Though the bad state of the Standard meta definitely contributed to the new game mode’s popularity, the crisp feeling of Battlegrounds attracted many players. From the strategy of building your army to adapting to randomness, Battlegrounds ignited something. It may not look like its autobattler competitors, but it carries over all the feelings one gives, with a strong Hearthstone flavor. In the end, however, Team 5 delivered an impressive product in Hearthstone Battlegrounds. It had to forego many of the visual aspects people had become familiar with in autobattlers. The explosive rise in popularity of autobattlers challenged the Hearthstone development team to think: what would a Hearthstone autobattler be like? Evidently, it couldn’t look anything like Teamfight Tactics or Dota Underlords, which have 3D models hopping across a chess-like board. For years, a portion of the community had hoped for the introduction tournament mode, but that dream was crushed at the end of 2018, when Blizzard announced they had shelved the development of said mode indefinitely.īut through quick adaptation, Blizzard found their new game mode after all. But for years Hearthstone had to make do with Standard, Wild, Arena and the Tavern Brawl, the latter of which was rather trivial to returning players. In Magic: the Gathering, the physical version, there are a wide variety of different formats, all supported by the developer Wizards of the Coast. Hearthstone hadn’t gotten a fully new game mode since the Tavern Brawls were introduced in 2015, and it was high time for one. And though the balance team was frustratingly absent after their Doom in the Tomb event gave birth to an obnoxious Shaman deck, overall the meta was kept in check pretty well.
Hearthstone expansion 2019 trial#
It was a matter of trial and error, of course. It’s a change of pace welcomed by the vast majority of the active Hearthstone community.īut it’s not just in-game events that kept the Hearthstone meta exciting-Team 5 continued to take a proactive stance towards card balance. To top it off, each expansion had its own single player adventure as well.
The final expansion, Descent of Dragons, will be followed by more cards early 2020. Saviors of Uldum, the second expansion of the year, was followed by Doom in the Tomb, bringing back twenty-three cards from Wild to Standard. With eighteen old cards being buffed and a whole new legendary being introduced, the meta was shaken up drastically. Two months after 2019’s first expansion, Rise of Shadows, Blizzard held the Rise of the Mech event. Normally, there was a four month dry period between expansions, often spiced up only by balance changes. There being a single story told across the three expansions added an enjoyable narrative, but the developers excelled between the expansions. The rate at which expansions were produced stayed the same, with three expansions being released across twelve months.
In 2019, players simply got more content. So when members core to Team 5 like Ben Brode, Yong Woo and Hamilton Chu left Blizzard in April 2018, the ramifications of that change became fully clear a year later. The expansion after that one is in the middle of development, and the one after that just enters the conceptual stage.
Once an expansion releases, the next one is almost completed entirely. While the third set of each year is the strongest, Blizzard can justify the move by ensuring that it spends the least amount of time in Standard rotation, since it will be rotating to Wild at the same time as Rise of Shadows and Saviors of Uldum.But how was the year for Hearthstone itself? Let’s recap what happened to the game, and look at the journey its competitive scene enjoyed this year as well.Īs stated by members of the team themselves, the Team 5, as the Hearthstone development team is referred to internally, generally is ahead of the live game state by about a year. The idea of releasing less powerful sets in the first two expansions of each year is a part of the Hearthstone design philosophy and is encouraged because of the Standard rotation of cards. Without a doubt, Decent of Dragons represents some of the most powerful cards released in Hearthstone, possibly rivaling the power levels of Death Knights from The Frozen Throne, which shifts how we evaluate an expansion compared to the earliest of 2019. Readers should know that it can be difficult to review this third set in the year, more so than the two previous from 2019, because Blizzard has clearly stated that their strategy is to launch powerful expansions at the end of each year. Blizzard has released its latest Hearthstoneexpansion, Decent of Dragons, wrapping up its year-long story in the Year of the Dragon.
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