Category Archives: Hearthstone
Never the Straw You Want
I may be done with Hearthstone for good. At the very least, it has been more than a month since I last logged in. While my participation has ebbed and flowed over the last twelve (12!) years I have played, this time feels a bit different. I just… have no specific desire to log in again. The impetus is gone.
And I’m pretty sure it’s because of the Event quest changes.
When we talk about the “straw that broke the camel’s back,” we refer to a number of isolated causes that, over time, accumulate to the point of sudden failure. But what is often not addressed, is how… lame the very last one can be. I didn’t stop playing because of some Blizzard controversy (remember Hong Kong?), or reintroducing mechanics that the devs hate and whom consequently made bad on purpose, or leveraging terrible AI artwork in promotional material, or making sets intentionally weak as a power level reset while still charging full price, or introducing $158 pet gacha mechanics, or any of the multitude of other reasons. Hell, I didn’t even quit over the first disastrous quest overhaul.
Nah, the last straw for me was Blizzard getting too cute with the Event quests.
For context, Event Quests are an extra layer of Weekly/Daily quests that grant Event XP that moves you along a reward track. These Events last 4-5 weeks or so, and the rewards are usually free packs, hero portraits, and occasionally free epic/Legendary cards. Blizzard has actually stepped up the number of Events lately – or at least it felt that way – so in many respects, I should have been feeling grateful for the extra stuff. Instead, I felt worse.
Thing is, I used to be able to complete quests, including Event quests, while doing Battlegrounds. This was helpful for those time periods in which Standard was feeling boring, or perhaps I didn’t have all the Legendaries needed for a competitive deck, or just enjoyed Battlegrounds more at that time. These new quests have the “Traditional Modes” limiter, which means Standard or Wild only.
Also, I don’t know if you know this about me, but I’m something of an optimizer. If you tell me I need to either play 2000 minions OR 500 Day of Rebirth deathrattle minions in Ranked Standard, I’m going to try the latter. And it’s going to feel horrible, not the least because any deck filled with those specific kind of minions is going to lose, on account of them being non-competitive. So here I am, trashing my Rank by losing constantly with cards I barely get to play – as games don’t last long when you play bad cards – and I still have to play like 500 of them, all because some fucking black-hat psychologist thought it would maximize engagement. Fuck every bit of that.
“Just ignore the quest and play normally.” Hearthstone isn’t the only game I play, and I sometimes go days without playing at all. Without focusing specifically on completing the quest, including the specific game modes it requires, completion won’t actually happen naturally. “Events aren’t required for anything, just enjoy whatever rewards you can get at your level of engagement.” Missing rewards, which now sometimes includes Legendary cards in the final steps, feels worse than not having Events happening at all. It would be one thing if it were a hidden achievement, or unlocked just a new skin or whatever, but it’s a rather in-your-face tracking mechanism that pops up after every game.
It’s a straw. Individually immaterial. Completely harmless to anyone who still enjoys playing Hearthstone on a baseline level. I 100% recognize that, by all measures, I would have likely drifted further and further away from the game independent of any changes to Event quests or otherwise.
However… it’s the last fucking straw. Perhaps not the one I deserve, but the one I have right now.
Egregious
Hearthstone recently announced a new feature coming soon: pets! As in, little animated avatars that sit in the lower-left corner of the game board and do cute things and react to emotes, dealing damage, and so on. Pets are purely cosmetic with no gameplay elements whatsoever. Blizzard has introduced a lot of cosmetic enhancements to the game over the years, so this would not be especially noteworthy.
What is noteworthy this time around is the fact that this pet will cost most people $160.
(Most coverage says $158 because it takes 15,800 Runestones, but you can’t buy that specific amount.)
The only way to unlock this first pet is to participate in the new Darkmoon Faire gacha machine – only available for a limited time! – which features 10 prizes. The first pull is free, because of course it is. Thereafter, there is an escalating cost for some reason, and a weighted score that puts the odds of getting the pet at between 0.1% and 7%, even after eight prior pulls… for nefarious reasons. This is certainly some of the most ridiculous gacha bullshit I have seen ever recently.
