Hearthstone (and battlenet desktop)

[Piralyn]

Looks like they're migrating to https://outof.cards/

Guessing they disagreed with Curse shuttering them since there's still content coming out for the subject of the site regularly, unlike Diablo 3.

[Jenilea]

Looks like they're migrating to https://outof.cards/

Guessing they disagreed with Curse shuttering them since there's still content coming out for the subject of the site regularly, unlike Diablo 3.

Thanks!

[Snique]

Hearthpwn has found a buyer and will remain operational: https://www.hearthpwn.com/news/6747-an-update-on-the-future-of-hearthpwn

[Piralyn]

Sounds like there's a lot of drama from both sides over there.

Out of Cards will be most of the old staff. Hearthpwn will be new people. Who knows which one will work out better.

[Snique]

More HS changes coming: two basic cards rotate to Hall of Fame and ten new cards are coming, replacing those two and others that have been rotated out, including two new neutral legendaries.

https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/vanish-and-mind-blast-rotate-to-hall-of-fame-10-new-basic-classic-cards-will-be-added-to-the-game/

There's also a bunch of info there about how Blizzard says it sees each class strengths/weaknesses (identity).

[Snique]

Next expansion launches Aug 6 - https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/blog/23037181/hearthstone-saviors-of-uldum-launching-august-6

New keywords such as "reborn" for minions that come back to life with one health (similar to the Paladin secret) and the return of quest legendaries.

[Snique]

Fire festival is up again, with a new tavern brawl and quests for free packs. The brawl is a PvE adventure with some easy heroes and not very tough bosses. The twist is that your run is timed. There's a prize for winning in under an hour and then another for winning in under 40 minutes. I managed 37 minutes and some seconds on a laggy mobile device; I could likely do better on my desktop but there doesn't seem to be a prize beyond this one.

[Cree]

the prizes are just golden cards too.

[Snique]

A handful of cards got replacement art. Purely "coincidentally" these were cards that featured more risque' images and more violent ones. Kind of going PG-13 to PG or G on some. Blizzard claims this is to make the images more "uniform" with the newer art style. No comment on why other old-art cards weren't updated, leading some to cry shenanigans. There has been news that Chinese authorities are pressuring entertainment makers of all kinds, including game companies, to remove more adult imagery on products not specifically marketed to adults so the assumption is that Blizzard is being accommodating to one of its biggest markets. Can't say I blame them, or that I'll miss stereotypical sexualized female images but I wish they'd just say that's what they're doing rather than pretending.

[Cree]

I find this change the weirdest:   and the change on Eviscerate is almost unnoticeable.

This article has good side by sides: https://www.pcgamer.com/hearthstone-card-art-changes/

[Snique]

I'm having a lot of frustration as a result of the latest expansion. I can't recall if this happened at other times. The short form is that the new special cards - particularly the quests and some of the legendaries - are at such a high power level compared to the existing cards that almost no deck without them is competitive anymore. Not just "not Tier 1", old decks are now Tier 3 or worse(*).

As someone who hasn't drawn good legendaries from his packs, and whose free quest was one of the worst (priest) this has left me with very little I can play. Super frustrating.

(*) Zoolock and long-game control warrior seem to be the exception but even those are using several of the new cards to keep up with the power curve.

[Piralyn]

I've seen similar complaints on Facebook from some people I know who play but aren't super hardcore so I don't think that's an uncommon sentiment.

[Snique]

https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/saviors-of-uldum-august-26-nerf-patch-dr-boom-mad-genius-lunas-pocket-galaxy-conjurers-calling-extra-arms-and-barnes/

a bunch of mana-increasing nerfs to problematic cards. Nothing surprising and I don't think this is actually going to do much except making quest decks even more powerful.

TBH I don't understand why people think control warrior is such a problem. I have pretty much all the cards and I still run about a 60% win rate (I can't check my deck tracker right now) and lose to the usual top-tier decks. That said, nerfing Dr Boom is probably wise. I just would've done a different nerf, but Blizz likes messing with mana cost because it's easy to do.

[Snique]

Blizzard appears to have kicked over a hornet's nest.

A couple days ago (Oct 6) Hong Kong Hearthstone player Blitzchung (@blitzchungHS) called for the liberation of his country in a post-game interview with InvenGlobal (https://www.invenglobal.com/articles/9242/hong-kong-player-blitzchung-calls-for-liberation-of-his-country-in-post-game-interview). This got very little attention - in the US at least - until the day after when Blizzard removed Blitzchung from Grandmasters and banned him from competing in Hearthstone for a year. It also took back all the prize money he had won (https://www.invenglobal.com/articles/9254/blizzard-has-removed-blitzchung-from-grandmasters-and-banned-him-from-competing-in-hearthstone-following-his-on-stream-hong-kong-protest).

This... did not go over so well. The Internet more or less blew up, largely with support for Blitzchung and condemnation of Blizzard. The subreddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/blizzard) got so heated that it got locked, though many of the threads were popular enough to hit r/all. Some of the top posts still visible there include instructions on how to delete your account, comparisons with Tiananmen, and similar. One popular photo shows that someone covered up the plaque in front of Blizzard HQ that says "Every voice matters" with a plain white sheet of paper.

Blizzard also fired both of the casters who conducted the interview, despite any lack of evidence that they were involved or knew what was going to happen.

It's hard to see this as anything more than corporate appeasement to the official Chinese government, particularly given what happened after NBA owner Daryl Morey's tweet. The math here doesn't favor the Americans - the Chinese market is worth many orders of magnitude more than all the ill-will and cancelled subscriptions. Activision/Blizzard have (as far as I can tell) been mum since the initial official announcement.

The timing is not very good for Blizzard, though, what with Blizzcon just around the corner. I can't believe that event will go off without at least one related incident.

[Snique]

Responses to the Blitzchung mess have ranged from measured:

- http://bmkgaming.com/statement-on-blitzchung/ - Brian Kibler has backed out of casting the Grandmasters at Blizzcon and won't be involved with GM at all in the future

to the full-on absurd. Apparently you can tell Facebook what "kind" of page something is and enough people told FB that the Hearthstone page was a "Chinese restaurant" page that it disappeared briefly from the listings for games and reappeared in that category. That's been fixed as of this morning; I hope someone got a screenshot.