Dean Ayala’s Hearthstone Q&A #33 - Dual-Class Arena Returns, Different Modes in Battlegrounds, In-Game Tournaments, NAXX OUT?
Current Development
- Content team is working on Battlegrounds with work on cosmetics and „light progression“.
- They are in early prototype stages for different modes in Battlegrounds. Nothing concrete.
- They would like to make in-game tournaments for Battlegrounds but in a way that would let it translate to other modes.
- Nothing above is set in stone.
- The team wants to exceed expectations for what expansions are instead of just meeting expectations.
- The next medium-big thing is a work in progress. The next big-big thing is being planned.
Dual Class Arena
- We can expect dual-class arena to return.
- More details „soonish“.
Battlegrounds Perks
- Its possible that pre-orders for expansions might see the loss of Battlegrounds perks being included.
- Originally, they thought that folks spending the money on the pre-orders should get significant value so putting perks in was maybe a good thing.
- Changing pre-orders to a constructed-only product makes sense when they are doing to do Battlegrounds-specific business models.
Mercenaries
- There are some plans to make adjustments to quests to better align with Mercenaries.
- Overall they are happy with the end result of progression. Tavern Pass experience was supposed to just be a small added bonus.
Progression
- If they were to change the way leveling works for classes, Dean would want to find a way to make the progression infinite, or close enough.
Releases
- New content releases in Hearthstone may make some team members a bit nervous, but the team has been finished with it for some time at that point which makes it more exciting.
- „The thing you work on is finally in the wild! People are playing it! Just a great feeling“
- The expansion team used to go out to dinner after a big release, but the pandemic hurt that. Now they’ll play games and eat Pizza sometimes.
- The whole team is so big that they can rarely do things as a group anymore. Its mostly the sub-teams finding ways to celebrate.
Future
- Garona, Blackhand and Ogrim Doomhammer are „too big and awesome to not use in the future“.
- There will be a Stormwind mini-set but they aren’t ready to say when.
- Recently they have been prototyping a graveyard system, but that isn’t the first time they’ve done it.
- To add a graveyard, they have to be very excited about a new space for cards. They haven’t achieved that yet.
- The only expansion they’ve talked about potentially revisiting is Naxxramas. Its old enough, and iconic, to be exciting again. It didn’t happen.
AMAs
„Do you every dodge good questions because they’re touching a sensitive subject or scary subject?“
- Yes and No.
- Dean believes a trick to running a good AMA is to be open to answering anything.
- You shouldn’t avoid hot topics in the community, that’s a problem.
- Dean will sometimes avoid questions that aren’t a hot topic and would require significant amounts of research to answer.
- Dean only has an hour to do this, he wants to be efficient with his time.
Dean
- Thinks it would be a great idea to do something with Arthas again.
- If Dean could blink a sandbox mode into existence immediately, he would. Such a thing is a big time vs value issue.
- Orcs in Mercenaries all the way.
- Dean loves the look of golden cards where they have the colored class borders. (Example below).
- „I hadn’t thought of just doing it for future sets, not a bad idea I will bring it up with our art director.“
This is not official. This is not planned to happen. This a fan mockup.
Screenshot is from a video uploaded to Feno’s Twitter. Original source is Suwa on Reddit (thanks Jay8Kay)
Full Transcript of Iksar’s Q&A #33
Und wie gehabt kann man die ausführlichen Fragen/Antworten hier nachlesen: