Some of the Hearthstone Team have been on various social media channels discussing aspects of the new expansion. I thought I’d throw together a bit of a roundup of what they’ve been talking about recently.
Mike Donais answers a question on Reddit about the new card Shadow Visions.
“Can you somehow shuffle the quest card into your deck, then discover it, and complete the quest twice?” – Piyamakarro
“Yes, you can mulligan your quest away and then Shadow Visions to get it and then complete it. However you can only have one quest in play at a time.”
“Quests can’t be found from random outside of game effects but cards like Mind Vision or Thoughtsteal can find them.” – Mike Donais
Kripp followed this up on Twitter with a question on why it would be so bad to be able to discover the new Quest cards.
“Why would it be so bad to discover quests?” – Kripp
“the edge circumstance where you might be able to pull one off is cool, most of the time it felt to us like a choice we would”
“never be able to pull off, and it felt a bit wrong to have them as dead choices in most circumstances” – Dean Ayala
Reynad suggests that cards like Babbling Book, Swashburglar, Drakonid Operative, and the new Crystalline Oracle should reveal the card that was generated or chosen. Dean Ayala responded to the suggestion.
“Every single babbling book/swashburgler/drakonid operative/crystalline oracle card would be excellent design if the card was just revealed.” – Reynad
“Generally, good card design to me is usually something that appeals to an audience without oppressing another too much.”
“some cards and strategies are directed at deckbuilders and people that want every last bit of information.”
“others are directed at embracing the feeling that anything can happen and creating unexpected moments.”
“Both, to us, are big parts of Hearthstone to embrace. Of course, your feedback is useful. Just adding context.” – Dean Ayala
Dean Ayala discusses some of the lore with to do with Sunkeeper Tarim.
He’s a Tol’vir. He looks awesome! – Dean Ayala
Uldum gets mentioned in relation to the Tol’vir.
Pretty close in proximity to Un’Goro. Our story is that a group of Tol’vir from Uldum wandered into Un’Goro and made a home for themselves there. – Dean Ayala
“Whats the story for the Saurok though? Pandaria is a lot further than Uldum.” – Opreich
Saurok were created by the Mogu, who were created by the Titans. With Un’Goro being such a titan influenced location, it’s not so unrealistic that similar beings were created there. – Dean Ayala
He then follows this up with a longer answer about how some of the lore was created for Journey to Un’Goro.
Lots of lore nerds like myself in card design :). Even if we don’t have the space to tell a great story through text we still think it’s important that everything fits together. The players that do care about that sort of thing can piece together the world on their own and it’s fun to think about.
Originally we had an idea to do a more long-nosed Saurok-like minions that resembled more crocodile/alligator than lizard. The thought was that the Mogu-created Saurok were made to deal with humanoid creatures like Pandaren, the Tol’vir created version of Saurok might have had to be a bit more bulky because the main threats weren’t humanoid, but dinosaur! We had a bunch of names for them, none of them actually got close to shipping. The only one I remember was The Reptol, in reference to reptiles created by tol’vir (although to me it’s because it sounds like Reptar and Reptar is the best dinosaur ever). We thought Sauroks were pretty sweet though and decided to just stick with them because we were already doing a bunch of weird and wacky stuff with the plant/dino/humanoid lifeforms in this version of Un’Goro.
TL:DR we thought a lot about lizard people – Dean Ayala
Ben Brode responds to a comment about how Sunkeeper Tarim seems a bit lazy.
We often explore similar designs in a class to reinforce class identity. What does it mean, mechanically, to be a Paladin? Paladins aren’t very good at killing minions outright, but are good at setting health and attacking to finish them off. You can see this echoed in Dinosize as well.
As it turns out, similar sounding designs can play very differently. Flamestrike is just “Shadowbolt everything”, but doesn’t feel close to the same card. – Ben Brode
This discussion was very cool, but man i forgot how those names are painful to read, like when they revealed the old gods not that painful this time but is still anoying like Tol’vir is fine but Mogu, Saurok or Reptol, Im not saying that they are that hard to read but why dont they have better names like Silvanas or Rexar you know names that are not that common but you could name your son with. Did somebody got what I’m trying to say?
No.