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Naa dude the broken back then in Ban's era is a joke compared to what's broken right now, I prefer Ban's meta for sure and its not nostalgia in these broken expansions you constantly feel ripped off and that feeling is never good to have in any game. What the Ban era needed was just a mini set to change things more constantly.
I think Hearthstone was trash for F2P players before 2019. I couldn't even build any other deck than cheap zoo decks after playing for 2 years and still was missing rares.
You missed the biggst factor of them all. Hearthstone, in the Ben Brode era, was on top of Twitch. The memes, songs, and creators are unmatched, even to this day. Forsen, Reynad, Toast, Kripp, Hafu, etc were all huge. People dedicated hours of their lives to making music just from in game card voices. I think old Twitch and old Hearthstone go hand in hand. I have never had the same chat experience in my life. So yes nostalgia is a huge thing BUT people forget, Hearthstone was King of Twitch. I think only League was more popular.
That's the exact reason why standard is declining. Before there were a lot of people coming into hearthstone because it was so simple to pick up and understand. You usually had a couple of choices to take each turn and you could play around and predict what your opponent is going to do next. Nowadays you can't do that. Your opponent can play 20 cards in a turn and discover all sorts of cards and for a new player that is a big turn off. Obviously people are leaving, but they always have, the problem is that no one want's to start to play this game
I’m sure the Pandemic helped people come in more then leave, now that signs of good return to normal is there, you’ll probably loose the player base that played for occupation. I certainly fall in the “occasinal casual” player groups, I pick up the game sometimes, play a few rounds with Elemental Shaman in Wild, Murloc in Standard and Quest Rogue and then I drop it for some time
You're not wrong. When I picked it up last year, I started with Standard since the card pool was limited... And I barely picked it up without help and I play physical TCGs.
The problem with hearthstone in general and modern hearthstone in particular is the limits to player interaction. As time has gone on, we have seen a bigger and bigger focus on OTKs, rush metas and generally a lot of different approaches which all revolve around ignoring what your opponent is doing in order to focus single-mindedly on your win condition. This is a problem because what made the game interesting was the counterplay. Seeing quest hunter press its hero power over and over and over regardless of what you're doing, that's not interesting gameplay, but people play it because playing a deck that requires interaction with your opponent means you're more likely to be disrupted. Its biggest mistake was catering to players who just want to win and climb the ladder, players who don't care about fun. They should have been focusing on the player interaction that made Hearthstone the deep and complex game that it used to be. That interaction and depth is gone now, and it took my interest in playing the game with it.
@@tempusername-l5d "ruined magic the gathering" ..... Magics playerbase is at its largest point in history right now and getting in as a new player is easier than its ever been with things like Arena. I honestly have no clue where you're getting this misguided opinion but its 100% incorrect. More of my friends play magic now then ever, and even people who never seemed interested in MTG are getting into the ever popular EDH.
great comment, just wanted to add that something similar happened to the Yugioh tcg meta over the years with modern top tier decks focusing on combos that set up unbreakable boards turn 1 - and has become less of a “dueling” card game with many exchanges and has evolved into something a bit more akin to poker. due to staple cards in every deck being mostly negate oriented in order to prevent your opponent from shutting you out of the game turn one - lethal on the field with 2 negates to stop you from building any sort of momentum on turn two :P I still enjoy both games, but ultimateIy fell off hearth - I feel like yugioh going the direction that it did was fresh and has sort of become its new identity, games are shorter on average but are insanely explosive and swingy - with monster effects being stronger than they’ve ever been. Feels like this is where hearth may be headed if they continue to design future sets around combos. I hope hearth can stick the landing and commit to this more explosive design with some sort of relaunch or big mechanic update to revitalise the game
Your comment is going to save me time. I was thinking of going back to HS and checking what it is like right now. I guess I won't be going back. That's what I felt before I stop 4 years ago. I got tired of seeing the same build over and over and it got very boring because I felt like I keep playing the same player every time.
The rapid balance patches is sooo good to keep the game fresh, there is nothing that destroys me more than when a digital cardgame does not do the thing a digital cardgame can do over a physical one.
Yeah thats why i stopped playing yu gi oh a year ago. in a physical card game you cant just change card that easy, either ban it (every 3 months a new ban list comes out) or wait like 3 years to change the card. Also what i love about Hearthstone are the rotations, so you dont have to look at every card ever released and see if it can cause problems (this is a really huge problem with yu gi oh imp).
It‘s sad because that is what Riot Games tried to do with legends of runterra. Only to end up with a game that has fewer meta shakeups and imo is more boring to play than Hearthstone.
@@volltrottel2 atleast for me the economy is far better than HS eventhough I leave the game for months still easily keep up with the meta deck. But I need to agree HS is far more enjoyable in terms of gameplay
Personally i liked the game but it has two many updates .like whenever i come back to play it all my cards that i worked for are gone.To a degree chaos is good.it is what made me like it since some people could pull moves yo didn't see coming.so it was worth it to see pro players.This days the game doesn't have a lot those moments .do you know any other good hearthstone alternatives.
What I will always hate about Hearthstone is the amount of RNG involved. Over the years it has gotten even worse because now you could be facing a Paladin card that was created by a Shaman card, that was created by a Rogue card. You can't play around almost anything these days and every game looks like a race of who will pull off their win condition first.
@@resa574 Not as much as before. The more rng there is, the less skill involved there is. Cards like yogg is where the game went from being competitive to being a mobile game for highlight videos on youtube.
@@kiwihaider3947 And that's totally fair. What's stupid is that classes can have access to cards that aren't available to them by normal means. You can never be sure what cards the opponent holds because they have been generated on the some by a random effect.
@@kiwihaider3947 Its one thing for a warrior to have execute when needed and a whole other thing for a rogue to have execute. The drawing is RNG you can quantify and calculate the odds for your opponent to have a certain card. The second a class can just create random cards from any class there is nothing you can do to play around it and all skill is gone.
The biggest issue for me was not the game quality, but the rapidly increasing cost to keep up. Most expansions, more cards, no more cheap adventures and then for me finally the nail in the coffin the move to quests, which completely made it unaffordable for those of us without tons of time to play.
What i am missing is the analysis of the monetization over the years. For me that was the most important aspect when quitting the game. When HS launched you had much cheaper decks that could actually compete. Face hunter, Zoo warlock and murloc decks were totally viable. That shifted when they started releasing more aggro focussed legendaries that were key for those decks to function. Now almost all decks require one or multiple legendaries. Also the unwillingness to nerf cards led to it being much safer to invest into decks and craft specific cards. The first time i really felt cheated was when Kingsbane rogue was a thing and instead of nerfing that card, they nerfed the cards around the legendary like Leeching Poison. That way you only get a fraction of the dust and you are stranded with a legendary you can't really use for anything else. Nerfs as a whole are bad for F2P players in that same way. When card X gets released and creates a meta deck, then it gets nerfed and drops to a Tier 3 deck, you don't get the dust back for your whole deck. You get maybe a little bit for the nerfed card but your overall investment into the deck is gone. I'm not saying balancing cards is bad, but releasing OP cards just to nerf them a month later does increase Blizzards revenue overall.
Oh, i also forgot to mention: I feel like neutral legendaries were much more widely used back in the day. Thalnos, Sylvanas, Cairne, Ragnaros, Leroy.. you could use those in a wide variety of decks. I think the focus has much more shifted towards class specific legendaries, making building a wide variety of decks much more expensive.
@@Epic_Epochs123 I wholeheartedly agree. The fact that certain heroes (Warlock, Control Warrior) almost always rely on a ton of epics and legendaries literally alienates players from crafting decks for them due to potential of this sort of nerf or outright not liking the deck.
Bro what you said about them nerfing Leeching Poison (a specifically common card) and totally ruining the entire Kingsbane Rogue archetype and fucking over anyone who invested dust into it is literally the exact reason I quit the game a few days later. Realised I wasn’t willing to invest money into decks which greedy Blizzard could just delete out of the game and take my money with them. *Especially* given that my other deck of choice at the time was Jade Druid and guess what they did with that? Nerfed the cheapest cards imaginable.
The Kingsbane nerf was also my reason for quitting the game. Earlier nerfs at least refunded you for your now worthless legendaries. But that one made me lose all trust in Blizzard as a company in an instant. If they would completely destroy all your work in a second and not even reimburse you, why should I then bother with this game any longer just to wake up one day to see that my whole deck has gone to ruins overnight? Never even looked back. And I really don't know why UA-cam suddenly started to recommend hearthstone videos again...?
Old Gods, Mean Streets and Un'gorro were some of the best times I had in HS. Sure there was the miseries of Rogue doing rogue things, C'thunn decks and Un'gorro mage nuking my big dinos and skipping my turns ;-; But the only thing that's come even close to the experience of evolve shaman or big druid was the Kazakus Lock from just before last year's rotation. Once those decks rotated out my interest in the game teetered off, and after DH's reveal I didn't really come back for much. I'm having a better time (and more free time in general) watching long time pros play instead.
Honestly I’m upset about all the removal, I wish the game was more minion oriented, when big minions get played they are very impactful, but nowadays a big minion has to have a good battle cry because it will be destroyed by a spell next turn and it’s boring
That's how most cardgames work. Vanilla critters need to be overstatted to justify their existance. Draft environments are the only ones where you can expect boards to stick. It's nit boring, it's just Deckbuilding to avoid being smkthered by powerful minions.
Oh fuck off. Turn 6 10/11 warlock card because lock is able to shit out imps every turn is NOT fun. Give me back Control Warrior, or at least Dragon Priest it took 20 minutes to play but it were FUN 20 minutes.
i literally just looked up "why did hearthstone get so bad" 6 different decks at ranked-standard gold or higher. 6. but they all have 25 identical cards and the style of gameplay is identical. It's a meta P2W fiesta and a disgusting fucking game
I actually dislike a lot of balance changes after releasing a card. To me cards feel like physical things, like they have value. When building a deck around a card you really like you shouldn't have to worry about if it's going to get nerfed next week. I liked the Ben Brode style more, where they took more caution.
