You gave me an idea… if I'm ever to develop an FPS game, though.

It is strange to me how Blizzard want to push Hearthstone as a serious esport but keep adding cards with hugely random effects.

Not that it matters to me since I stopped playing/watching hearthstone after Whispers of the Old Gods.

The whole humanity is an outcome of some astronomic dice roll and every (e)sport has a lot randomness. Except maybe chess. It's just more visible in Hearthstone.

I'm okay with RNG, as long as not stupid like that… For example, I think Yogg-Saron is okay.

Don't get me wrong, I think the RNG adds an interesting element of additional risk management to the game, but when you start to go bananas with it . . . it degrades the importance of skillful play.

To me sports are about extraordinary people displaying their skill. Blizzard's goals of "esports" and "amping up the randomness" are at odds with each other.

Ultimately the Hearthstone esport scene never really appealed to me anyway, being able to see both players hands takes a lot of the fun out of it for me.

What drove me away from Hearthstone was feeling like I could not play competitively anymore when sets of a certain age were banned and I didn't have the disposable income for packs anymore. Also, fuck C'Thun.

I remember the times when C'Thun was viable with nostalgia. It was the time when I was strongest.

I think reached rank 13 with my C'Thun priest. And since then I never reached the higher rank, because I refuse to play with strong classes.

So yeah, C'Thun is long gone, hail the mid-range shaman and aggro warrior overlords. That are much much worse than the Old Gods.

I'm hoping the new expansion will help this. Maybe cards like one above will make warrior unplayable?

I think the most rage inducing meta for me was the warsong commander, molten giant combos.

It reached a point where I would immediately quit any game when I was matched against warrior.

Yeah, I hated Grim Patron and Warsong Commander. Back then I was playing with classic control priest, so it was Auchenai Soulpriest + Healing Circle on Grim Patron turn, or lose. Even with that Auchenai combo, I would end up losing… I used to lose to Molten Giants as well, but I remember hating Grim Patrons more.

Why didn't you played Arena, through? It's always fun. There are tavern brawls too, to get gold for the arena, without having to deal with the stupid meta.

Back in early days, Blizzard used to add just cards with various effects. Right now Blizzard is making archetypes. Old Gods expansion had C'Thun forced archetype, then with Streets of Gazget-whatever they forced Jade/Dragon Priest decks archetype and this expansion is taking it further. Every class will get a quest and then they will get cards designed for nothing else but to complete those quests. Priest got a quest to play deathrattle cards, so most of priest cards will probably have a deathrattle. No wonder unique decks are disappearing…

Damn it, if this game dies, what I will play?

Overwatch, of course.

I agree with a lot here. I really liked Hearthstone, it gave me a new love for these types of games. I joined between Naxx and GvG and really enjoyed it for a long while. But as you said the randomness started pouring in and when I started losing/winning because of pure random bullshit I stopped enjoying it as much. I've moved onto other card games, but I still always come back to Hearthstone hoping for the best.

Give me back old school control warrior and tempo mage, dammit!

Shadowverse is probably the closest to Hearthstone. The art style is a bit ridiculous though. All animoo and when female characters are "evolved" they get more naked while male characters get less naked. Faeria is also pretty fun, though way different with the land stuff going on.