… and listen I’m just as guilty as others here… granted guilty is a bad term but you get the point I think.
The forums seems a lot more dead in recent history than I remember them being normally around this time in an expansion. Just an observation is all.
I’ve been spending time playing WoW Classic, and I’m guessing others have as well.
I’ll be 100% honest… I don’t get the huge “ya!” of WoW Classic, lol
I played it a TON at launch (had Warlord title from BGs) and I kind of played that game completely. It is awesome that people are enjoying it a ton so +1 to all of you doing so =)
I will say, only Collector’s Edition I wish I had kept the box, etc. =*( At one point in time even opened ones with all the components were going for a decent penny.
It’s definitely WoW Classic. Nearly all of my friends are playing it.
Classic had a different feel to it - it was created in an era where Blizz was less concerned about balance, and more about how they felt stuff should be.
Rogues were PvP masters and amazing duelists. Mages were the masters of PvE ranged damage. Hunters were the best soloists. Warriors were the best tanks. Priests were the best healers.
In practice, you can’t really have a game like that be balanced, you get situations where players feel shafted that they can’t do X as well as Y just because of their class choice (see all those Molten Core runs that just stacked mages). But it also means certain classes get to be specialists at something, and that feels kinda cool too - you can be a Human Warrior and be the bane of every Rogue ever, and Undead were pretty much Warlock destroyers thanks to their racial. In retail, racials have been changed to be more broad-spectrum: retail Stoneform cleanses bleed, disease, poison, curse and magic on cast, versus its classic form which gives immunity during its entire duration but only to bleed and poison. This is to say nothing of class differences, where certain classes are expected to have lower damage in order to offset an advantage elsewhere, while in retail all classes have a damage spec that puts them within 5% of everyone else’s damage spec; a “damage specialist/glass cannon” doesn’t really exist to the same extreme anymore, but does exist in classic since the balance is looser and gives you more flex room to become an “anti-X killer” if you want to go that way.
In tl;dr, it’s a version of the game with enough ruleset differences to almost be considered a completely different game, and some people like that more.
No idea why this forum would feel more empty though.
Maybe enough toxic negativity has finally pushed people to spend less time reading salty, uneducated rants by bitter losers?
Its not just here I have noticed, but also on discord over the last few months. This time last year discord was a hive of activity, now its more dependent on peak times.
E: this is also another large contributor:
As some of you know, Ive had a hectic 2-3 weeks and, as Im not a mobile gamer, and WoW Classic works on my PoS laptop, while HS doesnt (how does that work?!?) I started playing WoW Classic while out of town, and thats one addictive game! Now that I am back home, I prefer playing that than HS tbh in my limited amount of gaming time. I like the memery I can achieve in HS, but it simply is not as entertaining as I find WoW Classic currently.
Add them with the team fight new genre that become HS actual competitor.
probably just the direction blizzard has taken hearthstone, people wanted a real warrior nerf, they gave a token nerf at best, maybe coupled with the popularity of classic.
also what Wardrum said, only people left in HS community are toxic (that is what you said right?) 
it was a fun trip visit back for the past couple of months but I uninstalled HS too, it isn’t the same simple enjoyable game I signed into all those years ago
This. I’ve been finding it harder to want to come browse the forums lately, let alone post, because of all the nerf this and nerf that threads. This, imo, is one of the best expansions, with a TON of good cards/legends.
Agreed.
I can be legitimately enjoying myself while playing the game and need to go do something else so I’ll also go check the forums, then wind up being put in such a negative mood from this place that I don’t even want to boot the game back up when I get a chance.
Despite the efforts of some, this place is literally so toxic that lately I have a better Hearthstone experience when I don’t come to the forums much.
Nobody wants to play a slot machine every day. Not to mention ever since they fired jesse, this forum has been infested with trolls whom arent afraid anymore. Noc and pupu for example. Or the new one with bad English
I see most of my friends on wow classic, but most of them were originally from wow anyway so that doesn’t surprise me.
There is probably too much rage and bitterness on these forums, but it’s the forums, wasn’t it always that way?
No this really plays no role. I think on average the “toxic” posts are actually what is keeping this forum alive. Besides that,i don’t really see toxic posts and threads on this forum at all. I don’t see critizising or being skeptical about certain things being toxic.
This forum has never been popular,it always was about reddit. The frequent posters on this forum its below 100 people and it always has been like that in my memory,even more so after they removed the class forums.
The game itself is on the decline,for whatever reason (probably mostly natural life cycle in combination with the high costs). If you look at twitch the vieuwer numbers have been very bad since about the rise of the mechs event. if thijs or other big streamer isn’t streaming hs sits around rank 20 in same region as mtg.
And when game itself is on decline you will also see less forum activity.
The discord also is less active,and I assume there is no negativity there (I guess they will all get banned if people are like that).
Its easy to point finger to posters that post things that you don’t like but that really plays no role in the decline of the game.
Forum has not changed,the complaints about certain decks and anything else you call “toxic” have always been there ( i could probably dig up countless threads if they are still on the server somewhere). Wasn’t there also an ignore button for posters somewhere?
Someone made an effort for interesting posts on this forum,with the weekly class discussions where people can post ideas about class. Those threads get like 3-4 replies lol. (me often being one of them,and in a non “toxic” way).
These forums have never really been that popular even though they are the official forums. You want to talk hearthstone you go to redit.
I have made quite a few attempts/experiments on topics of various themes, observations below
Topics and posters
Highest participated thread are generally Subjective topic which invokes attention from different groups
Objective topics generally does not gather much attraction due to various individual’s reservations (some posters may not feel safe to post, not recognized for effort to post, etc)
Game’s design contribution
Recent designs generally does not allow much space for discussion on deck building, (reducing chance of experimentation)
e.g. where some cards are class specific or
cards that are so powerful that can force it way into less synergistic class
Dev/Mod/CM contribution
Communications has not improved after old forum, despite being said.
A distinct absence of presence of a CM, when compare to old forum.
New Forum Format
Current forum design does not promote structure discussion thread to prosper. E.g. Useful threads(e.g. player guide) are not able to gather attention as there is no way to sticky it
Above are some brief observations. In general, it is the fruit of the culture the forum has developed over time.
On a personal note, I also has chosen to reduce/limit my posts due to low participation, and recognition.
I’ve been playing other games in general. I played my first game of Heartstone tonight for the first time since Sunday. It’s gotten kind of boring for me, and I’m sure a lot of others share the same sentiment. The VS and other data reports are showing similar trends. It’s a sign that hearthstone is declining in popularity. No, that’s not the same as dying. Hearthstone isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. But the active playerbase is definitely less interested now than they were two or three years ago.
What is most frustrating is that we were on the path to clear, direct improvements in tangible ways.
And then they fired the only employee who still cared about this place.
Actually, yeah. What happened Mand?
I remember you one of the green poster in old forum. You might know something…
What’s to know. The forums had a community representative, Jessie. He posted on a pretty regular basis and served as Blizzard’s representative. He was a pretty active moderator, and the only staff member from their crew who ever interacted with the community on their official forms. He often voiced opinion but always kept his posts professional. A lot of people around here really liked him.
They fired him in a downsizing move to cut payroll expenses. The devs themselves would rather spend their time posting to reddit than their own official forums. There’s a reason people around here are salty and give them a chewing out whenever they show up. It’s because in 4 or 5 years worth of the games life they’ve made countless dozens of posts on reddit, but only about a dozen or less here. And most of them were around March of this year. The forms were in an uproar at the time and they showed up to try and put out the fire. They really haven’t been seen since. Their promises to be more active and post regularly are in the dev tracker archives too. It makes it look really bad for them.