I never make comments on YT videos but I felt the need to stop for a sec and congratulate for the amazingly articulated and detailed opinion about a game that has been part of our lives for so many time. For more people like you on YT, with honest and really grounded arguments. Keep fighting the good fight mate. Cheers from Brazil.
I don’t want to sound “old good new bad” because that’s not my point, but…. The Ben Brode era really was the best, Kobolds was one of my favorite expansions… and then came the dark ages which we call the witchwood 😂 I would like the Ben Lee era if not for the insane power creep that came with it.
I honestly feel like this game has gotten less complex, people wasting good cards on turn 1/2 just to progress a quest. People just rush their quest and that's all there is to this game now. Discover also allows people to recklessly waste their removals instead of saving them tactically. I'd say the game is more reliant on RNG than ever.
Exactly my thoughts, I recently jumped into classic for the nostalgia and the memes, but then I really saw how it’s actually a harder game mode, despite all the memes.
@@theancientone1616 The game is a lot of fun in duels, arena and all the other modes. But I can't be bother playing ranked all that much anymore due to the meta. I am glad they put in a classic mode though with all the other stuff
Take it from someone who's been playing magic for 23 years. The longer a card game goes on, the more people will claim it's dying. When I started magic it had already been around for 8 years and people were saying at my LGS that it was so much worse than when it started and the game was far from hitting it's peak. The simple reality of the situation is that there's a human emotion called nostalgia. AFter 23 years I know it well. Magic, for me, has never been as good as when I fell in love with it because, like all games, it changed and evolved but I loved it most in it's mid 2000s form because that's when it shaped me as a gamer. I imagine the same process happens to everyone else.
Just reconnected to hearthstone couple of days ago after 6 years of not touching it, faced a mage that cleaned the board and summoned a 10/10 on turn 4 then filled his board with 5/5 bodies next turn while maintaining a handfull of cards, naturally i uninstalled the game.The amount of value the couple of cards i witnessed in those games i played was simply ridiculous, hearthstone is just a game that got killed by powercreep.
I've started playing Hearthstone right before Nax release, and kept playing until introduction of Standart/Wild game modes. I came back recently to check on the meta, my friend plays standart and I play classic only. I might be wrong in my observations, but just sharing my thoughts. Personally, I think Hearthstone was much more back then, as a game. Gameplay-wise you had strong and consistent archetypes, with great synegry to classes' unique mechanics. Ramp Druid, Control Warrior, Zoolock, Handlock, Tempo/Freeze Mage, FaceHunter, MidRange Paladin, etc. All of them had relatively strict rules of play, but you had a lot of potential to experiment (Mill Warrior/Rogue, Malygos Druid, Patron Warrior etc). The classes went hand in hand, countering each other. It was not hard even for new players to remember/learn new cards or archetypes and their counters one to another. It was also because you had a strong set of BASE cards(talking about Classic set and free set), which played almost in every deck. You could even replace expensive cards with cheap ones, in case you still need a bit more dust. The community was extremely funky, with memes, different streamers and strong interactions between players. I could go on for ages how great it was, but who were there will definitely understand what I am talking about. And if you are new to the game, trust me, it was really huge. Basically, the whole twitch community was based around Hearthstone and its memes. Gachi became much more popular and mainstream now, but it all started from HS Forsen's streams. Now, on the other hand, there is a ton of new cards, releasing every expansion, with totally different mechanics and metas. The card you've played a month ago might be not viable anymore, and there is a huge favor of certain classes. It's funny how you have almost no base cards in your deck at all, since they all are too weak for now. . Warrior has an aggro deck now (how can a class with hero power "+2" armor have an aggro deck? It's simply silly). And in this deck there is literally a minion what you can not kill (Talking about the Juggernaut). Druid can have 20 mana and cast a ton of spells and minions on the same turn, ending the game. Demon Hunter with hero power for 1 mana? You can argue, but I think it's is broken compared to druid's hero power. The gameplay became even more RNG-oriented and a lot faster. It feels more like an arcade game for now. And as I mentioned, you have to craft basically all of them, since almost no base or classic cards used. Previously, all you had to craft is around 1-2 legendaries and an epic, now you have to craft the whole deck. The cost of decks rose almost twice, if not more. Now Constructed (Standart) Hearthstone is clearly in decline, you can see it on Twitch, having only few streamers and almost all of them play Battlegrounds. Yes, there are championship, but there is no e-sports league anymore, it's simply Blizzard's own championship and that's all. Monetization? I dunno. Previously you had some extremely cheap and effective decks(Face/Zoo/Aggro) what you could craft in no time. (Trump actually reached legend once on free BASE deck). Now you can have more gold, yeah, but the amount of cards and hours you have to put in to get those decks is much more. But that's all IMO. Hearthstone was like a classic game: easy to learn, hard to master with few RNG/Balance-oriented drawbacks. Now it's just a race who completes the quest first and who can deal more damage in one turn. TL;DR: HS old - good. HS now - bad. If you have read all of this, thank you. I tried my best to express myself. Thanks for the video though. Made me think and re-live some moments.!
Yeah dude, i remember playing back in 2015. The fun was real. And more important, game felt like players expertise was important, nowadays seems like RNG is out of control. Don't know how to say it, but back then was magic, right now all magic is gone, and with it all the great comunity it had...
They removed the fight for board, winning on board doesnt mean you win the game. It makes board control useless. Control turned into do random stuff from random stuff not in your deck. If you have a game that is based on board that should be the focus of the game that means not too much board clear, more trading etc.
You know what's funny? Brode reasoned that if they patched regularly, people would stop trying to innovate, because they'd just wait for nerfs and buffs to roll in. He was absolutely right. That is exactly what has happened. Between regular nerfs and buffs, and minisets being added at regular intervals now, I've heard the term "solved meta" within two or three weeks of a fucking expansion dropping, and it's utterly moronic. Regardless of what you think, it -is- bad for the game. Instead of figuring out how to change the meta, they wait for the change to be thrust upon them. I do think Brode should've patched more than he did, but we've gone way, way too far in the other direction, and I feel like most people don't realize just how bad it is for the game.
A card game shouldn't have this many insane random effects. Being unable to interact in any way with your opponent during their turn sucks and enables degenerate combo decks, but nothing feels worse than losing to rng. That's why the only random factor that should be in a card game is the order of cards in your deck, because that's the absolute minimum you can achieve while still being a card game. Every time someone highrolls it feels great for them, but it feels way worse for their opponent and it brings them closer to leaving the game. People tend to focus on the negative experiences more in the short term. Such a shame that this visually stunning game has horrible card design.
@@BlackSkyZ2 u literally get overall less gold now and it even goes more down as u level up in the pass so u get punished the more u play, how is it "overall improvement"? the cosmetics are cheap because they are cheap and stupid
cannibalized itself with BGs and card pool got larger and larger so that new players have hard time to catch up and older players grew tired of having to play keep up since cards become obsolete over time.
From a software standpoint, Hearthstone has gotten worse. The Hearthstone client wasn't built to have this much going on. Many people can't even run it on their phone because it's so large. They don't give their developers time to clear "tech debt", basically poor programming or structuring of code, usually caused by requiring quick development. Unless a lot of tech debt is removed, the hearthstone client will become slower, bigger, and buggier over time. Not necessarily something unique to Hearthstone, as software gets older this tends to happen as solving tech debt does not generate revenue.
I think it could indirectly lead to more revenue. I've seen someone say that they won't buy the battlegrounds tavern pass because of the stuttering issue. I guess whether it'd be enough to economically justify it is another question.
@@cripplingautism5785 they'll just release more monetisation and spent revenue on more marketing, they will never address tech issues unless it gets really extreme and makes the whole community boycott the game.
@@loganreed23 you say this but recently they did something to address the lag issues and added FPS options to the menu. i'm no longer stuttering like crazy and the memory leak issue seems to be gone. there is a new issue with refreshing the tavern taking longer than usual though.
I played from the beta until March of the Lich King. The only mode I never played was Standard. I left because of the numerous bots in ranked Wild, the terrible economy system, the team's refusal to nerf some problematic cards that enable terribly unfair decks like Big Priest, and the loss of that original Warcraft feel. Hearthstone is still a great game for many people, but I remember much better times.
i loved this game, then i get on recently and most of my cards are locked, its harder to get card packs and it just doesnt feel like they care anymore :/
Back in the day Hearthstone used to compete with League of Legends and PUBG for 1st to 3rd most viewed game on the platform, with many of the famous copypastas originating from HS. Now it’s barely viewed.
Dude, this kinda content is gonna get you places. Hearthstone history videos and stuff is really entertaining and it’s really enjoyable to watch. Keep it up!
I quit after Rastakhan's Rumble, and as someone who's trying to give the game another chance, I'm playing Classic because I at least can understand it. It feels absolutely impossible to try and get into Standard when there's 4-6 gigantic, very powerful 170-card sets that I have absolutely no idea how they work at all, and an entire new class that's completely foreign and makes it feel even worse, on top of other cards now being in Core, compared to when I first joined and there was only Standard and the small Naxxramas set to worry about. And good luck having any of my old decks stand a chance in Wild. I hear that Ben Lee's planning on replacing Classic with a new, rotating format with different sets, and honestly I'd be much more eager to play that, since if it's, say, Classic + 1 old set + 1 new set, then it'd a lot easier for me to get acquainted with the new cards, and I can enjoy some of my old decks again.
