This is absolutely ridiculous! You are censoring perfectly fine cards just so you can get into China! How pathetic are you Blizzard?
It should easily be enough to have different artworks for the client like other games do like Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links where you have different clients where the NA/European clients have the censored artowrk that the TCG has had for ages while the OCG has the original uncensored card art!
IT IS NOT HARD TO HAVE DIFFERENT ARTWORKS PER CLIENT REGION!
You don’t have to ruin everyone else experience just so you can make entry into China for petes sake have a separate client where the Chinese version ONLY will have the censorship. I mean you completely removed Succubuss!!!
Unless these changes are reverted I will no longer be playing Hearthstone or buying packs with IRL currency and will rather be spending it on a game like Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links.
Depends on how you define “right” or “wrong.” Your definition (or mine) are unlikely to be the same as Blizzard’s, if only because Blizzard’s motives are entirely financial. Money talks, and that’s that.
It would be more profitable in the long run to not piss off the pre-existing player base by spending a tad bit more to have a different artwork per client region rather than driving players away by censoring the artwork.
Would it? How do you know? And how do you know there aren’t additional reasons to standardize content? Someone else mentioned (although it’s speculative) that Blizzard is concerned about streaming content getting them in hot water with the Chinese. If that’s true, it would make sense to censor all artwork, not just the Chinese client.
The “Queen of pain” is a night elf demonhunter that has nothing todo with warlock and is considered “humanoid” than “demon” in warcraft
re:doing different things in different regions “too hard” they already did this with the asian release of world of warcraft and its a much larger scale so try pulling the other one.
@Sinkitsune : I don’t blame anyone except the parties involved in what ever is at question. But that is neither here nor there, I just wanted to point out that your avatar will very soon be one of the casualties of this war against censorship for the sake of a buck.
I don’t doubt it’s easy from a technical standpoint. But it’s still more work than doing nothing. The question then is whether the loss revenue from having one set of Chinese-friendly art is greater or smaller than the cost of maintaining two separate versions of the game. Based on Blizzard’s actions, it seems like we have an answer.
And sure, Ubisoft tried something similar with Rainbow Six and it blew up in their faces. Maybe this will blow up in Blizzard’s face too, and they’ll backtrack. But that would require pressure from the community to make it happen. Call me cynical, but I don’t see it happening.
But the censored client was approved before the freeze on introducing new games last year, and since then there’s been new censorship rules introduced (not to mention a change in which state agency oversees digital media). If not due to these changes, why would Blizzard change things now?
That is a fine argument. But is it strong enough to warrant this stream of mindless racism?
Careful because racism towards the Chinese and Koreans is the only one allowed on the Western Internet, so you are blowing all your hatred of Africans and Mexicans and Russians on one country. Unfair and dirty.