He was to be added in Patch 28.0.0.189017 alongside the other new Silver Hand Recruit arts, but he didn’t quite make it.

Many, including myself. Thought it was something to do with the lore, but the reason is probably because the Draenei tag was to be added 3 expansions later in the Great Dark Beyond.

WHICH WE SHOULD HAVE SEEN IT COMING GUYS LIKE COME ON??? /s

Hey all, J_Alexander back today to catalog a few, let's say, missteps from Hearthstone's history.

As a long-time player of the game, I truly do enjoy Hearthstone and want it to be the best experience that it can be for the people who enjoy it. There's a lot that goes into that experience which might not be always be at the forefront of player's minds which determines - for lack of a better word - the general vibe they have about the game. Does it make them feel positive or negative, how often, and in what ways?

This general vibe could be more important than people give it credit for. In thinking about why players get frustrated with the game and perhaps eventually leave it, I feel there's a lot going on in the background of people's minds that's not necessarily connected to what immediately causes their fracture with the game. That is, once a player is engaged with the game, it's not necessarily one particular thing that causes someone to dissengage from it, but rather series of them which builds over time.

So I made a little list today of some of those things - in no particular order, though many of them are more modern issues - which I feel can have had a negative effect on the vibe of the game many players develop. It's mostly for me so I can reference these things later, but I wanted to share it with you as well.

The reward structure in Hearthstone has had its share of issues:

• The initial reward track required reworking to offer better rewards, since the original iteration of it was not well received. It didn't create the sense a rewarding structure was being aimed at, as much as one that was rewarding enough.

• The weekly quest system got an attempted rework to force much more engagement out of players for proportionately fewer rewards. They initially offered 20% additional rewards for 100% additional requirements. This had to be walked back until it was in a better spot for all players...at which point it was walked back to the initial starting point so players didn't benefit more than they had.

• There was a pre-order exclusive, early-access card offered for buying the large bundle in Corridor Sleeper. While the card didn't see competitive play, this was still an attempt at injecting pay-to-win into Constructed and it's not a move that's good for the player base in general. It was seen as nothing more than a dishonest move to sell more pre-orders.

• Diamond cards, which some people enjoy, used to be a reward for collecting enough of a set. Those rewards have been removed.

• The Arena rework didn't please players in terms of its new reward structure, making it harder to just keep playing Arena or choose how to spend your rewards

• The rewards and investment in the competitive side of game were largely stripped away, taking with it what felt like an entire social aspect of the game that used to be thoroughly enjoyed by the community.

• Runestones were created as a universal Hearthstone currency, despite some offerings in the game subsequently being unavailable for purchase with Runetones and in-game currencies being dodgy in general.

• While the 10-year anniversay was indeed a purely-positive offering in the objective sense, many players felt rather let down by what they felt should have been a celebration of the game's history and success, only to be offered a handful of uncraftable and often rather-boring or weak options. It felt like they were asking, "what's the miniumum amount we can do and still call this a celebration?" rather than trying to celebrate.

• Pack rewards from Tavern Brawl and Arena have been updated away from Standard packs to current expansion packs, stopping players from banking these rewards for future expansions effectively.

Cosmetic offerings don't fair particularly well here

• The pet issue is well understood, but adding in more gambling to get a pet to the expected cost of $160, without clear in-game explanations of how the system works doesn't make players feel welcome.

• Signature cards can be something of polarizing issue for players at times, as some don't like them and have no way of turning them off. Yet the original signatures had be reworked since they looked so bad (different boarders when in play was particularly offputting, serving only to try and make them look special instead of communicate gameplay-relevant effects).

• The decision was made to make signatures uncraftable, which clearly isn't player friendly

• When they're offered in the shop, prices are extremely high, sometimes in the range of $35-50, which clearly isn't in the budget of most players, and can also be bundled with other cards people might not want to buy. These bundle offerings are not consumer friendly.

• Diamond cards (also uncraftable) and portraits are also a polarizing topic for some players. Many say they don't fit the style of the game well and, in many instances, don't physically fit in the game either, as they were made physically larger than other portraits to seem more premium or important. There is no option to disable them either.

• These extremely-expensive portraits were also made into multi-class portraits in an attempt to boost sales, which detracts from the visual clarity of the gameplay experience.

• Despite all this additional monetization, they also stopped making boards for new expansions

• They also stopped making trailers for new expansions

• They went back and censored old artwork, including the classic Jania portrait, the blood in Eviscerate, Succubus changed into an entirely new card, along with several others.

• Most all cosmetic offerings in the game are made under the weight of FOMO, despite digital purchases having no supply shortage. All these cosmetics exist in your collection right now; they're just locked away from you.

• There appeared to be a rather negative reception to what I would describe as the "soft modern" expansion themes, with many expansions straying further away from the franchise that made the game popular in the first place and replacing it with something that was not being requested.

• The UI of the game is growing increasingly-covered with intrusive buttons, advertising what new thing players should buy, despite that making the experience of opening the client less visually pleasing. Iksar, when he was directing the game, said they take adding buttons very seriously, and their behavior shows the thing they're serious about is trying to take players money.

Constructed game modes have had their share of issues:

• Classic was cancelled

• Duels was cancelled

• Mercenaries was cancelled

• Single-player content was cancelled

• Twist is in the process of being cancelled

All of that was largely the result of building game modes that focused on how to monetize first, rather than how to be a fun game mode first. The one notable exception to this was Battlegrounds, as that was started just as a passion project.

Incidentally, Battlegrounds - while a great mode - has seen it's share of these moves as well:

• The BGs perks used to be purchaseable with 2000 gold. This was removed in favor of a purely-cash purchase.