Sorry, but you're wrong. HS problems don't stem from power issues, they stem from a complete blind spot to what an opponent has to deal with. When my opponent buffs their entire deck, for example, I can't stop it. I can't silence the deck. I get to deal with an entire game of buffed cards. Or an "aggro" deck that plays multiple minions EVERY SINGLE TURN(!!!) but doesn't run out of cards. It's literally not fun. I simply concede and play the next one cause I have a life and don't worry about the silly ladder
I think the true Golden Age of Hearthstone was from the spring of 2015 to the fall of 2017. I'm a little biased with that time frame because that's when I played Hearthstone non-stop like I was straight up addicted to the game. But anyways, the reason I start with the spring of 2015 is because that's when the game was finally playable on all mobile devices. And so I remember back when I was in high school, all the boys (the girls didn't give a fuck about Hearthstone) were basically talking about Hearthstone like it was the new hot trend and we were all playing it in class, during lunch period, and right outside of school. Sadly I graduated high school that same year so that ended that whole experience. But Hearthstone was still doing really well into the winter of 2015, everything was going good in 2016, but then towards the middle of 2017 is when I think a lot of players started to not like the game as much as they did before. A lot of my friends permanently quit playing Hearthstone that year. I stopped playing it too, but I sort of went on and off of it afterwards. Reflecting back on it, I think the Kobolds and Catacombs expansion was a huge mistake. I know some people like the dungeon run style of gaming, but I personally hate it. It just didn't feel right with Hearthstone. So I basically didn't engage in those types of expansions. I loved the Battlegrounds addition though! So I only play Battlegrounds nowadays. But I will say this, I think a lot of us just grew out of Hearthstone. Many of us started playing the game when we were still young and had a lot of free time on our hands, but now we've grown up and are preoccupied with other things in life. It sucks but I guess that's life for us.
Meh, I''m glad that I got to play in the golden age of Hearthstone when it first came out, the game was still new and a fresh experience. Then came a ton of expansions and I realized that it would cost too much to keep up with it all. They really haven't adressed this very much since then, it's still a wildly expensive game if you want to craft all the different decks. Especially with competition like Legends of Runeterra where a F2P player can very easily get all the cards that they want, Hearthstone becomes a joke in comparison. At this point the only thing that could bring me back to Hearthstone is if they made the F2P experience about the same as in Legends of Runeterra.
@@oc5058 At least back then you'd have to be above average in Arena, but if you only enjoyed Constructed/ranked then you basically had to pay money to keep up. Even though I dropped $60 every expansion I was still missing a lot of epic and legendary cards.
Personally I like the Un'goro expansion the most. Even if it introduced some broken decks such as Quest Rogue, the meta was still quite diverse. I liked my Gunther mage :)
As someone who played classic to TGT, the reason I left was specifically because of the change in philosophy. Of course classic doesn’t get much play (it never changes), but the design philosophy was much better to me and a lot of other players from back then. There was RNG back then of course, but they tried to limit it as much as possible. Then at some point they decided “F it, let’s just go as random as possible.” And that’s the exact moment th they lost me and a lot of other players and that trend continue until today. It’s gotten much, much more complex, but also much, much more random. Hearthstone’s biggest weakness had always been that it hasn’t had a tabletop component and so cards that could never be played in a tabletop setting are printed and that leads to an incredible amount of RNG. Watching top level pro games being decided by stupid amounts of RNG would make me sick to my stomach. Once HS made these changes I just went back to mtg. You couldn’t pay me enough to play HS now, but if you did, I would just play a few games or classic and call it a day.
There was a very noticable shift at some point, at least from my perspective as a dedicated Hearthstone Arena player. I used to get an average of 7+ wins, which resulted in me getting refunds for my runs + gaining extra gold over time, which brought me to a peak of about 25,000 gold. Then started a decline of barely scraping 7 wins in the past few years. What do I blame it on? I'm suspicious of a couple things: - The Discover mechanics which introduced a new layer of RNG which minimized the deterministic aspect of the game. Example: A card that discovers a dragon, with a pretty high chance of either discovering "Raid Boss Onyxia" or "Ysera The Dreamer" which in most cases are instant game changers. - HearthArena and other Arena card rating apps, which helped "Bad players" make better draft decisions, which in some degree evened-out the Arena deck building field, which minimized the lower extreme of "Bad decks" by "Bad players" and pulled them up to the average and above playing field. For example, I used to face horrible decks when I was at let's say 1 win and 2 losses, since the game put me up against other players in a similar situation, but now, In the same situation I often face players with decks that seems to be easily 10+ win decks, just absolutely stomping me, which in my opinion shows that either matchmaking is bad or the balancing of the game is bad. - "Zephrys the Great" introduced an algorithm which I suspect was also stealth-implemented in the game itself, which results in very frequent and in my opinion quite obvious game changing scenarios where you or your opponent draw/discover the perfect card to turn the game around. I call it "Controlled RNG" to prevent players from accumulating gold through arena. They basically started to drain the players of their gold by setting certain conditions for when a player needs to lose or win. Giving you enough wins to feel good about it, but enough loses to not sustain gold. Why? so that players have to use real cash to enter Arena or to buy Expansions. I've never spent real money on Arena entry passes or on expansions, it was all paid for with gold that I earned in the previously stated 7+ win runs. Obviously this is all speculation, aspecailly the last point, and all I have as evidence is the fact that I have now dropped to about 100 gold. People might say "Oh you just became bad at the game", which is an option, but I think is a highly unlikely one, due to me playing arenas since the open beta launch in 2014 with the gold to prove my track record (Up to a certain point which I mentioned above). This much experience is not consistent with the rapid decline in the ability to achieve enough 7+ win runs to sustain gold, so either I changed or something in the game changed, and I believe the latter to be true.
Sometimes the drafting basically just says, "Hah, have fun loser, here is two sticks and a bag of chips, now go fight Onyxia." Arena was the one thing in Hearthstone that still felt value based and now it's just a kick in the teeth.
Yes, I am a long time arena player. Used do to well like Kripp, but now never get high wins unless I draft a completely broken deck. Discover cards absolutely ruined the game mode which allowed people to get multiple broken cards, which should have a draft restriction on it. Never knew who blizzard never fixed it for arena. I complain this on /r/arenaha and few seems to care about it and think this state of arena is acceptable or fun to play. Throughly quit the game last year or so, sold my 6 years old acc for $250 as all I do now is play arena occasionally. But I freqeuently get pissed off from games and unistall hs for while.
The first two points are perfectly valids. The value generated by the discover mechanic averaged out the power level of a lot of deck, giving a bigger role to the randomness of it. Players got better too. The average arena wins of the most succesful players declined from an average of 9.5-ish wins to to about 7.5 in a span of two years. The last point is just tin foil hat speculations and it’s not worth going over.
I can’t agree with you about rush mechanic being beneficial. The release of stronger rush cards lead powercreep and more busted spells, because rush minions were just almost identical to battlecry: deal x damage. Stat: Y/Z. As cards like these became more frequent, to match the power levels of these cards, developers had to print more efficient removal spells which eventually lead to the minimum board meta we are experiencing today. This is the cause to no board interaction/ less interactive gameplay that few people realize, which is a bad thing.
the tourists arrived, qnd things have been going down hill ever since. Blizzard wants players to forget what old HS was like, really... I mean at this point, its obvious. I cant believe this video is already over 2 years old, wow...
It got worse. When Mean Streets Of Gadgezan came out, I left. I wanted to play it free, but adding so many new cards so fast makes it impossible to keep up with the game.
I played Hearthstone since its official launch. Had no real consistent deck until Whispers of Old Gods expansion. Then I finally crafted my first good deck, spell shaman with Malygos and Yogg-Saron. After Journey to Un'Goro expansion I left. Then, when I've seen an announcement for Saviours of Uldum, I realized that Highlander decks are back and returned to craft some. For me, the best time in Hearthstone were Savoiurs of Uldum and Descent of Dragons expansions. I had so much fun with Zephrys, barista Lynchen and new Alexstrasza. Now I don't know if I want to get back and play more. Maybe I have enough resourses to craft one or two meta decks of my choice, but I don't know what's going on in this game today. Any advice? Is it worse or better than it was 3 years before?
While I think that the United in Stormwind meta was problematic (and I didn’t play a lot during Alterac Valley, so I missed a lot of the Thief Rogue issues), overall the game has been consistently good for a couple of years now. I’m a mostly F2P player, and I don’t have any problems crafting a couple of meta (and off meta) decks each expansion, so I can remain competitive and having fun (most of the time)
I'm not sure how you could've skipped an entire expansion and still be able to craft both meta and non-meta decks as F2P. This implies you bought at least some packs with packs, either previously or now.
Wow, that was a damn good summary, Rarran! I've been playing HS already since almost eight years now and I absolutely agree with you here. Thanks for making this super interesting video!
As someone who quit about the time the Ben Brode era ended and have no idea what's happened the past so many years, this video was extremely helpful and I was already looking into getting back into the game. It seems like the game is way up my alley compared to before
I think the biggest weakness is Hearthstone is showing its age and its cracks are showing. Bugs and lag are starting to become an issue. Yes, they balance more often but there are just SO MANY CARDS it’s hard to do it right. And yeah, they’ve come out with new game modes, which is nice but let’s be honest- Mercenaries is awful, Deuls are mediocre. And other game modes have not been getting TLC with their addition. Not only was that awful but time they spent on it was taken away from making the core game good. Not to mention, Single-Player content. I know it’s not for everyone, but single player content has been trash for the past year. The only thing book of Mercenaries has going for it is it’s free. Early Hearthstone had some truly amazing and memorable single player content. I think that added a lot to the charm of these characters.
So if everyone who loved the old hearthstone quit and the people who dont mind the changes are the ones remaining, its not worse? What kind of mentality is that? By that line of reasoning, its literally impossible for any game to get worse until the literal last player stops playing
I used to play up to Witch Wood, i can not remember anything beyond Whispers of The Old Gods, but i know i played Baku Silverhand Paladin before just stoping
Aside from those eras, I do see some positive changes recently. Getting a new CM did seem to do wonders in terms of Blizzard - Content creators relations. Card reveals for a bigger variety of creators, wild theory crafting streams, alienated creators coming back etc. This on top of them finally realizing the potential of BGs for Esports (only slightly later than the Chinese 😉). So I am more optimistic than usual for HS future.
That sad background music again... The low note on this video and some others I've seen recently, makes me wanna cry in fetal position. Good points and all, but feels bad man. Hope all is good at home Rarran
Started playing the game about a month ago for the first time since Boomsday. A lot of this video totally made sense. Reasons I stopped playing: The Year of the Raven stunk, things got VERY stale, and it felt like they catered to new players, returning players, new players again, then the long-term experienced players last. Things I like upon returning: Game feels fresh, metagame feels very healthy, it feels like there's much more to do (not even including new game modes: quests/achievements, etc.), the cards are interesting and involve many more decisions. Things I'm not so sure about: While I like things constantly changing and hated things like the 4 month break between expansions with balance updates that would affect two or three cards, they may actually be too fast now. I have barely learned out how to play two decks passably well and there have already been two balance patches and now a mini-set. The power level feels insane...it used to be that if you were staring down 20/20 in stats, you cleared the board and hoped there would be less pressure or you found another clear the next turn. Now you clear the board, put down 30/30 in stats of your own, and heal for 15.
Things I hated in Hearthstone: Reno, Pirate Warrior, Jade Golems, Jabberwock, Secret Mage, and Demon Hunter. Things I liked: Un'goro, Witchwood, Genn Greymane, Kalimos, handbuff Paladin... I feel like you and I just have different values
One of the big benefit of a completely digital card game is that you can ALWAYS just go back and change a card or entire sets. If they decide that the power creep went out of hand they could absolutely remove cards, redesign them etc.
Great video! completely agree with your views on nostalgia and era 1 of hearthstone. I think if there is/was a golden era, its the 3rd one and we are kinda in it.
I miss the time when i started Hearthstone and that was in the Beta where I still had to buy the game. It was funny looking back remembering things like attacking your on minions with yours. I just wish they would take the card collecting system from Legends of Runeterra. It is so frustrating to collect cards in HS. As Casual I don't win often, if I get 1 win in Arena it is already insane for me, especially because I am only good with Mage. Currently I can only play 1 deck, because I don't have cards for more. And even after I bought 50 Cards from my safed gold from multiple years, I maybe got 3 Cards for another Deck, because most of them were a different class. To me HS became insanly pay2win.
I stopped playing like 4 ish years ago. It was too expensive to keep up with the power creep of each expansion. It is good to hear they have worked on this...but now that it has been so long...I dont want to restart and deal with a bunch of new mechanics and a much faster game. I wanted more basic cards with stats that I can trade into other cards and do lots of quick math. I dont want to have to memorize a billion cards I may have to play around with a billion mechanics I have to keep track of. The longer the game exists the more it will only exist for the hardcores and the less room there will be for casuals who want to set fire to grass and kill some time.
I quit around TGT, I realized the packs and bundles were not worth the price and on top of that Team 5 were adamant on refusing to balance any cards despite it being a digital game they could patch freely.
was a legend player, and competed in regional (occasionally national) level tournaments with my university team. Then quit the game after graduation and never intended to go hardcore and pursue a career out of it. Just returned to the game now, wow it really is different. I'm actually digging the single player Rogue like modes which is extremely surprising as I'm typically the person who is all about PvP and needing to sweat profusely whether its career, life, or game. But its fun, very different like you say. Open as whole different can of worms of variables to consider and silly RNG to experience. I haven't enjoyed Standard HS just yet...mostly because I'm behind on decks and refuse to dust all my gold collections. But happy to see much more gold mechanics although I'll still just be buying packs or bundles (having much more varieties of better valued bundles is nice too for the portion of fans willing to pay).
Never heard someone complaining about year of the raven like Raran does,Personally I liked the creativity and the play style on this year it was unique and fun
Although I've never played any game from the franchise before, FOUR titles stand out to me in the best of ways on the trailers alone. Scholomance Academy (brings back the fun and adventure of magic schools) Kobolds & Catacombs (it gave me a strong D&D vibe and it's not JUST because Matt Mercer provided the song) Darkmoon Faire (I loved the idea of an otherworldly amusement park) Forged in the Barrens (FOR THE HOOOOOORDE)
hearthstone owes its success primarily because it is a functionally simplified magic the gathering copy that looked shiny and new, released with good IP world of warcraft along with the fact that blizzard had good branding, and reputation at the time. it was also helped by the fact that wizards of the coast is terrible at online or computerized mtg for the longest time. in a world where there was a competent mtg online program that was available on mobile at or before hearthstone release and pricing was similar hearthstone would not be nearly as big as it is. After the shiny and new honeymoon period people just realized that hearthstone is a fun game to watch or to play on the toilet but ultimately with greener pastures out there mtg arena, legneds of rune terra hearthstone just shows all its flaws
Dude , I play since the very beginning of the game . I loved the game , classic and the next expansions were amazing . The feeling was there everytime I queued for a game . In my opinion , this game died when cards like Zephyr were made ... I always played fun decks , never the OP ones ... and when Zephyr came to the game , turned fun decks unplayable . If you want to win games , you have to play the OP meta decks even if you don't like them because otherwise you will lose every single game . For me , as one of the oldest players of this game , the only game mode I actually enjoyed in the past few years was battlegrounds , and with a lot of sadness I'm telling you it isn't fun anymore , the last expansion was a total disaster ...
Rarran, I might may have said this before; your insight into hearthstone videos is fantastic. The editing, narration, and over all content yield some of the very best Hearthstone videos on the platform. You put ALOT of effort into your content and it clearly shows. Your style could definitely lend to content outside Hearthstone as well.
I started playing in 2015 but quit because: 1) 3 expansions a year and no more adventures was way too expensive, I didn’t stick around to see the rewards track improve. At it’s release it was another step towards a mind bogglingly stingy reward system 2) the meta became way too fast and control decks and slow decks became obsolete 3) insane powercreep
Also the insane uptick in cards with mechanics like discover that decided games by high amounts of rng rather than skill. So many discover cards. You can’t play around that
Your videos got me back into hearthstone, but mostly playing classic now. Been playing on and off since classic and seeing all your videos just gave me the nostalgia bug.
I feel like you kind of glossed over the fact that over the years hearthstone has also amassed a huge free single player, like dungeon runs, boom labs, and book of heroes to name a few, all of which I feel like still hold up today
single player content was pretty great, it was kinda pay to win at the very start since initially you couldn't craft adventure cards if you didn't own the wing they were from. nowadays they are so lazy with the single-player stuff, most of the time they just reuse the same dungeon run format that remains virtually unchanged since 2017
Hearthstone: wipe all creatures, wipe all creatures, wipe all creatures, wipe all creatures, legendary, legendary, legendary, legendary, legendary. gg.
This is EXACTLY the kind of video I wanted to see - how player opinions about the game have changed over the years, and why. Thank you so much for researching and documenting these things! It's so awesome to simultaneously relive the various eras of the game I loved and played for so many years, while also gaining new perspective about those times. That being said, it's very refreshing to have content talking about the good old days of Hearthstone without necessarily talking about it in the context of where the game is today and how it could or should be different - just talking about how it was, _period._ Hearthstone has a bit of a legacy at this point as a game that accompanied many of us throughout important parts of our lives. I traveled around and lived in a dozen different states between 2015 and 2020, and spent a lot of that living in a vehicle where it was just easier to be on my phone instead of a computer. Hearthstone was my main source of entertainment for a lot of that, and even when I did stay indoors I would just keep playing it on my computer. I have loads of memories of playing my favorite decks, playing Handbuff pally in Ohio, getting on my laptop in McDonald's during Witchwood and Boomsday because my phone wasn't working....like you said, not the highest point by any means, but it sure was memorable. And it got better - I played Dragon Warrior during Descent of Dragons on a sign holding job, IMO that was one of the best years....Rise of Shadows, and Tombs of Terror was _incredible..._ I definitely love these broader discussions, but I would still love some deep dives into very specific content or individual expansions.
Before writing a comment, I would recommend you finish the video! Thanks for watching!
Check out Rhat, he helped me a lot with this video: twitter.com/RidiculousHat
No, I shan't wait. I like shorts they're comfy and easy to wear.
Naa dude the broken back then in Ban's era is a joke compared to what's broken right now, I prefer Ban's meta for sure and its not nostalgia in these broken expansions you constantly feel ripped off and that feeling is never good to have in any game. What the Ban era needed was just a mini set to change things more constantly.
like wow
I believe the golden age is over-rated and is fueled by nostalgia
3:59 Shout out to that reno edit.
10/10
I think Hearthstone was trash for F2P players before 2019. I couldn't even build any other deck than cheap zoo decks after playing for 2 years and still was missing rares.
You missed the biggst factor of them all. Hearthstone, in the Ben Brode era, was on top of Twitch. The memes, songs, and creators are unmatched, even to this day. Forsen, Reynad, Toast, Kripp, Hafu, etc were all huge. People dedicated hours of their lives to making music just from in game card voices. I think old Twitch and old Hearthstone go hand in hand. I have never had the same chat experience in my life. So yes nostalgia is a huge thing BUT people forget, Hearthstone was King of Twitch. I think only League was more popular.
Hafu crying when her noods got leaked was priceless
@@nein9nein sauce?
Ben Brode, the one who thought the old DK weren't powerful enough at the time
And it was such a important time in twitch history and you can’t forget reckful rip he was the rouge goat.
@@nein9nein Cha-ching. Sounded like a vegas casino lobby right after.
That's the exact reason why standard is declining. Before there were a lot of people coming into hearthstone because it was so simple to pick up and understand. You usually had a couple of choices to take each turn and you could play around and predict what your opponent is going to do next. Nowadays you can't do that. Your opponent can play 20 cards in a turn and discover all sorts of cards and for a new player that is a big turn off. Obviously people are leaving, but they always have, the problem is that no one want's to start to play this game
I’m sure the Pandemic helped people come in more then leave, now that signs of good return to normal is there, you’ll probably loose the player base that played for occupation. I certainly fall in the “occasinal casual” player groups, I pick up the game sometimes, play a few rounds with Elemental Shaman in Wild, Murloc in Standard and Quest Rogue and then I drop it for some time
You're not wrong. When I picked it up last year, I started with Standard since the card pool was limited... And I barely picked it up without help and I play physical TCGs.
I left in late 2019 because of that, Clown Fiesta every single game made me extremely stressed
I started like 9 months ago and i liked it from the beggining
Discover sucks and the power creep sucks
The problem with hearthstone in general and modern hearthstone in particular is the limits to player interaction. As time has gone on, we have seen a bigger and bigger focus on OTKs, rush metas and generally a lot of different approaches which all revolve around ignoring what your opponent is doing in order to focus single-mindedly on your win condition. This is a problem because what made the game interesting was the counterplay. Seeing quest hunter press its hero power over and over and over regardless of what you're doing, that's not interesting gameplay, but people play it because playing a deck that requires interaction with your opponent means you're more likely to be disrupted.
