Op Ed: Updating Hearthstone

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Hi all, Lowenhigh here for an opinion editorial on something that will hopefully change the state of the way Hearthstone is updated in the future.

What you need to know about me first:

TL:DR – I am a rabid fan of Blizzard gaming, and of gaming in general! Expand the section below for the specifics… my “street creds,” if you will….

[su_spoiler title=”About Me: The longer version” style=”fancy” icon=”plus-circle” anchor=”magecommons”]I started with Blizzard games with the Lost Vikings in 1995, but I truly was hooked when I started playing Warcraft 3 since about 2000. I still remember how my 2 friends and I would rotate around our 1 computer that we owned for warcraft 3 games. 1 played, the other 2 watched. We all started World of Warcraft when it came out, and I played for about 8 years, from 2004 on the day of its release to after I finished college. I was a part of leadership in guilds for about 5 of those years, and even led my own for two or three. I saw everything that you could see in that game, and was ranked in the top of the world in PvP (Called Arena) and stood among the top 5% of PvE players with all of the best gear and stats (I even consistently held the highest marks on our guild’s damage meters!). I even got my wife to play, and because of my elite skill set I developed over that many years of hardcore gaming, she got really good too! Hah![/su_spoiler]

Why does this matter? Because I became intimately familiar with the way Blizzard works, responds to their fans/customers, and got used to the way they update their games! I “Grew up” with Blizzard, and watch video gaming grow into the mega-giant e-sport scene that it is today from the infant baby it used to be!

So, I have a buddy that I talk with a few times a week that works at Blizzard, and he says the same thing you might hear from a blue post responding to a passionate fan expressing frustration on any of Blizzard’s forums. We are always told that the team for X game is working hard on the game, and that you can’t see it yet, but that a ton of hard work is going on behind the scenes to make new updates happen. You will see it eventually, and be super happy OK?

As rabid fans of Blizzard games, we are VERY passionate, and often vocal (And sometimes much too critical) on the way Blizzard works. “OMG you nerfed my favorite class… so angry!!!” and “X class has been overpowered forever, PLZ nerf!!!” are the substance for about 1/3 of all posts that go up on forums. But it still takes a month or two before the changes they implement are put into effect.

I was one that accepted the party line of “It takes a ton of work to implement balance changes, including tons of testing and data.” After all, Blizzard boasts some of the most polished and complete games in existence in their categories. Then, the gaming world showed some powerful evolution. I moved on and played other games. Guild Wars 2, as a great example, is a free to play game that includes meaningful updates every 2 weeks, like clockwork! League of Legends, the biggest Free to Play game out there, includes meaningful updates every 3-4 weeks WITH a new hero AND balance changes. Rift, another F2P game, is releasing a NEW instance every week (For you non-MMO players out there, an instance is a new dungeon that you can play with your buddies for hours of fun and new items for your character).

The landscape is evolving. How much longer will we as fans tolerate months in between meaningful updates, and how long will we tolerate a lack of information coming from developers on our beloved Hearthstone? Elder Scrolls Online is another anticipated MMO in Beta now, and the developers release a new “Ask Us Anything” thread every week. How awesome would it be if HS devs answered 10-15 questions about Hearthstone every week? Communication is a 2-way street. They announce that they read their forums every day (And for a fact, they read IHEARTHU.COM’s forums every day too). I don’t think I could go very far to find others that agree that they need to improve their communication skills like the other games I’ve mentioned. Nowadays, great communication with fans need to come standard.

How hard is it to change Mind Control from 8 to 10 mana? They announced many upcoming changes at Blizzcon a couple months ago, and we haven’t seen any of them yet. Why not? That’s a question that I cannot answer for certain, but I do know that it is an unacceptable practice to continue in this way for months while other games are rapidly increasing their fan base with great communication and regular updates (Again, I understand it’s Beta, but Blizz still has to evolve!). Some updates are more complicated than others, which is why I suggest the following:

Weekly, Blizzard should:

• Host an “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) of at least 15 questions on Reddit or somewhere that is picked up by all Hearthstone fansites and hosted on Battle.Net to give HS fans something to chew on and look forward to.

Monthly, Blizzard should:

• Balance cards (Like the Battle Rage change that happened a few months ago, or the Mind Control change they mentioned at Blizzcon).
• Turn awful cards into decent cards
• Give us stats on the best players, and the NUMBERS! (Like the average representation of each class in Arena, top Arena picks, etc.

Quarterly, Blizzard should:

• Add NEW cards (At least 2-5 new cards for each class and for neutrals)
• Be prepared to push more complicated game updates through (Like balancing card selection in Arena)
• Address the State of the Game and intended changes to look for (Like they did at Blizzcon with the Hearthstone panel)
• Give us NEW things to buy in the Hearthstone store. We are rabid fans – we don’t mind giving Blizzard money for cool stuff!

Every 6 Months, Blizzard should:

• Add NEW game modes (2v2, “Adventure mode” that they have hinted at, etc.)
• Add new features, like detailed personal stats, each deck’s performance, review your last 10 Arena runs or matches, save replays, add official Twitch.TV functionality, etc.

Every Year, Blizzard should:

• Reflect back on where Hearthstone has gone, where they intend to bring it in the future, what worked, what didn’t work, and other “visionary” things
• Add an expansion with many more cards

It isn’t ok anymore for a company to keep fans in the dark between game updates, or to announce balance changes that aren’t put in place for months. Learning about Rexxar, the Hunter is cool and all, but if you don’t give us more meat to chew on in the meantime like balance changes, AMA’s, etc… Big whoop! Granted, it is Beta, but other new and top-tier games have shown that it is possible to update patches frequently and/or keep in amazing communication with their player base, and still have a stable and enjoyable game!

Players are starting to value routine changes to their games as much as seeing everything “in balance” and running smoothly. Great communication with fans is directly responsible for more game sales, positive buzz, and greater marketing success.

Are there other Blizzard fans like me out there reading this?

Would you love to see a guaranteed patch at least once per month that included updates to Hearthstone? Would that increase the amount of time you spent on Hearthstone, would that make you more vocal in the forums, and would that increase your enjoyment of the game? And very importantly, would that make the Hearthstone team at Blizzard much bigger heroes than they are for creating a game that we all enjoy so much already?

My opinion is yes on all counts. What do you say? Use the comment section below, or the forum thread - they are one in the same, and let us know!

Thanks for reading!