…at least, until I remembered some of the other “sales” Blizzard has had.
For reference, here is what my shop looks like currently:
You don’t really need to know what Golden packs are or the value of Signature Legendary cards – just look at the dollar totals. Not pictured are some of the “Mythic” alternative hero portraits, which turn the typical JPGs into 3D models with special animations and such for the low, low price of $60. Several months ago, there was a “bundle” of two different colors of the Kerrigan model for $80. So, while doubling the upper floor to $160 certainly feels egregious, I cannot say it came out of nowhere.
Plus, if I were feeling onery, I would point out that technically the pet only costs $158 if you value the remaining items at zero. Signature Legendary cards in the shop are sold for $30 as seen above. Hero portraits are usually $10 apiece and there are two. It’s hard to value a Diamond Legendary since you only get those in special ways, but I think I’ve seen them go for $40-$50. A single Golden pack costs $4. I’m not going to speculate on the other Signature cards or the card back, but already we’re back down to $54 taking the other stuff into account.
Is this rollout still a PR disaster? Yes. Is it indicative of cynical, pernicious monetization? Yes. Does it bring up legitimate fears about the future direction and longevity of the game as a whole? Yes.
Is it completely unexpected for Hearthstone? …ehh, kinda sorta maybe yes. But also no.
Boardgate: Hearthstone Edition
Hearthstone is releasing a new expansion next week called Perils in Paradise, but they aren’t releasing a new board along with it. And this is heralding the beginning of the end. Possibly.
As with most things, it’s not about the game boards themselves, but what they represent. Every Hearthstone expansion has had a new game board – there are 30+ of them – so the absence of one is notable, especially given this year will be the 10th (!!) year anniversary. Of course, this is the same year that Blizzard discontinued the Duels mode and enacted some boneheaded changes to the quest system in an apparent attempt to inflate engagement metrics.
It doesn’t help when the official Blizzard response plays right into everyone’s fears:
We hear your questions on what’s changing and why, including why there is no new board for Perils in Paradise.
Hang tight, as we’ll be sharing an update next week on that, along with what the team is focusing on for the future.
Why not just, you know, address it this week? Because the $50/$80 preorder bundles are still going until next week. There may be a less cynical argument that discussion over future Hearthstone changes is more appropriate in an flashy expansion release post. On the other hand, there have been plenty of those teaser-esque posts in the weeks leading up to the expansion, and Blizzard community managers have been bobbing and weaving the “where board?” questions for just as long. All the delays accomplish is elevating the doomsaying ahead of what should otherwise have been talk about the expansion itself.
Incidentally, when Blizzard removed Duels it was spun this way:
As we think about the future of Hearthstone and where the team can best focus their efforts, we’ve made the difficult decision to discontinue support for the Duels Mode. […] This change will allow us to shift our resources to where we feel they will have the most impact, including Traditional Hearthstone, Battlegrounds, and more.
Looking at the current state of Hearthstone more generally, it’s difficult to identify what “focusing efforts” has accomplished. Game balance in Standard mode is amongst the worst it has ever been; power is no longer creepin’, it be runnin’. Battlegrounds has re-introduced Buddies (presumably for a limited time), which is worst of the three types of historic meta-shakeup mechanics. Battlegrounds Duos is a mode no one asked for, is rife with trolling, and basically a content-creator dead-end. What could the devs possibly be focusing on, aside from updating their resumes?
I suppose we will see more next week. My guess is that they will start offering Premium Boards in the shop as another channel of monetization. Which, whatever. That, at least, would be less problematic than them coming out and saying “we’re only making one new board per year so we can focus on other things” and then those other things never materialize because it was shareholder value all along.
Questgate: Hearthstone Edition
You know what would be a great idea? In the patch which you release a new, hyped-up game mode you also make an indefensibly irrational change that guarantees a predictable, hostile fan reaction across your entire playerbase. You know, so that everyone is talking about that instead of whatever we were talking about before. I believe the technical term is “slamming your dick in a car door.”