Its biggest mistake was catering to players who just want to win and climb the ladder, players who don't care about fun. They should have been focusing on the player interaction that made Hearthstone the deep and complex game that it used to be. That interaction and depth is gone now, and it took my interest in playing the game with it.
@@tempusername-l5d "ruined magic the gathering" ..... Magics playerbase is at its largest point in history right now and getting in as a new player is easier than its ever been with things like Arena. I honestly have no clue where you're getting this misguided opinion but its 100% incorrect. More of my friends play magic now then ever, and even people who never seemed interested in MTG are getting into the ever popular EDH.
great comment, just wanted to add that something similar happened to the Yugioh tcg meta over the years with modern top tier decks focusing on combos that set up unbreakable boards turn 1 - and has become less of a “dueling” card game with many exchanges and has evolved into something a bit more akin to poker.
due to staple cards in every deck being mostly negate oriented in order to prevent your opponent from shutting you out of the game turn one - lethal on the field with 2 negates to stop you from building any sort of momentum on turn two :P
I still enjoy both games, but ultimateIy fell off hearth - I feel like yugioh going the direction that it did was fresh and has sort of become its new identity, games are shorter on average but are insanely explosive and swingy - with monster effects being stronger than they’ve ever been. Feels like this is where hearth may be headed if they continue to design future sets around combos.
I hope hearth can stick the landing and commit to this more explosive design with some sort of relaunch or big mechanic update to revitalise the game
@@dmg4535 Honestly, modern yugioh is the exact opposite of the sort of card game I would have even remote interest in...
@@tempusername-l5d For me MtG had gotten to expensive when I had the time to play and now that I have the money I don't have the time.
Your comment is going to save me time. I was thinking of going back to HS and checking what it is like right now. I guess I won't be going back. That's what I felt before I stop 4 years ago. I got tired of seeing the same build over and over and it got very boring because I felt like I keep playing the same player every time.
The rapid balance patches is sooo good to keep the game fresh, there is nothing that destroys me more than when a digital cardgame does not do the thing a digital cardgame can do over a physical one.
Yeah thats why i stopped playing yu gi oh a year ago. in a physical card game you cant just change card that easy, either ban it (every 3 months a new ban list comes out) or wait like 3 years to change the card. Also what i love about Hearthstone are the rotations, so you dont have to look at every card ever released and see if it can cause problems (this is a really huge problem with yu gi oh imp).
It‘s sad because that is what Riot Games tried to do with legends of runterra. Only to end up with a game that has fewer meta shakeups and imo is more boring to play than Hearthstone.
There was an era of Hearthstone where cards literally only received changes if they were going to be nerfed. This happened like once a year too lol.
@@volltrottel2 atleast for me the economy is far better than HS eventhough I leave the game for months still easily keep up with the meta deck. But I need to agree HS is far more enjoyable in terms of gameplay
Personally i liked the game but it has two many updates .like whenever i come back to play it all my cards that i worked for are gone.To a degree chaos is good.it is what made me like it since some people could pull moves yo didn't see coming.so it was worth it to see pro players.This days the game doesn't have a lot those moments .do you know any other good hearthstone alternatives.
What I will always hate about Hearthstone is the amount of RNG involved. Over the years it has gotten even worse because now you could be facing a Paladin card that was created by a Shaman card, that was created by a Rogue card. You can't play around almost anything these days and every game looks like a race of who will pull off their win condition first.
There’s still immense skill involved
Such as people having a high avg arena win rate, and those who have over 60% on high ladder/legend
@@resa574 Not as much as before. The more rng there is, the less skill involved there is. Cards like yogg is where the game went from being competitive to being a mobile game for highlight videos on youtube.
U talking about RNG in a crad Game. Guess what every fucking draw is a RNG.
@@kiwihaider3947 And that's totally fair. What's stupid is that classes can have access to cards that aren't available to them by normal means. You can never be sure what cards the opponent holds because they have been generated on the some by a random effect.
@@kiwihaider3947 Its one thing for a warrior to have execute when needed and a whole other thing for a rogue to have execute.
The drawing is RNG you can quantify and calculate the odds for your opponent to have a certain card. The second a class can just create random cards from any class there is nothing you can do to play around it and all skill is gone.
The biggest issue for me was not the game quality, but the rapidly increasing cost to keep up. Most expansions, more cards, no more cheap adventures and then for me finally the nail in the coffin the move to quests, which completely made it unaffordable for those of us without tons of time to play.
The pain is indeed huge, even if I'm a returning player.
What i am missing is the analysis of the monetization over the years. For me that was the most important aspect when quitting the game.
When HS launched you had much cheaper decks that could actually compete. Face hunter, Zoo warlock and murloc decks were totally viable. That shifted when they started releasing more aggro focussed legendaries that were key for those decks to function. Now almost all decks require one or multiple legendaries.
Also the unwillingness to nerf cards led to it being much safer to invest into decks and craft specific cards.
The first time i really felt cheated was when Kingsbane rogue was a thing and instead of nerfing that card, they nerfed the cards around the legendary like Leeching Poison. That way you only get a fraction of the dust and you are stranded with a legendary you can't really use for anything else.
Nerfs as a whole are bad for F2P players in that same way. When card X gets released and creates a meta deck, then it gets nerfed and drops to a Tier 3 deck, you don't get the dust back for your whole deck. You get maybe a little bit for the nerfed card but your overall investment into the deck is gone. I'm not saying balancing cards is bad, but releasing OP cards just to nerf them a month later does increase Blizzards revenue overall.
Oh, i also forgot to mention: I feel like neutral legendaries were much more widely used back in the day. Thalnos, Sylvanas, Cairne, Ragnaros, Leroy.. you could use those in a wide variety of decks. I think the focus has much more shifted towards class specific legendaries, making building a wide variety of decks much more expensive.
@@Epic_Epochs123 I wholeheartedly agree. The fact that certain heroes (Warlock, Control Warrior) almost always rely on a ton of epics and legendaries literally alienates players from crafting decks for them due to potential of this sort of nerf or outright not liking the deck.
Ah yes we all remember the 1 legendary (which everybody probably had) SMOrc hunter, good times.
Bro what you said about them nerfing Leeching Poison (a specifically common card) and totally ruining the entire Kingsbane Rogue archetype and fucking over anyone who invested dust into it is literally the exact reason I quit the game a few days later. Realised I wasn’t willing to invest money into decks which greedy Blizzard could just delete out of the game and take my money with them. *Especially* given that my other deck of choice at the time was Jade Druid and guess what they did with that? Nerfed the cheapest cards imaginable.
The Kingsbane nerf was also my reason for quitting the game. Earlier nerfs at least refunded you for your now worthless legendaries. But that one made me lose all trust in Blizzard as a company in an instant. If they would completely destroy all your work in a second and not even reimburse you, why should I then bother with this game any longer just to wake up one day to see that my whole deck has gone to ruins overnight?
Never even looked back. And I really don't know why UA-cam suddenly started to recommend hearthstone videos again...?
Old Gods, Mean Streets and Un'gorro were some of the best times I had in HS. Sure there was the miseries of Rogue doing rogue things, C'thunn decks and Un'gorro mage nuking my big dinos and skipping my turns ;-; But the only thing that's come even close to the experience of evolve shaman or big druid was the Kazakus Lock from just before last year's rotation. Once those decks rotated out my interest in the game teetered off, and after DH's reveal I didn't really come back for much. I'm having a better time (and more free time in general) watching long time pros play instead.
Mean steets was best times? Jade golems ??????
@@MyGameFox well I played a lot of druid lol. I enjoyed some hybrid jade decks but I'll admit it wasn't the healthiest for the meta
@@MyGameFox Before opening this comment thread this is exactly what was going through my mind when reading the original comment lmao
Old gods and Un'gorro were top!
I do miss my golems never did get the cards needed.
The Ben brode era was really the golden era for me. Patron warrior and all the variations of control/fatigue warrior were my jam.
Honestly I’m upset about all the removal, I wish the game was more minion oriented, when big minions get played they are very impactful, but nowadays a big minion has to have a good battle cry because it will be destroyed by a spell next turn and it’s boring
That's how most cardgames work. Vanilla critters need to be overstatted to justify their existance. Draft environments are the only ones where you can expect boards to stick. It's nit boring, it's just Deckbuilding to avoid being smkthered by powerful minions.
This is a Timmy point of vue
Oh fuck off. Turn 6 10/11 warlock card because lock is able to shit out imps every turn is NOT fun.
Give me back Control Warrior, or at least Dragon Priest it took 20 minutes to play but it were FUN 20 minutes.
As we are seeing now, another way is just print a minion that can't be removed lmao oops
i literally just looked up "why did hearthstone get so bad"
6 different decks at ranked-standard gold or higher. 6. but they all have 25 identical cards and the style of gameplay is identical. It's a meta P2W fiesta and a disgusting fucking game
I think the old Hearthstone was WAY better balanced than what we have now. Now a creature is literally unplayable unless it has "Rush"
I actually dislike a lot of balance changes after releasing a card. To me cards feel like physical things, like they have value. When building a deck around a card you really like you shouldn't have to worry about if it's going to get nerfed next week. I liked the Ben Brode style more, where they took more caution.
I never make comments on YT videos but I felt the need to stop for a sec and congratulate for the amazingly articulated and detailed opinion about a game that has been part of our lives for so many time. For more people like you on YT, with honest and really grounded arguments. Keep fighting the good fight mate. Cheers from Brazil.
Thank you for very kind words!
Tamo junto
I don’t want to sound “old good new bad” because that’s not my point, but….
The Ben Brode era really was the best, Kobolds was one of my favorite expansions… and then came the dark ages which we call the witchwood 😂 I would like the Ben Lee era if not for the insane power creep that came with it.
