2020 in Hearthstone – A Recap of the Passing Year

Today’s the last day of 2020. What a crazy year it’s been, both in real world (for obvious reasons) and Hearthstone. Of course, I’m going to focus on the latter, but sadly two of them are going to intertwine in many cases.

It’s safe to say that Hearthstone had its ups and downs over the passing year, but overall I’m going to rate it positively. The game is constantly evolving, and even though Blizzard didn’t nail every single change right away, they managed to reflect on things they did poorly and fix them (sometimes with the help of community).

Year of the Phoenix & Demon Hunter

Technically, when 2020 started we were still in Year of the Dragon. The first release of 2020 was Galakrond’s Awakening in January. However, it didn’t have a major impact on the game (yes, it added a few staples and changed the meta a bit, but nothing on the scale of a full expansion), other than it being the first time ever new cards were introduced mid-expansion. Which was cool, I guess, and probably the reason we’re getting the mini-sets soon. Yes, the format will be a bit different (cards will get added to the packs instead of being awarded adventure-style), but the general reception (and probably the monetary gain) of Galakrond’s Awakening was definitely the reason why Blizzard decided to pull the trigger on the upcoming extra content.

But let’s focus on the current Standard year – Year of the Phoenix. It started with a bang to say the least. Even before the first expansion (Ashes of Outland) launched, we’ve already got things like update of the ranked system (ditching the previous 25 ranks in favor of the current system), Priest classic cards revamp (getting rid of a couple of cards and replacing them with others + mostly buffing already existing ones), free meta decks for new/returning players (lots of which are actually pretty good, or at least they give you a couple of strong Legendaries), duplicate protection across all rarities. And, most importantly, a new class got introduced – Demon Hunter.

Yes, yes, in a hindsight we can say that the release was a disaster. The class was completely broken (as in “no deck in the entire history of the game was ever that strong” broken) and it required not one, not two, but three big nerf patches to become manageable. And it was still a Tier 1 deck, requiring another nerf shortly before second expansion’s release to finally fall down to Tier 2 (but who knows whether it wouldn’t climb back up given enough time). Long story short, Ashes of Outland was the expansion of Demon Hunter. But it didn’t end there. Scholomance Academy – the second expansion of the year – has not only brought back the Aggro version of the deck, but also introduced a new version – Soul Demon Hunter. The latter was a T1 or at the very least a high T2 deck consistently throughout the entire expansion. Finally, Darkmoon Faire has made Aggro Demon Hunter broken once again, leading to a quite recent balance update. For the first time, Demon Hunter is no longer seen anywhere close to Tier 1. Sadly, it got replaced by Shaman, which dominates the entire meta now, but that’s life.

I won’t go deeper into meta of each expansion, but some of the more standout decks besides Demon Hunter ones I’ve listed above were (in random order) Enrage Warrior, Highlander Hunter, Spell Druid, Galakrond Rogue, Face Hunter, Bomb Warrior, Highlander Mage, Pure & Libram Paladin, Guardian Druid, Control Warrior, Secret/Miracle Rogue, Control Priest, Cyclone/Tempo Mage… I probably have missed some, but it’s not super relevant to see a pattern. You see a few classess repeating, a few appearing from time to time, but also a bunch of them not being there at all. In particular, it was a terrible year for Warlock and – until very recently – for Shaman. Zoo Warlock had a brief moment of popularity in Scholomance Academy, before Darkglare got nerfed (and even then it wasn’t a T1 deck or anything). Some variants of Control Warlock or Galakrond Warlock were attempted, but not very successfully. As for the Shaman – before Darkmoon Faire’s Evolve Shaman (and especially the last 2 weeks after Demon Hunter nerfs), the class hasn’t been played at all for the entire year. Some people tried to make Totem Shaman, Aggro Shaman or Control Shaman work, but they were all niche, low tier builds. Classes like Priest or Mage were somewhere in between (they had a few nice moments, but overall they were mostly in T2-T3), while other classes had solid T1-T2 decks for months at the time.

The overall variety was okay, but not super impressive. My biggest complaint about the meta this year is not even is that it was imbalanced (even though it really was at times), but that it didn’t change enough. Many of the decks got from one expansion to the next mostly unchanged, sometimes with a few new cards, but without any major gameplay differences. Of course, I don’t expect a new expansion to shake things up completely, getting rid of any old archetype, but facing some decks for three expansions straight (or even longer in some cases – *cough* Highlander Hunter *cough*) is quite annoying. Despite all of that, I found the meta mostly enjoyable, at least if you avoided the most imbalanced moments when a balance update was desperately needed.

There’s still a mini-expansion ahead of us, but I don’t expect it to change the meta drastically, just like Galakrond’s Awakening. After all, it’s only ~1/4 of the full expansion. But that will be covered next year!

New Game Mode – Duels

If you enjoy Hearthstone, but get bored of the usual Constructed play quickly, Hearthstone has been delivering recently. Just a bit over a year ago, Battlegrounds was released, and it became a huge hit. While Blizzard didn’t share the exact numbers, the mode is extremely popular, and often pulls more viewers on Twitch than actual Constructed gameplay.

