Just a quick reminder for those of you who might have forgotten. Twist game mode is now down for the whole month of January. Initially, it was also planned to be gone in December, but Blizzard has decided to refresh it once again with the same format. The mode will be back in February with a new format. We still don’t know what that is, I expect that we’ll learn more in a couple of weeks. Possibly even as soon as the 28.4 (mini-set) patch notes.
Sadly the mode hasn’t been doing great so far. While I don’t have any internal numbers, it’s pretty easy to gauge the interest online (including on HSTD). I think that the concept itself is great, but the implementation so far has been a bit lacking. Especially the part where the first test season was not that much different from Standard (it mostly added a few decks that people have hated to face on top of what was already playable in Standard) and the first four actual seasons were the same format with only small additions and a few rounds of balance changes (it was cool for one season IMO, but they should have went in a whole different direction with the 2nd, 3rd and so on.)
The fact that it was meant to go down for two whole months was also baffling. I know that game design is often more difficult than people give it credit for, but I don’t see how it was difficult to just keep it going with new and unique formats/gameplay twists.
But I don’t think that it’s a lost cause. Since it’s not a continuous mode, people can jump right in during any format if they find it interesting. So maybe if it comes back with a fun enough format in February, people will jump right back in. Especially since there won’t be any big releases/updates in that month (we already got a big Battlegrounds patch and the mini-set is coming this month).
