Were French broadcasts popular? I always watch English (I don’t even know card names in my own language, haha), but Polish broadcasts weren’t very popular, had maybe a few hundred viewers at most (and sometimes less than 100). So I kind of understand why they aren’t doing them anymore.

The deck is still being optimized. I’ve seen Cutting Class and Stonemaul Anchorman in some builds, but they definitely aren’t very popular yet. I’ve even seen some builds running Cairne, and it seemed solid actually 🙂 We’ll probably see where the deck lands in a week or so.

I mostly agree with you, equality of outcome is not exactly what we should be striving for. It’s forced, unnecessary, and frankly hurtful for both sexes. But I do think that inviting more women to an event like that is exactly what you’re describing as “opportunity”, not “outcome”. Until now, we DID have many female streamers or pro players, but they usually weren’t given chance to participate in such an event. Inviting more of them is simply giving them opportunities to show themselves and build their audiences.

A “bad” sort of equality would be aritifially forcing 50% of the playerbase to be women, or having quotas (e.g. always qualifying at least X% women) in official competitive tournaments like Masters Tour or Grandmasters. If that would happen, I would be the first to oppose it.

And I said mostly agree, because I also disagree with your last point. We should NOT let private companies conduct their business as they want it. Why? Because we are their consumers, they make money thanks to us. We should all have a saying in how they conduct business. Just letting them do what they want because it’s not our concern leads to patologies. If people wouldn’t complain or strive for more, private companies would screw over consumers time after time. And I get it – that’s the reason they exist – to make money. They want to maximize profits. But we all should want them to be as consumer-friendly as possible, and speak up. I know that it’s cliche, but ultimately the power dynamic is on the side of consumers, as long as they work together towards one goal. A great example in Hearthstone would be the entire “Battle Pass” outrage – it was blown out of proportion, sure, but ultimately it made the game better for us. If we all just sat silently and accepted everything Blizzard does, the game would be in a much worse shape now for an average player.

Hearthstone has a much bigger male playerbase, I think that 1:10 would be a fair statement. And that’s what you see in actual competitive events – we don’t have nearly as many female players in Masters Tour or World Championships (in fact, VKLiooon was the first woman in HS championship ever). You’re right, it’s maths and forcing more diversity there would be stupid.

However, it’s a bit different when it comes to invitationals. Those are not meant to be “competitive” tournaments. Blizzard never invites “best” players. Let’s say Kripp, which is part of nearly every event like that. He’s a great player, don’t get me wrong, but he almost exclusively plays Battlegrounds, and yet he’s invited to Constructed tournaments all the time. Hearthstone invitationals are usually marketing events, not esports event, so lowering the playing field is not a big issue.

All of that is sort of an chicken/egg problem. The reasoning for not inviting more women to such events is that they make up for a small portion of the playerbase, which is obviously true. But one of the reasons why we don’t have more women playing HS is BECAUSE they don’t get invited to such events and don’t have extra opportunities to break through. Regis is a perfect example of those events really mattering – he was a really small streamer/YouTuber before getting invited, and he grew his sub count and Twitch viewership a few times ever since he started getting featured by Blizzard. Similarly, Slysssa’s popularity also jumped after getting invited to Battlegrounds Invitational. Giving more opportunities to women translates to more women becoming popular, which again translates to more women wanting to try out a game.

How things are seen is important. Just like men often don’t want to be doing things that aren’t seen as “manly” enough, the same goes for women. If a male player would see a game where 90% of the playerbase are women, there’s a solid chance he wouldn’t even try to get into it. And if a woman sees that the whole Hearthstone Twitch, including official tournaments, is a sausage fest, there’s a solid chance that she won’t even try to get into it. It doesn’t apply to everyone, but there’s a lot of people like that from both sexes. Gaming is still dominated by male players, being a female player is sort of a social stigma (not as bad as it was years ago, but it’s still there). Promoting women through such events (and thus boosting their popularity in general) is good for the game, because then more women will try the game in the first place.

Long story short, in my opinion, people saying that more women representation is unnecessary, because there aren’t many women in the game in the first place… sort of got it backwards. More women representation is necessary exactly BECAUSE not many women play the game, in order to encourage them.