Then, just 2 months ago, another game mode has been released. It’s called Duels, and it’s basically the PvP version of already well-known Dungeon Run style. It’s much simpler and not as grand in its scope as Battlegrounds, but it still provides a nice break from the usual gameplay. Because of the bucket drafting and extra, powerful treasures Duels decks are not only more random, but also simply crazy at times. You get those incredible combos that you could never pull of in Constructed, when everything just clicks you might be able to run over your opponent while they can’t do anything. Yes, not everyone will like it, because it’s simply not as balanced, but Hearthstone was never purely about balance and Duels embraces the wilder side of the game. And “not everyone likes it” is not an issue at all – not everyone likes Arena, not everyone likes BG and so on. Adding more diveristy is never a bad thing, because some people will surely enjoy it.

The biggest issue with the format is that it’s not complete yet – we only have 2 out of 3 Hero Powers and 3 out of 6 Signature Treasures. While we don’t know how the final ones will look like, they will surely add more diversity. Another problem is the balance – not balance of the gameplay itself (which is meant to be somewhat imbalanced), but the classes and treasures. There are a few classes that stand out and not getting one of them is a huge disadvantage. Some of the worst classes (like Paladin or Shaman right now) are maybe not unplayable, but definitely not as enjoyable, because the game really starts getting more fun a few matches in (and going 0-3 means that you won’t really get to experience the more interesting part). Similarly, while I don’t expect that we’ll ever have a real treasure / passive balance, unlike in Dungeon Run which was PvE, not having those “outstanding” picks that just ruin the experience for other players would be great.

Of course – the first problem should get fixed quite soon (the rest of Hero Powers and Treasures should come mid-expansion, most likely around the same time as mini-set), while a few balance updates can get rid of the latter. My guess would be that they don’t want to spend too many resources on balancing the mode that’s not complete yet – after all, the new HP’s & Treasures will surely upset the current balance. Hopefully we’ll see Duels in its full glory a few weeks from now.

On the other hand, what I like about the mode is its longevity. While there’s no telling how long they will plan to keep it updated, right now the promise is that we’ll get new Hero Powers & Signature Treasures (+balance updates if necessary) every new expansion. On top of that, the available expansions will rotate too. Between new HPs, Treasures & decks, once the game mode enters Season 2, it should feel completely different and fresh. At least that’s what I’m hoping for.

And Duels is not all we’re getting! Another new game mode is planned for this expansion. I’m pretty sure that it will actually be released closer to the next set and a new Standard year (just like Duels was technically added in Scholomance Academy, but realistically it launched shortly before Darkmoon Faire), but that’s still probably around 2 months from now. From what Ben Lee (Hearthstone’s Game Director) hinted at, Duels was the “smaller” game mode, while the next one will be bigger in its scope, similar to Battlegrounds. I honestly can’t wait until we hear more about it!

Competitive (From Home Edition)

2020 was very tough for any offline event, and that includes Hearthstone tournament. I almost forgot that Hearthstone Masters events were offline, played at venues around the world. In 2020, Masters Tour Arlington (Jan-Feb) was the last event happening offline. The second Masters Tour was supposed to happen in Indonesia, but it was moved to Los Angeles late in February. It was around the time when COVID-19 hit Asia quite hard and wasn’t a big thing in US yet, so Blizzard has decided that hosting it in California will be safer, then a couple weeks later announced that participants will be playing from their homes, and only casters & part of the crew will be at the venue. It wouldn’t be a bad idea if not for the fact that by the time the event has started (March 20), coronavirus already started raging in US and California’s governor issued “stay at home” order. While players were prepared to play from home, the idea of casting on-venue had to be scrapped. In fact, the first day of broadcast had to be canceled, because no one was prepared for that. Luckily, Blizzard managed to sort everything out and 2nd and 3rd day were broadcasted, with casters streaming from home (or hotel room, I honestly can’t remember).

Ever since then, every single event was online-only. Of course, since everyone had more time to prepare, further Masters Tour events (four of them to be precise) were all online and didn’t have any major issues. While I’m excited for the players to come back to offline venues next year, because attending a Masters Tour event in person is a really fun experience, I hope that Blizzard will keep a possibility of attending from home. I know a few players who would never be able to fly to one of those events, but they participated in Masters Tour because it was online-only.

Hearthstone Grandmasters didn’t change that much, honestly. Since it was on a weekly schedule and GMs live all around the world, they always played from their own homes. I think that casters had to adapt, but it wasn’t a big deal either. The only real difference was the final event of 2020 season – Hearthstone World Championship (where 6 out of 8 invited players were GMs from different regions, while the last 2 positions were occupied by Chinese players from Gold Series). World Championship is always a big event, sometimes happening at BlizzCon (but don’t even get me started on the HS competitive schedules – each year is completely different). It’s worth hosting the event offline just for the amazing shot of new Champion holding the trophy. Sadly, this year we didn’t get to see anything like that. Still, just 2.5 weeks ago, Glory was crowned a new champion after amazing GM season as well as superb performance during the Finals.

