As a (mainly) wild player, I think it was a giant failure. The Barrens meta allowed a wide variety of decks to be playable in every class. Even meme decks could work reasonably well. UiS ruined and polarized this balance firstly by The Demon Seed and secondly by the Pirate-Raza-Even trio. If it was up to me, I'd nerf nearly every quest.
As a Standard player, the only success was the Tradeable mechanic. Quests were a huge failure. They polarized the formats to the point that only Combo and Aggro could be played. Before anyone complains about Aggro decks, Aggro is not the problem. Aggro is only as good as it is because the Mage and Warlock Quests warp the format so much that if you don't play Aggro or one those Quests, it's an instant loss. Midrange and Control died because Combo kills you before your value matters and makes your creature removal useless, and Aggro will go under you before you can set up. There was cool stuff that was introduced, but this is a case of a few bad apples spoiled the bunch. Quests spoiled the rest of the set because they're way too strong. When you don't remember what Turn 10 or even 10 Mana looks like, that's sad.
@@shafta2010 because they don’t care about us. Broken cards forces people to buy packs so they have a chance, and the dev team are extremely stubborn biased towards combo decks
@@shafta2010 Because the quests where the new shiny toys of the expac, and the new shiny toys/promo cards are what they do their best to avoid nerfing at all costs
United in Stormwind is a good example of "cool idea poor execution" especially with questlines. If the questlines had more deck building requirements this would have been a cool expansion
Why do people say this? They've all had simple requirements like the old ones were play taunt minions or murlocs. No one had an issue with these. It's just the rewards are a bit too crazy imo.
@@joshtaylor2882 I mean like the questlines shouldn't be supporting an already good deck. Like compare barrens/wailing caverns spell mage to questline mage. Its pretty much the same deck but better. The quests should make new decks not just slight adjustments to already good decks
@@joshtaylor2882 I would say ur somewhat right and wrong Back then the requirements of playing taunt cards were harder to play in some cases since there were not too many good ones and u had to have a few to keep consistent, murlocs not really because it was usually aggro and was an actual deck. If the Taunt quest was in todays standards probs would be easier from how many cheap and reliable options there are, but it probs will still be a bit slow. And usually the ones that were easier to complete didn't really dominate the game they helped but it wasnt the all the reason on why they one all the time. The ones that required heavy build around such as the druid quest mage and i guess even priest quest The quest lines yes they are crazy but they are way to easy to complete comparing to the past quests, they are completed so much faster and require no build around for the most part, they are ligit pre-existing architypes that have a now defined win condition winch as u said are busted, if they went it probs wouldnt put a bad taste into the communities mouth.
I couldn't even bring myself to get level 100 in the reward track this expansion. It was just that miserable to play Standard or Wild constructed. That, to me, qualifies it as a failure.
They HoF'd Baku and Genn early because games were too consistent and repetitive and didn't want them dominating the meta for over a year. Sound familiar?
i really hope atleast something will be strong enough to compete with power level of quests and metta wont be the same again, doesnt matter what it will be
@@jhinabloomingflower807 Honestly I don't think wild can really be solved efficiently without just changing the mode to be more dynamic. effectively make another legacy format, that removes the truly problematic cards (sorc apprentices, quests, etc) while keeping the vast majority of other cards. Then you can have a truly wild format that has literally everything for those degenerates who want to play the banned cards.
100 % failure in everyway... Some deck archetypes were good and fun and NOT toxic such as Quest Rogue or Big warrior .. but that's about it . Stromwind in the trashcan.
I would agree except the rogue quest devolved into “stealth Scabbs, play battle master.” It being a value card is cool but the stealth spell and the extremely broken sap ruin it being fun for me. It’s the same problem as the other quests, it wins on turn 7-8 with no interactivity, because even if you play a taunt they just sap it and play battle master.
I blame Demon Seed and Ignite for this meta. Each phase of Demon Seed should go to 10 health so they have to basically lose their entire bar (die) to become a lich. So they might be at 10-15 when it finally activates instead of 30. And just change Ignite to target minions. I feel like I could survive through a Quest Mage if they couldn't just go infinite scaling damage as soon as they draw their entire deck.