I honestly feel like this game has gotten less complex, people wasting good cards on turn 1/2 just to progress a quest. People just rush their quest and that's all there is to this game now. Discover also allows people to recklessly waste their removals instead of saving them tactically. I'd say the game is more reliant on RNG than ever.
Exactly my thoughts, I recently jumped into classic for the nostalgia and the memes, but then I really saw how it’s actually a harder game mode, despite all the memes.
@@theancientone1616 The game is a lot of fun in duels, arena and all the other modes. But I can't be bother playing ranked all that much anymore due to the meta. I am glad they put in a classic mode though with all the other stuff
Take it from someone who's been playing magic for 23 years. The longer a card game goes on, the more people will claim it's dying. When I started magic it had already been around for 8 years and people were saying at my LGS that it was so much worse than when it started and the game was far from hitting it's peak. The simple reality of the situation is that there's a human emotion called nostalgia. AFter 23 years I know it well. Magic, for me, has never been as good as when I fell in love with it because, like all games, it changed and evolved but I loved it most in it's mid 2000s form because that's when it shaped me as a gamer. I imagine the same process happens to everyone else.
Hearthstone has a problem and its random effects, cards, pulls, luck, and other.
Perfect card game should be strict and more calculated.
Just reconnected to hearthstone couple of days ago after 6 years of not touching it, faced a mage that cleaned the board and summoned a 10/10 on turn 4 then filled his board with 5/5 bodies next turn while maintaining a handfull of cards, naturally i uninstalled the game.The amount of value the couple of cards i witnessed in those games i played was simply ridiculous, hearthstone is just a game that got killed by powercreep.
I've started playing Hearthstone right before Nax release, and kept playing until introduction of Standart/Wild game modes.
I came back recently to check on the meta, my friend plays standart and I play classic only. I might be wrong in my observations, but just sharing my thoughts.
Personally, I think Hearthstone was much more back then, as a game.
Gameplay-wise you had strong and consistent archetypes, with great synegry to classes' unique mechanics. Ramp Druid, Control Warrior, Zoolock, Handlock, Tempo/Freeze Mage, FaceHunter, MidRange Paladin, etc. All of them had relatively strict rules of play, but you had a lot of potential to experiment (Mill Warrior/Rogue, Malygos Druid, Patron Warrior etc). The classes went hand in hand, countering each other. It was not hard even for new players to remember/learn new cards or archetypes and their counters one to another. It was also because you had a strong set of BASE cards(talking about Classic set and free set), which played almost in every deck. You could even replace expensive cards with cheap ones, in case you still need a bit more dust.
The community was extremely funky, with memes, different streamers and strong interactions between players. I could go on for ages how great it was, but who were there will definitely understand what I am talking about. And if you are new to the game, trust me, it was really huge. Basically, the whole twitch community was based around Hearthstone and its memes. Gachi became much more popular and mainstream now, but it all started from HS Forsen's streams.
Now, on the other hand, there is a ton of new cards, releasing every expansion, with totally different mechanics and metas. The card you've played a month ago might be not viable anymore, and there is a huge favor of certain classes. It's funny how you have almost no base cards in your deck at all, since they all are too weak for now. .
Warrior has an aggro deck now (how can a class with hero power "+2" armor have an aggro deck? It's simply silly). And in this deck there is literally a minion what you can not kill (Talking about the Juggernaut).
Druid can have 20 mana and cast a ton of spells and minions on the same turn, ending the game.
Demon Hunter with hero power for 1 mana? You can argue, but I think it's is broken compared to druid's hero power.
The gameplay became even more RNG-oriented and a lot faster. It feels more like an arcade game for now.
And as I mentioned, you have to craft basically all of them, since almost no base or classic cards used. Previously, all you had to craft is around 1-2 legendaries and an epic, now you have to craft the whole deck. The cost of decks rose almost twice, if not more.
Now Constructed (Standart) Hearthstone is clearly in decline, you can see it on Twitch, having only few streamers and almost all of them play Battlegrounds. Yes, there are championship, but there is no e-sports league anymore, it's simply Blizzard's own championship and that's all.
Monetization? I dunno.
Previously you had some extremely cheap and effective decks(Face/Zoo/Aggro) what you could craft in no time. (Trump actually reached legend once on free BASE deck).
Now you can have more gold, yeah, but the amount of cards and hours you have to put in to get those decks is much more. But that's all IMO.
Hearthstone was like a classic game: easy to learn, hard to master with few RNG/Balance-oriented drawbacks. Now it's just a race who completes the quest first and who can deal more damage in one turn.
TL;DR: HS old - good. HS now - bad.
If you have read all of this, thank you. I tried my best to express myself.
Thanks for the video though. Made me think and re-live some moments.!
Yeah dude, i remember playing back in 2015. The fun was real. And more important, game felt like players expertise was important, nowadays seems like RNG is out of control. Don't know how to say it, but back then was magic, right now all magic is gone, and with it all the great comunity it had...
They removed the fight for board, winning on board doesnt mean you win the game.
It makes board control useless.
Control turned into do random stuff from random stuff not in your deck.
If you have a game that is based on board that should be the focus of the game that means not too much board clear, more trading etc.
I remember enjoying HS the most, the era where kazakus and jades were a thing and then DK decks, whichever that was.
Finally the youtuber who spits real truth about HS with heavy arguments.
You know what's funny? Brode reasoned that if they patched regularly, people would stop trying to innovate, because they'd just wait for nerfs and buffs to roll in.
He was absolutely right. That is exactly what has happened. Between regular nerfs and buffs, and minisets being added at regular intervals now, I've heard the term "solved meta" within two or three weeks of a fucking expansion dropping, and it's utterly moronic. Regardless of what you think, it -is- bad for the game. Instead of figuring out how to change the meta, they wait for the change to be thrust upon them.
I do think Brode should've patched more than he did, but we've gone way, way too far in the other direction, and I feel like most people don't realize just how bad it is for the game.
I didn't know I left during an era when many other people did (the raven year). Still not coming back. MTG feels much better
A card game shouldn't have this many insane random effects. Being unable to interact in any way with your opponent during their turn sucks and enables degenerate combo decks, but nothing feels worse than losing to rng. That's why the only random factor that should be in a card game is the order of cards in your deck, because that's the absolute minimum you can achieve while still being a card game. Every time someone highrolls it feels great for them, but it feels way worse for their opponent and it brings them closer to leaving the game. People tend to focus on the negative experiences more in the short term. Such a shame that this visually stunning game has horrible card design.
UNIRONICALLY DEFENDING THE BATTLEPASS HE IS BRAINWASHED
@@BlackSkyZ2 u literally get overall less gold now and it even goes more down as u level up in the pass so u get punished the more u play, how is it "overall improvement"? the cosmetics are cheap because they are cheap and stupid
cannibalized itself with BGs and card pool got larger and larger so that new players have hard time to catch up and older players grew tired of having to play keep up since cards become obsolete over time.
From a software standpoint, Hearthstone has gotten worse. The Hearthstone client wasn't built to have this much going on. Many people can't even run it on their phone because it's so large.
They don't give their developers time to clear "tech debt", basically poor programming or structuring of code, usually caused by requiring quick development. Unless a lot of tech debt is removed, the hearthstone client will become slower, bigger, and buggier over time. Not necessarily something unique to Hearthstone, as software gets older this tends to happen as solving tech debt does not generate revenue.
I think it could indirectly lead to more revenue. I've seen someone say that they won't buy the battlegrounds tavern pass because of the stuttering issue. I guess whether it'd be enough to economically justify it is another question.
@@cripplingautism5785 they'll just release more monetisation and spent revenue on more marketing, they will never address tech issues unless it gets really extreme and makes the whole community boycott the game.
@@loganreed23 you say this but recently they did something to address the lag issues and added FPS options to the menu. i'm no longer stuttering like crazy and the memory leak issue seems to be gone. there is a new issue with refreshing the tavern taking longer than usual though.
Rigged bots, perfect discovery bot counters what happened.
The most fun I’ve had playing hearthstone was with my armor stacking control warrior…. Endless hours of fun
I played from the beta until March of the Lich King. The only mode I never played was Standard. I left because of the numerous bots in ranked Wild, the terrible economy system, the team's refusal to nerf some problematic cards that enable terribly unfair decks like Big Priest, and the loss of that original Warcraft feel. Hearthstone is still a great game for many people, but I remember much better times.
i loved this game, then i get on recently and most of my cards are locked, its harder to get card packs and it just doesnt feel like they care anymore :/
Back in the day Hearthstone used to compete with League of Legends and PUBG for 1st to 3rd most viewed game on the platform, with many of the famous copypastas originating from HS. Now it’s barely viewed.
I think you do make a lot of good points. Feels like the game has still not recovered from the year of the raven even after it rotated out
Dude, this kinda content is gonna get you places. Hearthstone history videos and stuff is really entertaining and it’s really enjoyable to watch. Keep it up!
the classic ladder is not there anymore... i wanted to pick up the game again after many years
I quit for a few years after they got rid of classic. I loved it crafted a bunch of golden legends and then they removed it from the game.
I quit after Rastakhan's Rumble, and as someone who's trying to give the game another chance, I'm playing Classic because I at least can understand it. It feels absolutely impossible to try and get into Standard when there's 4-6 gigantic, very powerful 170-card sets that I have absolutely no idea how they work at all, and an entire new class that's completely foreign and makes it feel even worse, on top of other cards now being in Core, compared to when I first joined and there was only Standard and the small Naxxramas set to worry about. And good luck having any of my old decks stand a chance in Wild.
I hear that Ben Lee's planning on replacing Classic with a new, rotating format with different sets, and honestly I'd be much more eager to play that, since if it's, say, Classic + 1 old set + 1 new set, then it'd a lot easier for me to get acquainted with the new cards, and I can enjoy some of my old decks again.
My absolute favorite expansion was journey to un’goro. I have longed for an expansion as fun as this one. Been disappointed since.
Sorry, but you're wrong. HS problems don't stem from power issues, they stem from a complete blind spot to what an opponent has to deal with. When my opponent buffs their entire deck, for example, I can't stop it. I can't silence the deck. I get to deal with an entire game of buffed cards.
