Blizzard is embroiled in the biggest scandal in its history, but its games go on and we were hoping this new Hearthstone expansion would help a little bit, who work really hard and seriously in the company because of course there are still very talented people there People . Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case as we think United in Stormwind is one of the worst expansions in the game’s history (possibly the worst).
There are several problems, but the most serious one has its own name: missions. All classes receive a new mission, which is divided into three phases. Each level offers a reward that culminates in a 5 mana 7/7 creature that has a tremendous effect upon entry. The wizard receives +3 magic damage permanently, the wizard transfers all damage that he himself inflicts to the opponent, the priest receives a 10 cost card that kills the opponent immediately (even if he never manages to get 10, to be able to use them) and so on with the rest of the classes.
The problem with these missions is that they are extremely powerful and can usually be completed in round 7 or 8, which at that point dictates victory. In addition to the missions, there are also several new victory conditions, such as the villain, who manages to repeatedly damage the opponent in a single round, or the demon hunter, who can cause more than 30 damage by a combination of cards in a single shift.
The result? At the moment there are practically only two types of decks: those that are trying to reach their win condition as quickly as possible (they generally do so on rounds 7 or 8, albeit many times before) and those that are messing around with this condition of. to fight victory, victory that ends the rival before with direct damage and minions. To be honest, there are almost no games that make it to the age of 10 right now as control archetype decks have proven useless in this meta as most decks have nothing (read: minions) to control .
Some matches get so absurd that players have to kill their own minions to form combos, as the opponent is not supposed to play them or, if he is playing them, is supposed to kill them himself. This lack of minion cards eliminates all types of player interactions with the board and also a lot of the game’s strategy, as the games are based on completing the objectives of their deck as quickly as possible without what the opponent is attaching much importance to. Hearthstone is a racing title at the moment, it is no longer a tactical card game, because whoever manages to reach his victory condition or his mission first wins.
We’re not talking about balancing or balancing issues, which used to be the most common expansion problems. There was always one or the other deck that was stronger than it should, that’s not the case. Okay, the priest is in critical condition, but there are strong decks in this set that are cleverly fun to play. The problem is that they are all so powerful, and require so little interaction between players and the board, that the games don’t end up being fun. On the contrary, it is frankly frustrating to see the opponent draw all of their cards in one turn, play a series of cards with 0 or 1 mana cost, and then kill the opponent without being able to do anything.
We know there may be people who enjoy the immense power of these combinations, but we don’t think this is the way to go, on the contrary, in our opinion it is the exact opposite of what Hearthstone needed. Adjustments will come in the coming weeks, but this time the problem seems to be in design and philosophy, not so much in a particular letter or class, and that leads us to believe that this situation will be quite difficult to resolve . .
We thought United were a breath of fresh air at Stormwind amid so much bad news plaguing Blizzard today. We were wrong.
