Rise of Shadows Q&A - April 22, 2019

[pijon95-2946]

Bumping this.

Can we pelase get wild packs with gold? This should’ve been solved at the first rotation years ago.

[RetroPotato-11714]

Also bumping
Any plans to implement more things that encourage playing wild like n exclusive card back for wild legend or more wild tournaments

[CookieMonsta-22195]

Oh, and hi there again! Also I wanted to ask: are you, guys, going to give us “Sorry” emote back?

[CrunchTime-1623]

Why is there such variance with opening legendary cards? I purchased a 40 pack bundle for $50 and I got only one legendary on my 40th pack. This frankly feels AWFUL and I don’t want to spend money anymore. It then gets me upset when I see people pulling 4+ legendaries in 40 packs. I know you guys have worked to help with how many you can pull (1 in first 10 packs etc) but maybe make 30 packs the most you have to open before opening a legendary?

Now reading that you guys are not implementing the ‘no triplicate Epics’ at this time, the pack opening process needs to be revamped. I feel that opening packs is just not worth the money. I know you guys want the pack opening experience to be fun and engaging and to feel good but at the moment it just isn’t.

[Zambiealex-2811]

Could you delete Brawliseum.

[puffin-1837 (Stephen Chang)]

@CzechCloud-2787

Current standard metagame
I love how Rise of Shadows turned out and i am glad that a lot of cards with infinite value rotated to Wild. A few cards stayed with us from the Year of the Raven and i think it creates a bad experience. Playing against Dr. Boom, Mad Genius is not fun because of the infinite value. The same thing could happen during this year with Hagatha the Witch and with Zul’Jin and because we all want to see new strategies with every expansion this doesn’t help. I would consider rotating all the hero cards to Hall of Fame. What are your thoughts on this?

We learned a lot about Hero cards after we introduced the Death Knights and applied that knowledge to the Hero Cards in the Year of the Raven. The type of value that cards like Dr. Boom, Mad Genius and Hagatha the Witch provide are less reliable than those found on some of the Death Knights. We’re continuing to learn from these Hero Cards as well and will continue to monitor their use in the current meta. Dr. Boom, Mad Genius saw a lot of play at the start of Rise of Shadows, but his use is starting to taper off as the meta evolves and players are playing decks that counter Warrior. It’s unlikely that we’ll rotate these to the Hall of Fame early and if we felt a change were needed to any of these Hero cards that we would nerf them instead.

Standard rogue decks are the most entertaining to play I have seen in years. The problem is that a lot of players feel the same and we see almost 30% of all decks on ladder are rogues. What are you going to do with keeping it from dominating so much?

In general, we like it when players find the answer themselves by playing decks that can counter the decks they find to be dominating the meta. That said, we’ll continue to monitor the play rate and win rate of Rogues to ensure it doesn’t get out of hand and if it does, we’ll step in as we have in the past.

Archivist Elysiana has seen a lot of hate from the competitive community and its true that a lot of matches take a lot longer then they should. I would propose to nerf her to 10mana, so you can’t bounce it with Youthful Brewmaster which should reduce the hate significantly.

We know that players have concerns regarding Elysiana, particularly in the competitive scene. We’ll get a lot more information on her with the upcoming World Championship and we’ll continue to monitor her overall use and will step in to make a change if we think it’s needed.

Zilliax is the most played card in standard right now. Is he on a watchlist or do you like how he affects so many archetypes?

We like the way Zilliax is being used. As such a flexible card (due to having so many keywords) Zilliax naturally finds his way into a variety of decks for different reasons, and we like this. Some decks really value the Lifesteal, some value the Mech minion type, some use him to synergize with Rush or Taunt cards. Often how he interacts in each game or deck feels different and less repetitive. In general, Zilliax just feels great to play and doesn’t feel awful to play against so we’re pretty happy where he is right now.

Current Wild metagame
Wild should be a reservoir for old strong strategies which has no place in standard and balanced metagame. But the format should also evolve with new expansion being introduced to the game.