I feel that the main problem the Demon Seed brings will simply remain, and it’s that it’s affected by fatigue as well, which penalizes heavily all control decks, completely taken out of the equation. The only times I’ve won vs quest lock as a control deck is whenever they outdraw their quest reward when their hand is too full, that’s the only way.
Considering 3 of the questlines got nerfed, and there were more that could’ve been debated for a nerf, I’d say the failure was really in the balance testing than anything else.
I do think this is an interesting discussion, and because of that interest I feel compelled to share my own fairly unique take on this. As some of you may be aware, there is now a mod for Hearthstone that specifically makes it accessible to the totally blind. This mod came out near the beginning of August, so to the blind Hearthstone community, ′which sprung up quickly after′, the entire game is new. It is therefore difficult for the totally blind, like myself, to share this opinion about the state of the game, because from my perspective, finally, at long last, I can play a game I have loved from afar. A game I could only listen to before. That, to me, is far bigger than any concerns about the meta, or the success of the expansion. I don't say this to cast any shade on this video, in fact I do think the video is great, but as an advocate for accessibility I do enjoy sharing a different perspective with people when the opportunity presents itself. Thanks for reading!
I consider it a success in how influential it was and how cool the tradeable keyword is. But for me, I consider it unsuccessful since it has made me not want to play standard for over a month.
I think that the only class who were cool the entire expansion were paladin or chaman, because they were always changing: Paladin become a divine shield handbuff, a libram and an aggro secret deck. The chaman got the elemental, quest and n'zoth battlecry deck, who were kinda fun. And now there is even some good Elwyn boar or big demon dh which are very cool deck to use. Even if the meta wasn't perfect it was still fun (exept when you face a warlock).
I think if there's a lesson to be learned here, it's that you cannot have quests give rewards that are too powerful or significant. They have to be balanced rewards but they can't be game-ending. Quests in prior expansions buffed decks but didn't just let you win on the spot. Ossirian Tear, Sulfuras, Ascendant Scroll (?), etc., all provided nice boosts but you could still best them.
And if theyre game ending rewards (like priest quite littarly) they should be very hard to get/complete and not come earlier then turn 10 (like priest)
@@Emperorhirohito19272 Can very easily lose versus swarm decks or aggro. The HP is very strong and essentially puts your opponent on a timer, but the win can be delayed. Compare that to the current Mage quest where you literally cannot inhibit your opponent's plans at all.
@@ZKEUS yeah I get that but compared to others, especially the uldum quests like Osirrian tear it’s way more game ending. Plus a taunt handbuff warrior isn’t that bad against aggro in the first place
I had some amount of fun in the few last days of UiS Wild meta after the banning of Demonseed Warlock but it's still polarizing. Sometimes even playing Pirate Warrior you don't finish the quest because you win with hyper aggro alone. Before UiS meta I played a lot of Raza Priest and hit legend with it many times. People don't like it but compared to what we have now, it's way more balanced now and you felt like you had more time to disrupt it than the best decks now. I feel the amount of times a card needed to be nerfed is a big indicator of how much of failure an expansion is. It baffling that only 3 quests have been nerfed so far and I imagine will get nerfed again if they print more support for them.
Spot on Zeddy. Just to add to what you have to say, yesterday I was OTKed by quest rogue using the 4 mana Edwin buffed to around 18 attack and giving it charge using Mr Smite after I cleared all his threats as a control warlock without quests. So the mini expansion for United in Stormwind added more toxic cards like Mr Smite and made it worse for the control players. This game would be better off without this expansion and the mini set. This is my two cents if I have to review this expansion with its miniset.
The quest lines really killed the expansion, I didn’t even get lvl 100 on the reward track because I got bored so quick and quit playing. I hope alrerac changes things up in a big way.
