I think that instead of further nerfing the Warlock Questline, they will just remake it completely once it rotates out to Wild and the ban is lifted. Either make it a different condition or give it a different reward that can’t be exploited that easily in the format.

(Offtopic) I got a PS5 recently* and I’m waiting for Director’s Cut to come out before I try Death Stranding out. I’ve heard very mixed opinions, either praising the game or saying that it’s very boring. But I definitely want to try it out myself.

*It’s actually my first console ever, I’ve gamed on PC my whole life, but my GPU is close to dying, I can’t get a new one at a normal price, so I settled for a console to play through all the PS exclusives before (hopefully) GPU market will be back to normal in a year or two. So far I don’t regret, I’ve missed so many great exclusives.

It looks like mini-set will be released in the next patch after Mercenaries after all: https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/united-in-stormwind-mini-set-releasing-in-next-major-patch-after-mercenaries-possibly-november/

That’s a bummer. I won’t judge Merc gameplay until I actually get to play it, though. I hope to get some early access too but Blizzard doesn’t like me as much as those popular streamers 😀

That’s a good point, the deck is very strong indeed. And assuming that Questline Shaman gets nerfed, it might become even better, because that’s the worst matchup. Of course if it’s such a big patch things might shift around and it might turn out that another counter pops out, but it will be pretty scarry.

Deck guides weren’t doing very well (sadly not that many people were reading them) so we’ve decided to cut them and redirect those resources elsewhere. Hearthstone is getting more and more content each year and we have finite amount of time to cover all the articles, guides etc. I would love to get back to them at one point, but it will be difficult now that HS will have even more content with Mercs 🙁

That would be hilarious. But if they nerf it again, they will probably do 12 right away to save them one extra step.

That’s why I’ve said it would be a really stupid, but from what I hear they never considered banning anyone for it. I’ve seen some questions about it, though, so I wanted to clarify that there will be no bans.

Some online games do ban players for intentionally exploting bugs. Not talking about some minor things, but stuff that allows them to cheat.

E.g. I can’t remember which one, but one of the online shooters let players jump “under” the map and shoot people from down there while they couldn’t respond with fire (since from their perspective shots came from the ground). People exploiting the bug were banned. And IMO for a good reason, because it ruined everyone’s experience.

Of course, the C’thun thing is not nearly as severe, but I’m just saying that they COULD issue bans for it – explotining bugs breaks ToS that every players sign when they register.

That’s a great point, you definitely should be able to inspect them closely without going back to your collection and looking for them. It will become even more difficult when more skins are released.

First part of puzzle 2 is different for everyone – you need to carefully enter all the minions stats, types and positions into the spreadsheet and you’ll get your own “code”. If you’re doing that and it doesn’t work, then double check everything, even writing one number incorrectly will give you a wrong code.

Oh yeah, I thought about sharing it, but in the end it’s exploiting a bug. Blizzard PROBABLY won’t ban anyone for it, but I don’t want to risk sharing it and making someone get banned. So play it at your own risk 🙂

Yes, his Deathrattle triggers before you summon a Treant so his effect still goes off.

I’m not saying that it’s better, I’m just saying that not having viable Control options for a while is not the end of the world and doesn’t automatically mean that the meta has to suck for everyone. We had tons of metas when some archetype or class wasn’t viable and I wouldn’t say that it was particularly problematic. The truth is that it’s nearly impossible to keep everything viable.

If the situation lasts for a few expansion, then yes, that would be a different story and I would 100% agree that something needs to be done. But players can’t expect that the thing they like to play will always be good in a game that’s constantly changing. Or rather, they CAN expect that, but they will be disappointed.

And as OG already commented, it was implied by Iksar that the silent majority of the players don’t mind the current meta, at least not enough to quit the game. Devs clearly know more about it than us, since they have access to all the stats and metrics we don’t.

And again, the article didn’t say anything about the “majority”. We don’t have the same stats Blizzard does so we can’t be sure about it with all certainty, but between the quote from Iksar and personal experience, it’s safe to assume that MANY players indeed like the meta. I don’t understand why you disagree with the use of that word. Like I’ve said, even if only 30% of the players like the meta, that’s still many players. No one tries to bend the reality and make it look like everyone online loves the current meta, that would be silly.

It’s pretty obvious that vocal minority doesn’t like the current meta, but it doesn’t mean that it’s not liked in general. You need to keep in mind that ~90% of the players don’t talk about the game on social media or forums, they just play it casually. Most of the opinions about the game you read comes from a very small percentage of the playerbase that have their own opinion bubble. And I wouldn’t be surprised if this meta was well-received among those players (at least that’s what the devs are suggesting – OG just quoted them on that).