But there’s one more thing. We can’t talk about competitive Hearthstone in 2020 without mentioning a deal between Blizzard and Google back in January. The goal was to move all the esports events from Twitch to YouTube. Of course, the biggest reason was Overwatch League, but Hearthstone also got affected. Before that, you could watch it both on Twitch and YouTube, but the Twitch streams were obviously getting way more attention. Most of the Masters Tour events had tens of thousands of viewers, with World Championship peaking at over 200k. Of course, that’s still not THAT much compared to esports events in other games, but it was pretty impressive. Ever since the move to YT, viewership has plummeted. This year’s World Championship had only ~30k viewers during the final game. While it peaked a bit higher during SilverName’s matches (because of influx of Russian viewers, he’s the most popular Russian Hearthtstone streamer after all), the numbers are still nothing compared to the old ones. Frankly, it’s disappointing. I’m sure that Google paid a lot of money for that move, but it’s not good for the viewers. Twitch is still by far the most popular game streaming platform, and most of the players following Hearthstone are there. Many viewers have completely missed the Championship because of that.

For 2021, I hope that HS Esports will move back to Twitch somehow. I’m sure that it won’t happen, but once can dream, right?

Battle Pass Debacle

One of the biggest “events” of the year was release of the new progression system. A full revamp of Quests, rewards and so on. That already sounds like a big deal, but the reason why it was so important wasn’t new system itself, but the community’s reaction to it. In order to better understand it, we need to go back a few months ago, to August. That’s when Blizzard sent out a survey detailing a new progression system, so called “battle pass”, where rewards were earned from XP gained by playing the game. After doing some quick calculations, however, it turned out that the maximum amount of rewards from the Battle Pass would be quite low – way lower than what more hardcore players can earn right now. There was a lot of talk about it in the community, with devs (and Ben Lee himself) saying that the survey version was just a work in progress, the rewards would be adjusted and – words that he probably curses to this day – no player will earn less gold under the new system than they did under the old one.

Fast forward two months later, where the new system gets announced & soon released. Players once again did some math and it quickly turned out that the words I quoted above were a lie – there were many players who earned less gold under the new system. To be more precise, we’ve also got a bunch of packs, a Legendary card and so on that made up for it for MOST of the players, but even if we count those, some of them were still behind. Of course, the biggest issue was that some players in fact did earn less gold, which meant that Blizzard no longer delivered the promise. Or well, we don’t EXACTLY know, because Ben Lee said that lots of XP will be loaded into events, but that irrelevant. People were already mad. And don’t get me wrong – I think that players were in the right, but many took it too far, harassing devs, badmouthing streamers who didn’t “join the protests” and so on.

At first we’ve got a fix that turned 6 packs on the later levels of the track into 1350 Gold. That was a step in the right direction, and it actually fixed the “earning less gold than before” for most of the players. The system was still worse for SOME outliers, but not by much – for majority it was comparable in terms of gold and it gave some extra rewards like packs (which obviously can’t be ignored). But the community didn’t stop there and the protests continued. It got to the point where the new progression system and “Blizzard greed” was the main topic of discussion for a few weeks straight.

Then, suddenly, Blizzard has announced a second fix, which went live ~2 weeks ago. It added some extra gold to the track, increased the XP from Quests, made a lot of them easier to finish, but most importantly it reduced the total number of XP required to hit level 50 by around 20%. The last change was the biggest one, because it added around 1250 extra Gold to the pockets of the players who will hit level 50 by the end of expansion. They’ve also dropped 500 Gold + 5 packs as an apology for all the players. Between all of that, virtually no player will now earn less gold, and majority of players will earn significantly more gold than before. For example, after all the changes I will have around 2500 Gold more than I did before + 10 packs + all the other smaller rewards. Of course, not everyone was happy with that at first (for whatever reason), but at this point most of the players are content, and those who aren’t have already quit the game.

Of course, now the issue is whether having more rewards than before can offset the fact that mini-sets are coming… but that’s a problem for next year. Right now we don’t know much about them – and things like rarity distribution will make a massive impact on how expensive the game will become once they’re introduced. And it’s not like mini-sets are just there to take our money – they add extra content to the game, something that lots of players have asked for. So even if the overall cost is increased slightly, but we’re getting a big mid-expansion shake-up, then I can live with that (although I would prefer the game to be cheaper, just like anyone).

Conclusion

As you can see, 2020 had its ups and downs. While real life gave us some really hard time, Hearthstone’s development was very good for the most part. At this point I’m seeing a pattern of end-of-year Hearthstone drama – with blitzchung’s ban in 2019, progression system drama in 2020 – I wonder what 2021 has in store.

There are also some good times ahead. Mini-set is getting released soon, then we’re getting another new game mode, new Standard year with some revamps to Classic card set (if the plans haven’t changed, that is) – and all of that within the upcoming 3 months. Who knows what the rest of year will bring?

Anyway, I hope that you’ve enjoyed reading this summary. Happy New Year, everyone!