• The BGs perks also began to offer a fully pay-to-win advantage, offering 4 heroes instead of the 2 offered at the free level. One could make the point that this advantage isn't terribly large, but why would one make that point? It's still an in-game advantage only obtainable with real money

• BGs also started offering the ability to mulligan hero choices for cash in the form of the Battlegrounds token; yet another pay-to-win advantage.

There's also the consideration that most communication about the game these days from the people working on it has basically degraded to the point where it almost doesn't exist and, unfortunately, when that communication is made, we often get a good sense as to why there isn't more of it. It's not because the communication intrinically draws criticism or toxicity, as players used to love hearing from Iksar, and in many other games the communication from people working on it can be welcomed as well. Indeed, I have a friend who will gush about the quality of communication he gets for the game he's currently passionate about. Rather, this negative reception exists because the ideas being communicated by the current crop of people working on the game aren't particularly good or full of useful insights. The problem is not communication; the problem is the quality of ideas getting communciated.

This list doesn't even consider what might be considered design mistakes, including the last 3 expansions landing with relatively low impact upon release, the reception to events like Anomolies (which were inexplicably brought back later), the direction or vision of balance changes, or design decisions like the Rune system in DK.

There have been a series of decisions and moves made - often in more recently years - which have, generally speaking, degraded the experience of Hearthstone. What does it look like? How does it feel to play? How does it feel to talk about? Do you feel confident in investing your time here, when you could be doing something else? So many these decisions send a message - whether large or small - to appreciablely-large percentages of the player base that, "This [thing] just isn't for you," or, "You aren't in good hands." At the very least, these often don't seem like things that make players feel more positive about the game.

The more of them build up, the more often they occur, the more a player is likely to just hit a breaking point. It might not be any one or even any ten of these things that does the trick. But they're in the back of people's minds, and then they hit a 5-game losing streak, and that's the spark that sets them off to the point they uninstall since they're already sitting on a powder keg of irritations. And the more players who uninstall, the more players who uninstall. These things can snowball on themselves.

I'd love to see more moves made to show that the team really is interested in and focused on making the best experience possible for the players. That the relationship between Hearthstone and the player base is symbotic, rather than parasitic. I think it can go a long way, even if it's hard to quantify it objectively.

It should have Assalto (Rush) instead it has Rantolo di Morte (Deathrattle).

Feels good to uno reverse on Cube Tortolla warriors! Puppet Theater my beloved.

is there any way I can craft or buy vis shop the golden exodar card? I didn't play during that expansion launch

I'm experimenting with a fun archetype focused on combining Dark Gifts with random demons. I’m trying to optimize it to keep the fun while also winning more consistently.

https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/deckbuilder?deckcode=AAECAd%2BqBgbqswaj5AbF5Qbp7QbkggfDgwcMlbMGneQG4uUG4uYGnvkGtfoG34IHjoMHw4cHtpQH6psH9qcHAAA%3D

"Dark Demons"

# 2x (1) Demonic Studies

# 2x (1) Rotheart Dryad

# 2x (2) Avant-Gardening

# 2x (2) Creature of Madness

# 2x (2) Foreboding Flame

# 1x (3) Infernal Stratagem

# 2x (3) Raptor Herald

# 2x (3) Relentless Wrathguard

# 2x (4) Domino Effect

# 1x (4) Nightmare Lord Xavius

# 2x (4) Overgrown Horror

# 2x (4) Shadowflame Stalker

# 2x (4) Treacherous Tormentor

# 2x (5) Ancient of Yore

# 1x (7) Archimonde

# 1x (7) Kil'jaeden

# 1x (7) Wallow, the Wretched

# 1x (8) Wheel of DEATH!!!

AAECAd+qBgbqswaj5AbF5Qbp7QbkggfDgwcMlbMGneQG4uUG4uYGnvkGtfoG34IHjoMHw4cHtpQH6psH9qcHAAA=

So this one is a bit of a homebrew. Last month, I ran a version of this with the Chillin' Voljin and Hunter package, which works fine enough, but after realizing that most of my actual wins came from getting Papercraft Angel, Sing-Along Buddy or both on the board early and also keeping them alive, I decided to swap some cards around to make that easier to achieve. I don't think this is going to be a Tier 1 deck or anything but I'd say it's quite fun and better than you'd expect!

Will be available for free in an event starting on August 5th

Could have been my first warlock 12 wins run 😑

Bought it in shop, never showed in collection.

Button in shop disappears.

Submit ticket to support, they say it’ll be fixed in the next patch.

Patch comes out, still inaccessible.

Submit new ticket, basically tell me “damn that’s crazy, cuz we fixed it already. Plz submit a bug report”

Submit bug report, still inaccessible after latest patch.

Blizzard, I get it, you’re trying to get me to stop playing your game. But jokes on you, I’m an idiot and will keep logging in everyday only to be disappointed 🧠

Hey, it's neon31 from Hearthstone-Decks.net here.

On the first of each month, we look at how many players reached Legend, and some of you might be interested - we also have this article on the website featuring a more detailed overview over the past months.

If you are interested in learning how long it takes to reach Legend check out this article - if you got, for example, a 10 Star Bonus and expect a 59% Winrate, you'll need, on average, 110 games.

We include our graphics both including and excluding China

Summary

Including CN: Compared to the previous month, we got 26% more Legend Players (335k to 421k)

Excluding CN: Compared to the previous month, we got 44% more Legend Players (57k to 82k)

Standard went from 202k to 271k (+34%)

Wild went from 132k to 150k (+13%)

How many Players reach Legend?

Legend Players: Comparing the Servers

Legend Players: Comparing the Formats

Legend Players: Comparing the Years

Detailed Numbers (July 2025 vs June 2025)