Sorry, I approved it by mistake. Deleted it again. Those comments are not appreciated no matter which “side” you’re on.

I deleted that entire comment chain. You’re all entitled to your opinions, but if you want to be hurtful to others for no reason at all, please just keep your comments to yourself. It’s one thing to criticize Blizzard’s decisions and another to directly attack Hearthstone community members. You really gain nothing from saying that and can make someone’s day miserable, is that what you really want?

If I see more transphobic etc. comments, I’ll just start banning, so be warned.

That’s a really statistically significant sample size you’ve got there.

Kolkar Pack Runner might be a potential nerf, e.g. making it a 2/2.

Or maybe changing the Mankrik’s “cast when drawn” spell to 4 mana (so it’s not drawn by Barak Kodobane).

I think that either change would hit the deck without making it unplayable. But to be honest, I don’t know if it even needs a nerf right now. It’s still early into the meta and it has pretty clear bad matchups like Paladin or Priest. Even Rush Warrior is not that great and it’s all over Legend right now (can’t speak for lower ranks).

It’s already dropping popularity quickly in Legend once people started countering it and it might happen in lower ranks soon too.

I talked to the devs and suggested that they should add a monthly quest that can only be completed on 15th, something like “Play 3 matches with Nozdormu the Eternal in your deck” for a small reward (e.g. some extra XP) to promote it and to let a wider audience know that such thing exists. Of course I doubt that it’s going to happen immediately, but maybe in the future. That would increase the chance of running into another Nozdormu considerably and make it a fun little monthly event.

I find Blitz matches really fun. They change the meta and your strategy considerably – they promote quick thinking and analyzing how the situation might change a few turns ahead. You also need to use every second to think about your moves, including your opponent’s turn.

I’ve been playing chess on a regional level when I was younger and Blitz was always my favorite format, even though it was less “competitive”. I was asking for a Blitz format in Hearthstone for years.

It’s not for climbing the ladder faster or for getting more XP, that was never the point of the card. It’s about having fun. Nozdormu is intentionally a bad card so people aren’t forced to play it and do it willingly trying to look for someone else using it (or more likely set up a friendly game, because it’s hard to find someone with Nozdormu on the ladder). If you don’t like Blitz matches then you won’t find using Nozdormu fun and it’s simply not something for you, and that’s totally understandable.

You mean the one in Wild? It’s not bad, but both Secret and Reno Mage still have better WR according to the stats. You could also try Mozaki version if you’re into combo Mage decks.

Once you complete an achievement, it won’t disappear no matter what you do.

Or well, at least it SHOULDN’T, haha. But we all know how Hearthstone works sometimes.

Yes, but from the original message it sounded like refunds would given away some time AFTER the hotfix, so if you want Dust as soon as possible (and make sure that nothing bugs out), just wait until you can get full Dust from disenchanting him. We’ll give an update once the hotfix is live.

It has never happened to me before and I don’t see people reporting it, so it’s probably not a common issue. Maybe you should try making a support ticket?

Shouldn’t have shared it here after all 🙁

Just kidding, I’m sure that they have figured it out anyway, but that’s a pretty funny coincidence.

We’ll have a what is getting hit post… once we know that.

Previous one was just nerfs announcement and I gave a few of my quick predictions, this is an actual analysis post that goes in-depth on those.

I think that this content is kind of important right now – many people don’t even play the game until nerfs happen, because the current meta is very imbalanced. Didn’t want to cover deck guides etc. right before (hopefully) significant balance changes so there’s not much content left we could be posting.

A nerf to Pen Flinger would be a big nerf to Field Contact too. And since I assume that Pen Flinger is nearly a given, I don’t think that Field Contact will get hit. Maybe later if it turns out to be still too strong with nerfed Flinger.

The card is very strong, but it doesn’t seem problematic, at least not in Standard. Secret Paladin is the only deck running it (and not even as auto-include), so if it gets nerfed, Crabrider will also see less play.

Good to know, I was watching it when working and I don’t read chat. I’ll post about it on social media so people know.

Good question, I should have mine too, but I still don’t have them. I don’t see any indicator that I got them, unlike Twitch, where I get a notification…

So I’m not sure. It’s the first time I’m using YouTube drops functionality. We’ll see.