The change in question is to Weekly Quests in Hearthstone. Specifically, the requirements for completing them increased by ~300% (or more!) whereas the reward, e.g. Reward Track XP, only increased by ~20%. The more XP, the more progress you make along the Reward Track, the more freebies and in-game currency you earn to buy more packs, mini-sets, and so on. It’s how to F2P.
Now, some of these quests are the kind that you achieve organically from just playing the game. Things like “Spend 500 Mana” or “Draw 30 cards.” Then there are ones a bit more annoying to achieve, like “Use your Hero Power 50 times” or “Play 50 Battlecry Minions.” Those can technically be achieved in the course of normal play, but only if you’re playing a deck/class that wants to be pressing the Hero Power button and/or casting Battlecry minions. You can reroll one Weekly Quest per day, so I typically rerolled those in the hopes of getting something easier to complete in Battlegrounds or in the Tavern Brawl game modes. Finally, you had the standard “Win 5 Ranked Hearthstone Games” that everyone gets at the beginning of the week.
…except now it’s win 15 games. And you now need to play 100 Battlecry minions. Or play 60 (!?!) Miniaturized/Mini minions when it was like 16 previously. In return, you get an extra 500 XP over what it was rewarding previously, e.g. 3000 vs 2500, or 2250 vs 1750.
For context, you earn approximately 400 XP/hour by playing Ranked Hearthstone without any quests at all. So, yes, technically there is more XP to be earned. But that very much depends on one’s ability to actually complete any of these Weekly Quests before they reset.
And that’s the rub. How long individual games take will depend on the individual and what decks they use, but I’d say the average for me would be 10 minutes per Ranked game and 20 (or 30+) minutes per Battleground. If we assume you are being matched with people of appropriate skill, you will only be winning 50% of the time. So the one “win 15” quest jumps from 100 minutes to 300 minutes for Ranked, and 200 minutes to 600 minutes in Battlegrounds.
If Hearthstone is your primary game, spending 10 hours a week playing Battlegrounds is probably something you were doing anyway. But if it’s not? Well, Blizzard clearly doesn’t want you playing at all.
If there is actually any other reasonable conclusion to reach, I’d love to hear it.
Hearthstone Evolving Monetization
I mentioned it last post, but Hearthstone recently came out with a new expansion, Whizbang’s Workshop, which also heralds a new Standard cycle with several sets rotating out. But after 10+ years of playing, this is actually the first time that I intentionally didn’t purchase the expansion bundle.
Now, nobody needs to know the machinations that transpired that resulted in my declining to spend money on Hearthstone, but I’m going to tell you anyway. Because, well, I certainly found it interesting.
Hearthstone is like most TCG/CCGs (e.g. Magic: the Gathering) in that it releases expansions several times a year (and pushing older expansions out of Standard). Card packs can be bought for 100g via in-game currency or purchased using real money at any time (basically $1/pack). In the weeks leading up to expansion releases, Blizzard will offer limited-time pre-purchase bundles, which sweeten the deal: $50 and/or $80 for 50/90 packs, random Legendary cards, and cosmetic Hero portraits. If you are trying to build a collection, these are typically the best bang for your real-dollar buck.
Blizzard will also sell you a Reward Track Pass ($20) that gives rewards like specific Legendary cards, and even more cosmetics. There is a separate Tavern Pass ($15) for Battlegrounds, which unlocks cosmetics but also an additional 2 Hero choices at the beginning of each game (arguably the most naked Pay2Win). Hearthstone also has an in-game store which features bundles of cards (typically $20) or macrotransaction cosmetics ($60!) for “signature” Legendary cards, e.g. alternative art.
All in all, if you want to give Blizzard your money, they make it easy to do so.
The actual value proposition has gotten murky to me though. A few years ago, Blizzard implemented both a pity timer (e.g. guaranteed Legendary cards after X packs) and copy protection that was later extended to all card rarities. This was an enormous Quality-of-Life feature that doesn’t necessarily get the press it deserves. On top of that, Blizzard more recently added a “reroll” feature once they committed to alternative art cards, which meant you could get a different card of the same rarity if you already had a “better” visual version. This doesn’t come up too often, but sometimes it’ll let you exchange a weak duplicate on the free Reward Track for a chance at something much better.