United is Stormwind was a huge failure. The size of which, will not show its full extent for some time yet. Not only is the game incredibly toxic and stale in both Standard and Wild with it being dominated by aggro decks that win on turns 6-8 (4-5 in Wild). But moving forward, nothing in Fractured in Alterac Valley looks like it can make an impact to do anything to this meta. Further from that, unless the yearly rotation and new core set completely guts these decks, we'll see it continue on for all of next year too. While, Wild seems like it will be irrevocably broken until the next new ridiculous mistake gets printed that outperforms Quests. The health of the game could be in dire straits if Bli$$ard only looks at the metrics. Since if (When) Alterac flops because none of its cards do anything against the hyper aggro meta, they'll see it as a reason to continue printing more broken aggro/combo cards to make sales. Much like how when Rastakan didn't exponentially increase powerlevels of meta decks (With it's weird mish-mash of cards that had no place due to being for unsupported archetypes) they decided to go back into blatant powercreep in Rise of Shadows.
Gigantic failure imo, I was super hyped for it because well quests, first few days I really liked it but when it was known what is broken, and what you simply cannot play not even as a meme it got so fucking boring, looking back at old quests these ones actually feel so God damn boring.
Out of everybody i used to go to fireside with local to me (15 or so), im the only one who still plays HS. And i barely play anymore. Ive gone from a few hours AT LEAST per day, to maybe a few hours per week. And United in Stormwind was the smoking gun. It just seems like the direction of the game is so linear everytime they release a new set. I paid for the expansions, and i have no idea why when I havent actually played with like 50% of the cards in the set, because 'the meta' wont allow it. I hope things change going forward, but Hearthstone isnt the game it once was, and people are starting to see that and unfortunately leave.
The answer is it was a failure. Questlines ruined hearthstone because you couldn't interact with the opponent. As consequence, the only option left was to go aggro and attempt to defeat the opponent before they could complete the OP quest. For example in Wild, a hunter can complete the first part of the quest by playing rapid-fire and thus permanently upgrading their hero power to target minions. This upgrade was too easy to accomplish and had no drawback to the player. The designers really permanently ruined Hearthstone as a result.
We all know it was a failure. They amount of nerfs required to bring things somewhat in line is evidence of a playtest/design failure. If the game was a printed physical CCG then this set would have destroyed the game for the entire cycle.
I've never been a huge constructed player but I used to be motivated to climb ranks. This expansion, constructed has never felt worse, especially in WIld. This is the most disapointed expansion since Gadgetzan for me. What an absolute fail
It wasn’t a failure, just two archetype got shelved, making cards live in the shadows of mages, warlocks, hunters and warlocks. The trade mechanic was phenomenal
Mage was never good lmao every other class was better at one point the expansion let every class be meta for a bit seems better than other expansion where some classes were dead Garrote/Quest Rogue, Quest/Elemental Shaman, Handbuff Paladin, OTK DH, Shadow Priest, Aggro Druid, Aggro Hunter, Quest Control Warrior, Quest Warlock and Quest Mage which is worse than these other decks before they were nerfed
I was super stoked for the idea of a Maestra rogue deck. I loaded one up, and played against two quest mages.... who proceeded to complete their quests by Turn 3 or 4 and kill me. Haven't been back to standard since.
They should create a new game mode where you can use ALL CARDS without nerfs named "Wildest Wild". Then they delete all questlines (or most of the questlines) from wild and make a decent patch with nerfs, so we can enjoy playing wild without getting destroyed because we didn't played a minion or a direct effect card until turn 3. Back in the day, to make a OTK you needed to draw almost your entire deck and a lot of things could go wrong or you could die until you get the combo in your hand. Now, players start with the simplest combo ever in their hand. I find hearthstone a really cool game but a terrible experience for those who decide to start playing it. The only thing that supports this game is the "old community", and even them are quitting the game, because there is literally ZERO benefits in playing more hearthstone, particularly when you can t even play a decent interactive deck. Blizzard is killing hearthstone and trying to milk it as much as they can before everyone stops playing it.
