations).
Does this mean fireside gatherings will still be able to open packs this weekend?
Hard to say. Stay tuned for the patch notes. Usually something like this is mentioned there.
Worst case scenario, there won’t be one, and everyone can open all packs together the day after.
Nothing about that was announced yet, but given that they “silently” proceed with what is basically a regular release, I wouldn’t be surprised. They might not say anything about it but still allow early openings over the weekend.
Well if they streamed, it would be hell in the comment,
Let the hearthstone streamer, who are a third party reveal the card, since they are not « directly » under activision blizzard
I can understand why they don’t do the stream yesterday but some people (like me) schedule their evening for that so not cool to cancel last minute
I found this quite funny
I like how the article image went from the team completely exhausted to renewed energy. While I’m personally happy things are maintained in the end, I also hope all the Blizzard thing gets sorted in the background… Hopefully.