Concurrently, Blizzard has also seemingly changed their design philosophy regarding the power of cards overall. Historically, it was all about the high-profile Legendary cards flipping games by themselves. While that is sometimes still true, most of the time the best decks are only good because of the supporting Common and Rare cards. This change appears more democratic… but it has a sinister edge. When Blizzard nerfs a card, they allow you to dust (disenchant) the card for its full dust value, rather than the normal 25%. Back when Legendary cards ruled the day, a nerfed Legendary meant you could just dust it and craft another brand-new Legendary and play with a different broken deck. These days, Blizzard nerfs the (relatively powerful) supporting Commons/Rares, leaving the Legendary cards alone. Except, without the support, the Legendary card is useless, but you can’t dust it for full value because the Legendary itself hasn’t changed. Thus, “investing” in Legendaries is risky.
As an example, Blizzard just released a balance patch yesterday that contained three Paladin nerfs to Common/Rare cards. Now, the Paladin deck did need adjustments, as it could kill you from hand with buffed minions. And these cards were problematic. However, if you crafted the 3-5 Legendary cards that went along with the deck (and improved your winrate thereby), well… oops. Best you can hope for is that some other Paladin deck rises from the ashes before the cards rotate out of Standard.
Coming into this expansion, I had actually accumulated 6700g, which meant I could buy 67 packs straight-up. The copy protections mentioned above essentially means that that is enough packs to get all of the Common and Rare cards, along with a handful of Epic and Legendary cards. What would another 50-90 packs give me on top of that? A few more pity Legendaries/Epics… but remember, they are less critical than they were before and/or more risky. I would get a lot more dust to craft whatever card(s) I want, but again, I will already have the important Common/Rare cards already, and thus be gambling on “investing” in the higher tier cards that may get stranded in nerfed decks. No thanks.
Finally, to really bury the lede: Whizbang’s Workshop is a weak set compared to what we just had.
The extra funny issue surrounding everything is how players – including myself! – react to new sets. Many times the top theorycrafters will say something like “Totem Shaman is still Tier 1, but no one wants to play it.” What they really mean is that a deck that was super strong two years ago is just as strong against the current format without needing new cards. But no one wants to play it. Because A) they already played the same strategy for years prior, and B) it means acknowledging you paid money buying new cards you can’t even effectively use. It’s a double cognitive dissonance whammy!
Blizzard has gotten a bit better at adjusting cards (including buffing them, which they almost never did before) at regular cadences, but all the interlocking factors I talked about really makes me wonder about unintended side effects for players like me, e.g. the ones that try to gauge the value per dollar gained. Moving heavy into more cosmetic options is a clear workaround, but even that is fraught in nature – if the alternative art Legendary isn’t competitive, you’ll never likely be able to play it. And if you never play it, you may never be enticed to purchase said alternative art.
Or maybe you don’t care and just want to watch it animate from your collection like an NFT and/or play casual games and hope you draw it before getting killed by a bot. In which case, you do you.
Chasing the High
It’s super dumb, but I have pretty much exclusively been playing Hearthstone Battlegrounds for the last 1.5 weeks. I say “super dumb” because this sort of gaming doesn’t mean anything. And, yeah, “does anything really mean anything?” but Battlegrounds is on a whole other level of frivolousness.
If you’re unfamiliar, Battlegrounds is a game mode within the Hearthstone client that is essentially an Auto-Battler. There are two main phases: Tavern and Battle. During the Tavern phase, you spend gold purchasing minions, upgrading the Tavern tier (unlocking higher-tier minions in the pool), refresh available minions, sell minions, use your Hero Power, and/or rearrange your minions. After about 60-90 seconds, you transition into the Battle phase. During Battle, minions take turns attacking from left to right, but their targets are chosen randomly (barring Taunt or other special effects). Whoever has a minion(s) left standing wins and deals X damage to the opponent’s hero.