Or an "aggro" deck that plays multiple minions EVERY SINGLE TURN(!!!) but doesn't run out of cards. It's literally not fun. I simply concede and play the next one cause I have a life and don't worry about the silly ladder
I think the true Golden Age of Hearthstone was from the spring of 2015 to the fall of 2017. I'm a little biased with that time frame because that's when I played Hearthstone non-stop like I was straight up addicted to the game. But anyways, the reason I start with the spring of 2015 is because that's when the game was finally playable on all mobile devices. And so I remember back when I was in high school, all the boys (the girls didn't give a fuck about Hearthstone) were basically talking about Hearthstone like it was the new hot trend and we were all playing it in class, during lunch period, and right outside of school. Sadly I graduated high school that same year so that ended that whole experience. But Hearthstone was still doing really well into the winter of 2015, everything was going good in 2016, but then towards the middle of 2017 is when I think a lot of players started to not like the game as much as they did before. A lot of my friends permanently quit playing Hearthstone that year. I stopped playing it too, but I sort of went on and off of it afterwards. Reflecting back on it, I think the Kobolds and Catacombs expansion was a huge mistake. I know some people like the dungeon run style of gaming, but I personally hate it. It just didn't feel right with Hearthstone. So I basically didn't engage in those types of expansions. I loved the Battlegrounds addition though! So I only play Battlegrounds nowadays. But I will say this, I think a lot of us just grew out of Hearthstone. Many of us started playing the game when we were still young and had a lot of free time on our hands, but now we've grown up and are preoccupied with other things in life. It sucks but I guess that's life for us.
Meh, I''m glad that I got to play in the golden age of Hearthstone when it first came out, the game was still new and a fresh experience. Then came a ton of expansions and I realized that it would cost too much to keep up with it all. They really haven't adressed this very much since then, it's still a wildly expensive game if you want to craft all the different decks. Especially with competition like Legends of Runeterra where a F2P player can very easily get all the cards that they want, Hearthstone becomes a joke in comparison. At this point the only thing that could bring me back to Hearthstone is if they made the F2P experience about the same as in Legends of Runeterra.
you can get the full collection as F2P, i did. you just have to play the game 3-4 hours per day
@@oc5058 At least back then you'd have to be above average in Arena, but if you only enjoyed Constructed/ranked then you basically had to pay money to keep up. Even though I dropped $60 every expansion I was still missing a lot of epic and legendary cards.
Oh yea I remember playing in the naixx era facehunter "turn 7 lethal", good times :D
@@oc5058 bullshit
"Has Hearthstone gotten worse?" Yes, there are SOO many bots plaguing ranked now
I saw a lot of videos from you but i think that is one of the best on your whole channel. great work man
Demon Hunter was the thing that made me leave HS.
Personally I like the Un'goro expansion the most. Even if it introduced some broken decks such as Quest Rogue, the meta was still quite diverse. I liked my Gunther mage :)
As someone who played classic to TGT, the reason I left was specifically because of the change in philosophy.
Of course classic doesn’t get much play (it never changes), but the design philosophy was much better to me and a lot of other players from back then.
There was RNG back then of course, but they tried to limit it as much as possible. Then at some point they decided “F it, let’s just go as random as possible.”
And that’s the exact moment th they lost me and a lot of other players and that trend continue until today. It’s gotten much, much more complex, but also much, much more random.
Hearthstone’s biggest weakness had always been that it hasn’t had a tabletop component and so cards that could never be played in a tabletop setting are printed and that leads to an incredible amount of RNG.
Watching top level pro games being decided by stupid amounts of RNG would make me sick to my stomach.
Once HS made these changes I just went back to mtg. You couldn’t pay me enough to play HS now, but if you did, I would just play a few games or classic and call it a day.
There was a very noticable shift at some point, at least from my perspective as a dedicated Hearthstone Arena player.
I used to get an average of 7+ wins, which resulted in me getting refunds for my runs + gaining extra gold over time, which
brought me to a peak of about 25,000 gold. Then started a decline of barely scraping 7 wins in the past few years.
What do I blame it on? I'm suspicious of a couple things:
- The Discover mechanics which introduced a new layer of RNG which minimized the deterministic aspect of the game.
Example: A card that discovers a dragon, with a pretty high chance of either discovering "Raid Boss Onyxia" or "Ysera The Dreamer"
which in most cases are instant game changers.
- HearthArena and other Arena card rating apps, which helped "Bad players" make better draft decisions, which in some degree
evened-out the Arena deck building field, which minimized the lower extreme of "Bad decks" by "Bad players" and pulled them up
to the average and above playing field. For example, I used to face horrible decks when I was at let's say 1 win and 2 losses,
since the game put me up against other players in a similar situation, but now, In the same situation I often face players with
decks that seems to be easily 10+ win decks, just absolutely stomping me, which in my opinion shows that either matchmaking is bad
or the balancing of the game is bad.
- "Zephrys the Great" introduced an algorithm which I suspect was also stealth-implemented in the game itself, which
results in very frequent and in my opinion quite obvious game changing scenarios where you or your opponent draw/discover the perfect card
to turn the game around. I call it "Controlled RNG" to prevent players from accumulating gold through arena. They basically started
to drain the players of their gold by setting certain conditions for when a player needs to lose or win. Giving you enough wins to feel good about it,
but enough loses to not sustain gold. Why? so that players have to use real cash to enter Arena or to buy Expansions.
I've never spent real money on Arena entry passes or on expansions, it was all paid for
with gold that I earned in the previously stated 7+ win runs.
Obviously this is all speculation, aspecailly the last point, and all I have as evidence is the fact that I have now dropped to about 100 gold. People might say
"Oh you just became bad at the game", which is an option, but I think is a highly unlikely one, due to me playing arenas since the open beta launch in 2014
with the gold to prove my track record (Up to a certain point which I mentioned above). This much experience is not consistent with the rapid decline
in the ability to achieve enough 7+ win runs to sustain gold, so either I changed or something in the game changed, and I believe the latter to be true.
Your last point is 100% correct, if we could get decktracker to share their data, it can be proven.
Sometimes the drafting basically just says, "Hah, have fun loser, here is two sticks and a bag of chips, now go fight Onyxia." Arena was the one thing in Hearthstone that still felt value based and now it's just a kick in the teeth.
Yes, I am a long time arena player. Used do to well like Kripp, but now never get high wins unless I draft a completely broken deck.
Discover cards absolutely ruined the game mode which allowed people to get multiple broken cards, which should have a draft restriction on it. Never knew who blizzard never fixed it for arena.
I complain this on /r/arenaha and few seems to care about it and think this state of arena is acceptable or fun to play.
Throughly quit the game last year or so, sold my 6 years old acc for $250 as all I do now is play arena occasionally. But I freqeuently get pissed off from games and unistall hs for while.
The first two points are perfectly valids. The value generated by the discover mechanic averaged out the power level of a lot of deck, giving a bigger role to the randomness of it. Players got better too. The average arena wins of the most succesful players declined from an average of 9.5-ish wins to to about 7.5 in a span of two years.
The last point is just tin foil hat speculations and it’s not worth going over.
I can’t agree with you about rush mechanic being beneficial. The release of stronger rush cards lead powercreep and more busted spells, because rush minions were just almost identical to battlecry: deal x damage. Stat: Y/Z. As cards like these became more frequent, to match the power levels of these cards, developers had to print more efficient removal spells which eventually lead to the minimum board meta we are experiencing today. This is the cause to no board interaction/ less interactive gameplay that few people realize, which is a bad thing.
I just wanna be back in the old gods era :(
Dude, you are really the best content producer of hs! Are you in twitch? Love your videos, continue like that!
www.twitch.tv/rarran gonna be streaming at expansion release
@@Rarran epic
the tourists arrived, qnd things have been going down hill ever since. Blizzard wants players to forget what old HS was like, really... I mean at this point, its obvious. I cant believe this video is already over 2 years old, wow...
been playing this game since 2015...but when Battlegrounds mode came out, it was the only gamemode I played since
Same here! Battlegrounds spoiled us big time.
Ben Brode: who am I? None of your business !
It got worse. When Mean Streets Of Gadgezan came out, I left. I wanted to play it free, but adding so many new cards so fast makes it impossible to keep up with the game.
yeah I stopped playing during the raven era, loved mill rogue and late-game hunter
I played Hearthstone since its official launch. Had no real consistent deck until Whispers of Old Gods expansion. Then I finally crafted my first good deck, spell shaman with Malygos and Yogg-Saron. After Journey to Un'Goro expansion I left.
Then, when I've seen an announcement for Saviours of Uldum, I realized that Highlander decks are back and returned to craft some. For me, the best time in Hearthstone were Savoiurs of Uldum and Descent of Dragons expansions. I had so much fun with Zephrys, barista Lynchen and new Alexstrasza. Now I don't know if I want to get back and play more. Maybe I have enough resourses to craft one or two meta decks of my choice, but I don't know what's going on in this game today. Any advice? Is it worse or better than it was 3 years before?
While I think that the United in Stormwind meta was problematic (and I didn’t play a lot during Alterac Valley, so I missed a lot of the Thief Rogue issues), overall the game has been consistently good for a couple of years now. I’m a mostly F2P player, and I don’t have any problems crafting a couple of meta (and off meta) decks each expansion, so I can remain competitive and having fun (most of the time)
I'm not sure how you could've skipped an entire expansion and still be able to craft both meta and non-meta decks as F2P. This implies you bought at least some packs with packs, either previously or now.
Wow, that was a damn good summary, Rarran! I've been playing HS already since almost eight years now and I absolutely agree with you here. Thanks for making this super interesting video!
As someone who quit about the time the Ben Brode era ended and have no idea what's happened the past so many years, this video was extremely helpful and I was already looking into getting back into the game. It seems like the game is way up my alley compared to before
I think the biggest weakness is Hearthstone is showing its age and its cracks are showing. Bugs and lag are starting to become an issue. Yes, they balance more often but there are just SO MANY CARDS it’s hard to do it right. And yeah, they’ve come out with new game modes, which is nice but let’s be honest- Mercenaries is awful, Deuls are mediocre. And other game modes have not been getting TLC with their addition. Not only was that awful but time they spent on it was taken away from making the core game good.
Not to mention, Single-Player content. I know it’s not for everyone, but single player content has been trash for the past year. The only thing book of Mercenaries has going for it is it’s free. Early Hearthstone had some truly amazing and memorable single player content. I think that added a lot to the charm of these characters.
Just one thing: people dont play classic or duels because is not fun, but because you need wild cards
So if everyone who loved the old hearthstone quit and the people who dont mind the changes are the ones remaining, its not worse? What kind of mentality is that? By that line of reasoning, its literally impossible for any game to get worse until the literal last player stops playing
Honestly I just miss brode
So we are ignoring the player exodus and fiasco of the Blitzchung situation?
I used to play up to Witch Wood, i can not remember anything beyond Whispers of The Old Gods, but i know i played Baku Silverhand Paladin before just stoping
I think they should continue to cater to newer/casual players and let the pros do their own thing.
Aside from those eras, I do see some positive changes recently. Getting a new CM did seem to do wonders in terms of Blizzard - Content creators relations.
Card reveals for a bigger variety of creators, wild theory crafting streams, alienated creators coming back etc.
This on top of them finally realizing the potential of BGs for Esports (only slightly later than the Chinese 😉).
So I am more optimistic than usual for HS future.
That sad background music again... The low note on this video and some others I've seen recently, makes me wanna cry in fetal position. Good points and all, but feels bad man. Hope all is good at home Rarran
Started playing the game about a month ago for the first time since Boomsday. A lot of this video totally made sense.
Reasons I stopped playing: The Year of the Raven stunk, things got VERY stale, and it felt like they catered to new players, returning players, new players again, then the long-term experienced players last.
Things I like upon returning: Game feels fresh, metagame feels very healthy, it feels like there's much more to do (not even including new game modes: quests/achievements, etc.), the cards are interesting and involve many more decisions.
Things I'm not so sure about: While I like things constantly changing and hated things like the 4 month break between expansions with balance updates that would affect two or three cards, they may actually be too fast now. I have barely learned out how to play two decks passably well and there have already been two balance patches and now a mini-set. The power level feels insane...it used to be that if you were staring down 20/20 in stats, you cleared the board and hoped there would be less pressure or you found another clear the next turn. Now you clear the board, put down 30/30 in stats of your own, and heal for 15.
Things I hated in Hearthstone: Reno, Pirate Warrior, Jade Golems, Jabberwock, Secret Mage, and Demon Hunter. Things I liked: Un'goro, Witchwood, Genn Greymane, Kalimos, handbuff Paladin...
I feel like you and I just have different values
One of the big benefit of a completely digital card game is that you can ALWAYS just go back and change a card or entire sets.
If they decide that the power creep went out of hand they could absolutely remove cards, redesign them etc.
Great video! completely agree with your views on nostalgia and era 1 of hearthstone. I think if there is/was a golden era, its the 3rd one and we are kinda in it.
I miss the time when i started Hearthstone and that was in the Beta where I still had to buy the game. It was funny looking back remembering things like attacking your on minions with yours.
I just wish they would take the card collecting system from Legends of Runeterra. It is so frustrating to collect cards in HS. As Casual I don't win often, if I get 1 win in Arena it is already insane for me, especially because I am only good with Mage.
Currently I can only play 1 deck, because I don't have cards for more. And even after I bought 50 Cards from my safed gold from multiple years, I maybe got 3 Cards for another Deck, because most of them were a different class. To me HS became insanly pay2win.
I stopped playing like 4 ish years ago. It was too expensive to keep up with the power creep of each expansion. It is good to hear they have worked on this...but now that it has been so long...I dont want to restart and deal with a bunch of new mechanics and a much faster game. I wanted more basic cards with stats that I can trade into other cards and do lots of quick math. I dont want to have to memorize a billion cards I may have to play around with a billion mechanics I have to keep track of. The longer the game exists the more it will only exist for the hardcores and the less room there will be for casuals who want to set fire to grass and kill some time.
I loved the Hearthstone classic Mode, a friend and me came back to HS just because of this mode. I don't know why they removed it.
I quit around TGT, I realized the packs and bundles were not worth the price and on top of that Team 5 were adamant on refusing to balance any cards despite it being a digital game they could patch freely.
was a legend player, and competed in regional (occasionally national) level tournaments with my university team. Then quit the game after graduation and never intended to go hardcore and pursue a career out of it.
Just returned to the game now, wow it really is different. I'm actually digging the single player Rogue like modes which is extremely surprising as I'm typically the person who is all about PvP and needing to sweat profusely whether its career, life, or game. But its fun, very different like you say. Open as whole different can of worms of variables to consider and silly RNG to experience.
I haven't enjoyed Standard HS just yet...mostly because I'm behind on decks and refuse to dust all my gold collections. But happy to see much more gold mechanics although I'll still just be buying packs or bundles (having much more varieties of better valued bundles is nice too for the portion of fans willing to pay).
Hearthstone has always been a dumpster fire of a game. And it's nice to see that it is finally burning itself out.
Never heard someone complaining about year of the raven like Raran does,Personally I liked the creativity and the play style on this year it was unique and fun
Great video and spot on with the points you made. Keep it up!!
I really loved this game, but constant update and keeping up with the newest meta was really tough if you dont spend money.
This is fantastic, Rarran, keep up your great vids!
Loving the new content with video essay style formats. Keep doing what you enjoy, you’re good at it
Played 5 games from the new expansion, yes the game got worse or changed so much that I cant enjoy it anymore
Although I've never played any game from the franchise before, FOUR titles stand out to me in the best of ways on the trailers alone.
Scholomance Academy (brings back the fun and adventure of magic schools)
Kobolds & Catacombs (it gave me a strong D&D vibe and it's not JUST because Matt Mercer provided the song)
Darkmoon Faire (I loved the idea of an otherworldly amusement park)
Forged in the Barrens (FOR THE HOOOOOORDE)
hearthstone owes its success primarily because it is a functionally simplified magic the gathering copy that looked shiny and new, released with good IP world of warcraft along with the fact that blizzard had good branding, and reputation at the time.
it was also helped by the fact that wizards of the coast is terrible at online or computerized mtg for the longest time.
in a world where there was a competent mtg online program that was available on mobile at or before hearthstone release and pricing was similar hearthstone would not be nearly as big as it is.
After the shiny and new honeymoon period people just realized that hearthstone is a fun game to watch or to play on the toilet but ultimately with greener pastures out there mtg arena, legneds of rune terra hearthstone just shows all its flaws
Dude , I play since the very beginning of the game . I loved the game , classic and the next expansions were amazing . The feeling was there everytime I queued for a game .
In my opinion , this game died when cards like Zephyr were made ...
I always played fun decks , never the OP ones ... and when Zephyr came to the game , turned fun decks unplayable . If you want to win games , you have to play the OP meta decks even if you don't like them because otherwise you will lose every single game .
For me , as one of the oldest players of this game , the only game mode I actually enjoyed in the past few years was battlegrounds , and with a lot of sadness I'm telling you it isn't fun anymore , the last expansion was a total disaster ...
Man i loved my reno quest dk priest deck. That thing was nasty and so so fun.
Rarran,
I might may have said this before; your insight into hearthstone videos is fantastic.
The editing, narration, and over all content yield some of the very best Hearthstone videos on the platform.
You put ALOT of effort into your content and it clearly shows.
Your style could definitely lend to content outside Hearthstone as well.
Another really awesome quality VOD. Twas a great watch!
I started playing in 2015 but quit because:
1) 3 expansions a year and no more adventures was way too expensive, I didn’t stick around to see the rewards track improve. At it’s release it was another step towards a mind bogglingly stingy reward system
2) the meta became way too fast and control decks and slow decks became obsolete
3) insane powercreep
Also the insane uptick in cards with mechanics like discover that decided games by high amounts of rng rather than skill. So many discover cards. You can’t play around that
Your videos got me back into hearthstone, but mostly playing classic now. Been playing on and off since classic and seeing all your videos just gave me the nostalgia bug.
I feel like you kind of glossed over the fact that over the years hearthstone has also amassed a huge free single player, like dungeon runs, boom labs, and book of heroes to name a few, all of which I feel like still hold up today
single player content was pretty great, it was kinda pay to win at the very start since initially you couldn't craft adventure cards if you didn't own the wing they were from. nowadays they are so lazy with the single-player stuff, most of the time they just reuse the same dungeon run format that remains virtually unchanged since 2017
God imagine a hearthstone without "*Discover* a mage spell."
**laughs in suicidal memories**
My favorite expansion was witchwood, cause I've got Tess Greymane and the idea of playing thief rogue is so cool I play it even now
Hearthstone:
wipe all creatures, wipe all creatures, wipe all creatures, wipe all creatures, legendary, legendary, legendary, legendary, legendary.
gg.
This is EXACTLY the kind of video I wanted to see - how player opinions about the game have changed over the years, and why. Thank you so much for researching and documenting these things! It's so awesome to simultaneously relive the various eras of the game I loved and played for so many years, while also gaining new perspective about those times.
That being said, it's very refreshing to have content talking about the good old days of Hearthstone without necessarily talking about it in the context of where the game is today and how it could or should be different - just talking about how it was, _period._ Hearthstone has a bit of a legacy at this point as a game that accompanied many of us throughout important parts of our lives. I traveled around and lived in a dozen different states between 2015 and 2020, and spent a lot of that living in a vehicle where it was just easier to be on my phone instead of a computer. Hearthstone was my main source of entertainment for a lot of that, and even when I did stay indoors I would just keep playing it on my computer. I have loads of memories of playing my favorite decks, playing Handbuff pally in Ohio, getting on my laptop in McDonald's during Witchwood and Boomsday because my phone wasn't working....like you said, not the highest point by any means, but it sure was memorable. And it got better - I played Dragon Warrior during Descent of Dragons on a sign holding job, IMO that was one of the best years....Rise of Shadows, and Tombs of Terror was _incredible..._
I definitely love these broader discussions, but I would still love some deep dives into very specific content or individual expansions.