One of the things we enjoy most with each new expansion is the additional tools players have available to modify their existing decks and to create new ones. In Wild, there are interactions that simply aren’t available in Standard that players are able to explore, which is very exciting and can shake up the Wild meta. We do see this evolution with each expansion and experimentation that takes place.

Here are some of the ofenders which keeps this almost impossible:
Barnes, High Priest Thekal, Darkest Hour, Voidcaller, Kabal Crystal Runner, Thing from Below . Is it possible to have a different balance approach to Wild or can you come up with a third format in the future which could take the best from both worlds - Wild and Standard alike?

In general, we’re more comfortable with really powerful strategies in Wild than we are in Standard. That said, we have stepped in in the past, Aviana and Naga Sea Witch for example, when certain decks are too unfun to play against and have strategies that seem unreasonable to contend with. We’ve talked about potential changes to Barnes and Darkest Hour decks and will continue to look at the impact of the other decks you mention. We’re happy with Wild being a place where players can explore very strong synergies and decks, but will step in to make changes if we think the game will be better for it.

[Esparanta-2269]

It would be even better if you add Wild shop, where everyone can purchase Wild packs/adventures via gold/money. So, win-win situation for both sides. Also, that would help for new players who wants to explore or invest in this “cursed” or “forgotten” format.

[ElCheckElMat-2133]

Is multiplayer mode really impossible to make on heartstone?

[Racthoh-1224]

Yeah a 2v2 format would be pretty cool

[ThatSaltyBoi-2570]

Thankyou Blizzard Gods!

[anon89377020]

I just wanted to say thank you for all your hard work, and thank you for acknowledging Wild format.

Thank you for hearing us out and taking the time to respond and interact with us. It means a lot.

[LouRolfes-1570]

I also appreciate the time to interact and respond. Looking forward to seeing how you address some of aforementioned decks/cards that make for very unfun interactions in Wild. I’m hoping the action doesn’t die with these posts.

[Darksun-11549]

Thank you so much for taking some time to answer some of our burning questions.

I would like to hear your stance on unnerfing cards. When do you feel it is right to revert changes like you did with Molten Giant? Do you plan on changing nerfed cards that are rotated into wild in the future?

[minami-1114]

Have team 5 ever considered collection achievements for reward cosmectics?

I feel like it would be really cool to use portraits to show that you did stuff like:

Collect all warrior cards of the year of raven.

[hadidjah-1104 (Hadidjah Chamberlin)]

@Weapon26-1737

Are there any plans to create new in-game rewards for players beyond card packs, and card backs? It seems new hero portraits are saved for pre-orders and promotions which leaves very limited options for rewards in game.

Yeah, we’re talking about a bunch of different smaller goodies that we could use for more frequent, low-key rewards. We don’t have a super solid timeline for them yet, but there are a lot of different things we’re talking about and scoping out as possible rewards/cosmetics/etc.

[ElCheckElMat-2133]

Is the 2vs2 mode really something you can’t speak about?

[hadidjah-1104 (Hadidjah Chamberlin)]

@SneakyTT-1332

Are there any secret interactions on the Rise of Shadows game board?

Not on the RoS board, no.
The volcano was kind of a special case where we just couldn’t not do a gigantic eruption (and the Troll gates kinda wrote themselves as well :P), but we approach boards with the base goal of designing a clean, awesome board first and then fitting appropriate clickables to that (very generally speaking - we all sit right next to each other so there’s a lot of back and forth and "Hey what if we added…" between everyone as well).
Those secret interactions are really fun for us to make, and we always bat a ton of clickable ideas (of varying levels of practicality) around, but we want to make sure they make sense with the board rather than trying to find a way to force a crazy interaction into every single one at the cost of the overall design or blowing our entire clickable budget on one thing.

[hadidjah-1104 (Hadidjah Chamberlin)]

@Agentphil-1709

If there was one card from the wild set that you would bring back to standard, what would it be?

Glimmerroot, I love that lil’ guy.<3 I think he’s a great card, but also I’m super attached to his FX because they were really fun to make, so I’m biased.

[stevebob-1502]

Priest is in such a poor position at this time. What is going to be done to help them now and in the future?

[hadidjah-1104 (Hadidjah Chamberlin)]

Yo happy birthday!