Battlegrounds has been around for a while, but I didn’t really bother playing it for years. As my interest in Hearthstone proper started to wane though – I don’t care much about ladder ranks – Battlegrounds started to become more appealing. Throughout the seasons, Blizzard started to really shake things up with new, rotating features that added some spicey randomness. Granted, there’s already plenty of randomness in the game mode, but these were on another level. Things like Buddy units (unique to each Hero), Quests (bonus effects if you can complete them), and the latest season introduced Spells as something you can purchase in the shop. All of these things were introduced in a particular season, and then rotated out, keeping things fresh.
And then someone this season went nuts and added all of the things.
Specifically, this current season has Spells and then several weeks later… Quests too. The Quests have been revamped though, and some of them feature crazy effects like “Discover a new Buddy each turn.” That’s not actually the most powerful Quest effect, but I had a few degenerate games where I leveraged it to a massive win. Indeed, the sheer nonsense you can evoke depending on randomness – and the speed in which you must do so – is what is driving me to almost compulsively play Battlegrounds. I’m chasing the high I get from some of these games, or chasing the dream where I was a turn or two away from going nuts before getting wrecked by someone else’s high-roll.
Really though, the randomness cannot be overstated:
- Starting Hero selection is between 2-4 from random pool (94)
- Opponent hero selections are random (for you)
- Overall minion type pool is random (5 out of 9)
- The minions you’re offered in each Tavern are random
- There are only X copies of specific minions in the pool, which opponents can buy
- Getting a “triple” confers a huge bonus, which is a pick 1-of-3 minions from a higher tier
- Minion attacks are random (aside from Taunts or other special conditions)
- HUGE variance can that lead to losing to 5% odds
- Certain spells are random
- Steal a random minion from the tavern, Discover a Battlecry Minion, etc
- Quests are random on top of random
- At a baseline, you are offered a choice of three quests (out of 60)
- Your hero selection impacts which quests are available
- Quest completion methods are randomly assigned (out of 15)
- Play X Battlecry Minions; Speed Y Gold; Kill Z Minions; etc
- Minion types, hero selection, and quest power impact X/Y/Z values
- Some Quest rewards are themselves random
- Cast 5 Random Spells each turn; Discover a Buddy; etc
Sounds like it would be frustrating, yeah? And yet… it usually feels fine.
In Hearthstone, a card that does 3-6 damage is frustrating. Not drawing your combo pieces is frustrating. In Battlegrounds, the randomness is usually just presented as you needing to make the best decision out of available options. Did your minions miss the enemy buff target three times in a row and yet they hit your buff minion right off the bat? OK, that sucks. What’s your next play?
It also helps that losing early just means you can queue into a potentially better game right away.
Near as I can tell, whatever reward center in my brain that lights up from deck-building roguelikes (e.g. Slay the Spire) or survival-crafting games has been short-circuited by this season of Battlegrounds. I’m somewhat mad at myself because I should be playing Red Dead Redemption 2 (played one session) or anything else in my extended library. We’re talking like probably 30-40 hours of potential progress spent on otherwise wirehead activity in the past few weeks.
And yet… I need another bump. The next Battlegrounds season gimmick has been teased as being co-op, which honestly sounds pretty awful. I doubt that they keep Quests around for another entire season in any case, but maybe Blizzard will see the spike in (my) gametime and consider keeping it around. The fact that it may go away for a while makes me want to get my fill even more.
Gimmie, gimmie, gimmie! I need it.
Oh, and Hearthstone proper released a new expansion cycle too, I guess. Yawn.
Duels Out
Blizzard put out a surprising notice that the Duels game mode in Hearthstone is getting axed.
As we think about the future of Hearthstone and where the team can best focus their efforts, we’ve made the difficult decision to discontinue support for the Duels Mode. We do not have plans for any further scheduled updates for Duels, and the Mode itself is scheduled to be removed from the Hearthstone client in April 2024.
This change will allow us to shift our resources to where we feel they will have the most impact, including Traditional Hearthstone, Battlegrounds, and more. To that end, Battlegrounds Duos is scheduled for an upcoming Battlegrounds patch, and we’re trying out some Duels Treasures in our next Arena season—more details soon.
