Was Five Weeks of Naxxramas Too Long?

T.J. Sprague: Twitter

It has been a little over fiveweeks since the first wing of Naxxramas has launched which also means each wing is now open to the public. The Curse of Naxxramas is a great first expansion pack for Hearthstone. It is great to throw a few wrenches into the metagame to see what players come up with and the heroic mode bosses are both challenging and entertaining. For the most part I am very satisfied with new set of cards but is releasing five wings on a week by week basis really the right way to go? Well I don’t believe there is a simple yes or no answer to this and it is somewhere in the middle.

Each week the players were introduced to a new wing which also came with a small set of cards. This led to different play styles and decks that would swiftly change every week. Throughout the weeks I saw many interesting ways to use the cards given to us and it was just fun experimenting with an expanding card pool each week. We were given personal time with each card since we only had about five new cards to work with instead of thirty at one time. Thirty cards at once could have been very overwhelming.

I was also extremely hyped during the release of Naxxramas. I have played Hearthstone since closed beta and playing with the same set of cards for over half a year eventually became dull. Logging in each weekto a handful of new cards was a lot of fun. It extended my excitement for the expansion. Each Wednesday after each new wing was like Christmas morning and I got to play with my brand new toys. It’s an easy way to up the players’ excitement but it also effective one.

However, on the other hand the cards of Curse of Naxxramas didn’t always work in many small releases. These cards are an ensemble. They can be interesting on their own but they benefit most when they are with other cards in the set. For example we were given the card Dancing Swords when the Military Quarter was released on the third week of Naxxramas. It is a minion card that costs three mana with four attack and hit points, which is a really high value for its mana cost. However the card’s deathrattle causes the opponent to draw a card. This synergizes with the card Wailing Soul which would silence Dancing Swords. Wailing Soul was released during the Construct Quarter which was available a week after the Military Quarter. Players had to wait in order to the most out of the cards given to them.

The segmented wings also brought up a few balance issues. The cards from early wings heavily benefited some already strong decks over others. The infamous zoo warlock deck dominated the ladder before Naxxramas was released and its reign only strengthened after completing the Arachnid Quarter. The card Nerubian Egg has proven to be a strong addition to the zoo warlock deck. Cards that cleared boards like Explosive Trap and Flamestrike were the bane of this aggro deck but Nerubian Egg is board clear insurance. While the zoo warlock player gets their board cleared they can still get one or two 4/4 Nerubian minions.

Haunted Creeper was also released during the first wing which gives the player up to three minions for two mana. This synergizes well with Knife Juggler, a key component in the zoo warlock deck. This aggro warlock domination did not slow down until Unstable Ghoul and Sludge Belcher were released the following week in the Plague Quarter.

Each week also introduced up to two new class cards. This caused a minor problem. The rogue and druid classes were given more cards to use because their class cards were introduced first Naxxramas’s release schedule. The paladin class was the last to receive their unique card which was a small hindrance to mid-range or aggro paladin decks. It may have been better if all class cards were released at once.

Overall I enjoyed the multi-week release of the Curse of Naxxramas but it also proved to be problematic. Assuming Blizzard does a similar expansion release in the future there are a handful of things worth changing. I think five weeks to release thirty cards is a little bit too long. Getting about five cards a week was exciting but I think getting a larger pool of cards each week over fewer weeks might have been better. There wasn’t much to experiment with when we only got about five cards at a time but maybe a three week launch might have been better. I would have enjoyed one week of eleven cards, with the following week releasing all nine class cards, and a third week featuring the final ten cards.

I don’t think the Naxxramas release was perfect but Blizzard is on to something. What do you think? Should cards be released at once or gradually over a few weeks? Let me know in the comments.