Also, “many players” doesn’t mean “most of the players”. 30% of the players is still “many players”.

Fwiw, I like the current meta. Not because I hate Control decks – on the contrary, I also like them a lot. I just don’t mind that the game plays differently now than it did a year ago, and I hope that it will again play differently next year. I’ve been playing ever since Closed Beta so I lived through all of the metas and I embraced most of them simply because I like the change. If very similar archetypes with very similar playstyle were viable every expansion, the game would be much more boring in the long run.

Yep, nothing is exclusive, you can get all of that in-game. Although Diamond portraits you’re getting for Diablo/Lich King are very rare.

I’ve tried to look it up about that and I don’t think there’s anything official. I’ll try to ask the devs and update the guide, assuming they will want to share the info, haha.

Having dupe protection for Coins would be a pretty big deal. Fully upgrading a Merc and still getting useless Coins for it would suck.

Yeah, that’s something I wanted to mention too – if things get too bad, Blizzard has shown that they’re willing to change it. I’ve personally talked with Ben Lee a couple of times and he’s really not a “bad guy”, he genuinely cares for the game and wants to make it as good as possible. But they don’t seem to be as good at communicating those intents + I’m sure they got pushed by the marketing to monetize it a bit more from the get-go, because Battlegrounds was a huge “lost opportunity” when it comes to the early sales (popularity exploded, but there were no ways to take advantage of that for Blizzard). I hope that if it’s too much, they will back down a bit and change it.

However, before any of that happens, we need to actually play the mode. People are too quick to call it P2W gacha without even getting their hands on it.

I mean, roguelike is a really vast genre and it doesn’t really have a consistent definition anyway. If people call games like StS or Darkest Dungeon (it reminds me most of those two) “roguelike”, then this should also fall in that category. I think that it has some roguelike elements – the dungeon crawling, procedurally generated maps, not keeping any rewards (other than XP) if you die mid run – the last one is not the same as perma-death, but I didn’t expect that one anyway. That’s also why I’m calling it “roguelite” not “roguelike”, haha.

As for your main point, though. Blizzard has already said clearly that they plan Hearthstone client to be a “base” for different “modes”, which will often feel like different games. It’s something they’re doing on purpose, they clearly want to branch out from just a card game. Frankly, I don’t have a problem with it – I think that having Hearthstone as a central “hub” for different modes that different people like and play would be nice.

But the thing is, each of those modes should be F2P-friendly if they want to keep players’ attention. Battlegrounds very much is – all you need to spend Gold on are perks, but you can easily grind more than you need. Now the problem with Mercenaries is that you seem to have to spend a lot of Gold on it, but you don’t GAIN it back. Or at least they haven’t said anything about it – all the treasures, Quests from Campfire etc. seem to give you Mercenaries-only resources and not Gold. I bet that you will gain some XP for rewards track while playing it, but that doesn’t seem enough.

And I agree that BG should get some rewards track / F2P rewards. I think that will actually happen too. Iksar talked about it in one if his latest Q&A’s – it’s something they’re working on and plan to release next year. How exactly will it look like? Hard to say, but I agree that it’s necessary.

Sadly yes, it’s the same Gold resource shared between regular HS and Mercenaries. So you should probably save some if you don’t want to spend real money.

Sadly we don’t know how much buildings / upgrading your Village will cost yet :/

I have to say that I’m not a big fan of the way they showcased it. It was too much info packed into a pretty short stream (only ~30 minutes), with little to no actual gameplay shown. I think there were better ways to do the showcase (I’ve mentioned it already on Twitter, but IMO they should have invited some popular community figure and let them experience it for the first time, they would be a good “proxy” for an average player). But after processing all the info and looking up some actual gameplay, the mode looks really fun.

My only concern right now is whether it won’t be overly monetized. The biggest problems is that it shares resources with the regular game. You use Gold to upgrade your Village and you use Gold to purchase Mercenaries Packs. It might be hard to keep up unless you spend real money, and that’s the polar opposite of basically F2P Battlegrounds. $130 worth of pre-purchases before the mode is even out is also a bit excessive. It was a big PR mistake in my opinion, people have mostly focused on that instead on the mode itself.

We’ll have to see how it works out in practice before I can judge it. Maybe despite all of that it will still be F2P-friendly. I’m well aware that they have to monetize the mode somewhere, but if they go too far it might push away the players.

I know that my comment might sound a bit negative, but don’t get me wrong – I was excited for the mode and I still am. I can’t wait to get my hands on it. I just have some concerns about the monetization, but it might turn alright for all we know.