My feelings on this are… complicated.
First, the introduction of Duels was the deathknell of the content I actually enjoyed the most in Hearthstone: the Dungeon Runs. Those were repeatable PvE solo content largely on par with Slay the Spire in fun. It would not surprise me, if it were possible to calculate specifically, that I spent 200+ hours playing Dalaran Heist alone. But when Blizzard rolled out the Duels game mode and marketed it as PvP Dungeon Runs, the writing was on the wall. We ended up getting shit like “Book of Heroes” PvE content, but you couldn’t craft your decks or have much agency in completing it.
Also, Duels as originally monetized, was incredibly malicious. You were offered a random selection of heroes when first entering, then offered three hero powers for that hero, but two of those hero powers were locked behind “achievements” within your collection, like having 20 epics unlocked from a recent expansion. Then there was a third choice of signature treasure card, which most were again locked behind achievements. While there was mercifully an option to play Casual for free, the primary mode cost gold/cash just like an Arena run (with similar prizes). And, yeah, even though I always played Duels for free, I did also spend dust crafting otherwise useless epic cards to unlock some of the hero powers/other cards, so Blizzard did get cash out of the economy in a roundabout way.
For the record, Blizzard did end up changing things within Duels and unlocking everything for everyone eventually. Whether that was for marketing reasons or the simple fact that they’d have riots on their hands if players had to craft cards from 3+ expansions ago to stay current within the game mode, who can say.
What we can say though is that Blizzard is apparently in a period of… consolidation. Classic? Removed. Duels? Removed. Mercenaries? Still exists, but has been sunsetted permanently. Twist? It is on a “scheduled” hiatus, but it is difficult to imagine the thought process behind introducing a completely new competitive format, selling literally brand new cards and decks, and then going on a break three months later.
Well, maybe it’s easier after seeing graphs like this:
Caveats abound here, of course. These are not “official” numbers and since the data comes exclusively from players with the Firestone overlay mod installed, it’s not representative of the overall playerbase. Hell, I don’t even use Firestone (Hearthstone Deck Tracker for me). But… yeah. There’s Standard, Battlegrounds, and Arena up at the top, an enormous gap down to Wild – a format that Blizzard literally can’t kill without total collapse – and then, well, all the rest. Duels has a respectful showing there, but it’s also a format that requires constant upkeep and maintenance since every expansion set could radically imbalance the mode based on off-the-wall interactions. Twist basically doesn’t exist, and this was before the hiatus. Not a great look.
Look, we all get it. Corporations goin’ to corporate. It’s fun to imagine Bobby Kotick personally flushing these modes and now that he’s gone it’ll be rainbows and sunshine. But I doubt it. There has apparently been a lot of shuffling of designers over on the Hearthstone team, and whomever is still in charge is no Ben Brode or Ghostcrawler in the communication/hype-man department. And that makes me suspect that we may end up getting less spaghetti on the wall instead of more. Reminds me of the Google graveyard of apps in how they axed things like Reader (RIP) and now seem to exclusively focus on inserting four ads in my Gmail account instead. Classic enshitification.
So, yeah, kinda sad about Duels. If this allowed them to get back to Dungeons Runs or similar PvE content, that’d be great, but it won’t. I’m playing a lot of Battlegrounds actually, so I’m still in the ecosystem, and I do enjoy certain Brawl weeks, but the end of my interest may be nigh.
Which may be just as well – after more than 10 years, I have other shit I need to do.
This is My Life Now
Big project going on at work has sucked all the oxygen out of the room. Right before the project started, my son brought home some unexpectedly powerful daycare flu. It wasn’t COVID (we tested), but still knocked him out of daycare for nine days, and I’m still getting over it myself going on 14 days. I wasn’t out out for those whole two weeks, but masks + a runny nose does not mix well. Plus, it doesn’t look great to people when you step outside the room to take your mask off to blow your nose, even if you hand sanitize after. I don’t even blame them – I’d be leery too.
