Dean Ayala’s Hearthstone Q&A Recap #41 - Classic Format Potentially Changing to Rotating, Wild-only Card Set Idea, & More
Hearthstone’s Core Set
- There are two goals for a Core Set:
- Teach Hearthstone to new players as they level up.
- Give players tools for archetypes built in expansions.
- The teams are currently quite happy with Tradeable.
- We don’t see Tradeable in the Core set because they don’t want too much of it in Standard.
- Cards should be run because they are desired for their entire effect, not just to draw other cards.
- Gallon wouldn’t be surprised to see Tradeable in the Core set in the future.
Year of the Hydra
- All the expanions this year are standalone - no year-long story.
- Don’t expect any hints about the new expansions.
- The nerf-reverts that happened for newly-sent-to-wild cards are easy to explain:
- Revert a card nerf if it would be good for the health of the game.
- Keep a card nerfed if it would be a negative.
Hearthstone Cosmetics
- The golden upgrade feature is coming, timing is to be determined.
Battle.net Regions
- If they could, they would let players transfer their accounts across regions.
- The game is setup in a way that makes it „extremely intensive“ on the development side of things if they were to attempt such a feat.
- It is unlikely we’ll see region transfers.
Classic Hearthstone
- There has been a real consideration about changing the Classic format to being a rotating sets format.
Duels & Battlegrounds
- Duels is still in active development.
- Duels has no new big-ticket features in the near to mid term.
- They do want to fix intentional disconnects in Hearthstone Battlegrounds. It is unlikely we’ll see anything soon though as the team is busy with other things.
- Battlegrounds will be receiving a homescreen UI overhaul in the future.
- One thing Battlegrounds will get in the future is a place to see important news in-game.
- Some folks on the team want to do Tavern Brawls for Battlegrounds.
- That needs to be weighed against other features like progression, tournaments, duos, and home screen updates.
- They also need to make sure enough design space exists before committing to building the tech.
Hearthstone’s Shop
- All products they put in the shop are an experiment at the end of the day.
- They try their best to guess what players would be happy paying for a particular product.
Hearthstone’s Future
- Dean could see them doing another card like Toki, Time-Tinker. Time travel is certain an ongoing theme in Warcraft - there’s a whole dragonflight for it!
- The class ban limited-time feature that Dean has talked about in the past is still something he wants to do.
- It is not currently on the schedule but there’s a good chance we’ll see it.
- Elevator Pitch regarding Wild:
- They make a new set of cards that is made up of old Hearthstone favourites and some new wild-only cards.
- This becomes the pack to buy if you want to play wild.
- There are some ideas being considered, early in the process, but they like it as a starting concept.
Dean „Iksar“ Ayala
- Since his title change, he’s been focusing less on design and more long-term goals and thinking about leadership.
- Dean will be having dinner this evening with Ben Brode.