Hearthstone

slippery said:

Interesting. This probably should have been the case a long long time ago

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Hall of Fame
Three Classic cards are being rotated when the Year of the Dragon begins: Doomguard, Naturalize, and Divine Favor. As per usual, these cards will eventually be replaced with new Classic cards a la Tome of Intellect or Call of the Void.

Donais explains that Doomguard has basically just been around for a long time at a power level that’s the team thinks is a bit too much. The same can probably be inferred with Divine Favor. For Naturalize, however, Donais explains that it’s a matter of class identity. Druid is meant to be weak at hard removal and Naturalize breaks that class identity. It also just happens to be very powerful.
For the first time ever, Blizzard is also rotating two set cards: Baku the Mooneater and Genn Greymanefrom The Witchwood! These two cards have helped Odd and Even decks to dominate the meta and it seems like Blizzard is finally ready to let other decks shine.

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Hearthstone’s Year of the Raven is out and the Year of the Dragon is in. Blizzard’s third-ever themed year is set to arrive shortly and with it comes a slew of improvements and changes. For one, it will be the first ever year in which all three expansions will continue to tell the same story. The first expansion will lead to the second which will conclude with the third.
It’s a completely new approach to Hearthstone expansions. Before that, three sets from the same year weren’t really related. A lot of the time, they didn’t even have that much of a backstory. This change should keep the entire Year of the Dragon more consistent and interesting.

We spoke with Principle Game Designer Mike Donais this week to discuss some of the changes. “One of the important things is that each expansion still has a really cool strong theme on its own,” he tells us. “Having a narrative that goes through it should help everyone feel like they understand what’s going on.”
He imagines players will be more attached and invested as to what’s going on throughout the year as a result.

Here are the hints for the upcoming Year of the Dragon expansions:

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Arena fans have something to look forward to as well! While the game still has bucket systems and the developers will still be making small adjustments as needed, Blizzard is introducing Arena seasons. Arena seasons are two months long and will rotate which sets are available! Tired of a certain removal spell? Maybe next season it won’t be available! Do you like a certain class, but it’s not that great in the current meta? Maybe it will become Tier 1 with a different set of expansions!

Donais says that the biggest reason the development team made this change was just to give players something fresh halfway through the expansion. It also has the side effect of helping hardcore Arena players while not off-putting more casual fans.

“There’s no downside, it’s just upside,” he says. “It’s not that hard for us to do it, so we should do it.”

Arena wins will also start counting towards Golden Hero Portraits once the update goes live. Hearthstone will not be updating these retroactively, however, which means that any wins prior to the update won’t count.

The first Arena rotation after expansion released will contain: Basic, Classic, Curse of Naxxramas, Whispers of the Old Gods, Mean Streets of Gadgetzan, The Witchwood, and the first expansion of this year.

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