One amusing side-effect of this whole situation is what’s happening with my free time. I’ve been going to bed earlier due to wanting to beat the illness sooner, and also due to the project requiring a physical presence way early in the morning. So while I do still have 1-2 hours to game each night, I haven’t had the drive to do much other than veg out.
It started with watching some Twitch streams of Hearthstone. The new expansion is out, Blizzard fucked everything up by introducing multiple uninteractive OTK (one-turn kill) decks, but I still like to keep a pulse on things, so the streams were entertaining. Then I started watching Youtube videos of the Hearthstone streams, because A) I could see different decks more easily, and B) I can jack up the speed to 2x and thus watch twice as many. Finally, I started going to HSReplay where you can watch, well, simulated replays of Hearthstone games directly. There is a fast-scrolling feed on the main page which tells you the matchup, so you can isolate Paladin vs Warlock or whatever you want.
No joke, yesterday I watched random Hearthstone replays for two hours and then went to bed.
That has to be the nadir, right? I’m not playing the game, I’m not watching other people playing the game in an interactive setting, I’m not watching an edited video of the game playing… I’m literally just watching JPEGs of the game happening on the screen. And I found it entertaining and insightful! If I were just watching TV or something, at least there would be a plot or overarching story or something. I could say “I finished X series.” Still haven’t gotten around to watching the newest season of Handmaid’s Tale, for example. Then again, I’ve been watching that on CNN for the last four years already.
I feel like I should feel worse, but I kinda don’t. Between the two-year old and this work project clown show, I have learned to… let things go. Not in a “woosa” sort of way, but in that Fallout-esque “It’s been 200 years since nuclear Armageddon and I still can’t be bothered to sweep the inside of the house I’ve been living in for a decade.” Might be harder without a broom, I suppose. And we still have unopened, unsorted boxes from when we moved into this house three years ago so I probably I shouldn’t throw too many stones. Or I should start with the ones still laying on the floor.
In An Age 
AIrtists
Jul 23
Posted by Azuriel
There’s some fresh Blizzard drama over a Diablo Immortal + Hearthstone colab artwork:
The top comment (1700+ upvotes) is currently:
I’m all for piling onto Blizzard at this moment, precisely because what they are currently doing in, for example, Hearthstone is especially egregious. It’s not just the pets, though. The dev team had been advocating for reducing the power level of sets for a while – ostensively to fight power creep – but after like the third flop set in a row, their efforts are beginning to become indistinguishable from incompetence. The Starcraft miniset has been nerfed like 2-3 times now, but people are still playing cards from there because they’re more powerful than the crap we got today. First week of the expansion, and the updated Quest decks all had winrates of less than 30%.
Having said that, it isn’t all that clear that the AI artwork is actually Blizzard’s fault.
Last year, there was another AI art controversy with Hearthstone regarding the pixel hero portraits. While there was no official announcement, all signs pointed towards the artist themselves being the one to submit the AI-generated product rather than Blizzard actively “commissioning” such a thing. And remember, even the small indie devs from Project Zomboid got burned when they hired the same person that made their original splash screen and said artist turned around to submit AI-smeared work.
This sort of thing used to sound insane to me. Why would an artist use a tool that specifically rips off artists and makes their very own future work less valuable? Is there no sense of self-preservation?
On the other hand, that Hearthstone hero portrait “artist” almost got paid if it weren’t for those pesky Reddit kids. Considering that Microsoft is now requiring its employees to use AI in their jobs, perhaps the artists were just ahead of the curve. In my own meatspace job, AI tools are being made available and training being required if only to styme certain employees from blindly pasting sensitive, personal data into ChatGPT or Grammarly. Because of course they do.
Regardless, I am interested in seeing how it goes down and what eventually wins. AI does, obviously. But do people stop caring about AI-generated product art because so many examples eventually flood the zone that it becomes impossible to keep up? Will it be a simple generational change, with Gen Alpha (etc) being OK with it? Or will AI advance enough that we can no longer spot the little mistakes?
All three are going to happen, but I wonder which will happen first.
Posted in Commentary, Hearthstone
4 Comments
Tags: AI, Art, Blizzard, Controversy, Hearthstone, Microsoft