United in Stormwind was the worst expansion in Hearthstone for me. The Quests were unbalanced, what lead to the most boring meta since Dr. Boom. Everyone just played Decks that won in Turn 6 without any chance to interrupt them. While interesting, balanced or fun Decks didn't had a chance. The main problem was that the developers didn't realize the core issues of TCG game design. Simple Issues like face-charge, zero mana costs, infinite card draw, mana-destruction, or that fatique damage as a punish effect can't just turned into a win condition. Another one of the worst designs was the Quest-Combo-OTK Demon Hunter. Absolutely no one is interesting in watching his opponent playing with himself. I mean absolutely every issue was blatant obvious so either the devs are totally ignorant and incompetent or what is more likely they tried intensionly to make overpowered designs to push the polarization.
The keyword was a great success tbh but the rest I couldn't really enjoy and I'm mostly a wild player the wild meta was so easily shattered by the questlines
I enjoyed the expansion. Played almost exclusively fel DH with the card that copies your left and right most cards. Probably because it wasn’t that popular a deck, it felt like no one was prepared for it - it just stomped aggro decks with aoe and healing and double Jace could beat most control decks. Quest mage was hit or miss - they struggled with frost spells if you didn’t play minions or trigger their secrets, but it could equally go the other way with the right run of cards.
You put it well. I play mostly wild and facing pirate warrior 5 times in a row all the time is annoying, and if I switch to standard it's the same. Luckily I found some fun in playing a pure quest paladin in wild but that's about it
I miss those days were you could put a bunch of murloc cards, or a bunch of elemental cards in any class and have an actual chance of winning some games.
ive barely been playing standard. just battlegrounds. until i got the new 4 drop that discounts big minions by 3. now big deathrattle priest is my go-to. super fun would recommend
Alright, I might have a bad take here, but I honestly believe that this sort of super consistent, 1 note meta is exactly what happens when people rail against created by. Was it excessive in barrens? Yes. Did I hate it? Yes. But when literally everything that makes games play out differently from one another is either killed outright or in principle, this is exactly the meta you get. Super consistent decks that will play out the same way 100% of the time, regardless of anything your opponent does. Pirate warrior will always draw ancharr on turn 2-3, hunter will always just point spells at your face, and demon seed will just draw their entire deck and kill you with infinite fatigue. When random is eliminated from the game, stormwind is what you get in return, and I hope hearthstone devs find a middle ground between absurd random and whatever stormwind was.
Big time this. Blizzard makes too much discover and RNG, people bitch that the games are too decided by chance. They say okay, now decks are insanely consistent and can do the exact same powerful thing every single time. People bitch. I admit the questlines are way too strong and kinda ruined the game, but the player base also doesn't know what it wants
I think a main positive of the expansion is there was a lot of support for archetypes, these quests got loads of support, which I think is great. However, quests have become oppressive as they block out other archetypes and strategies from the game
It was. It was the only expansion I stopped playing after 2 weeks in. Games were decided too fast. Solitaire games w/ quests and now Mr. Smite is back… What they did good was class identity.
it really is funny how some people are defending the Stormwind meta, saying that the cards were well designed and it is good to have a game plan. I remember people on reddit were raving on how diverse the meta is with mage, warlock, druid, warrior, DH, hunter, rogue, but just skipping over how the meta was either combo or aggro. I am completely fine with combo decks existing but it should never be so easy to complete the combo. I remember when exodia mage was actually hard to play and required good game sense, and now spell mage just has to complete quest and toss some spells at the opponent's face. Even Mechathun decks back in the day was very fringe and not easy to pull off. Combo decks should lack some consistency so that other decks can catch up and actually play, but right now combo decks are so consistent they literally counter almost every deck. I almost quit hearthstone about a month back and ranked in any mode just felt like a chore. i usually climb to D5, but this season i just stopped at G10. It was simply not fun to play constructed.
You can follow a line and play your green cards and then the 5 mana 7/7 green card and win or you can actually try to think by yourself knowing that your decissions during the game doesn't matter and lose
"Failure for the health of the game" but are their overall metrics up (users playing the game, etc...) that's the real metric of whether it's a success or failure.
Thats hardly a metric to follow for players, if you want the most players make a gatcha games with waifus. Theee you go. When it comes to making a competetive and fun card game the metric is is the game and fun and are the decks toxic. And thats the game people want to play
@@C3l3bi1 Maybe. As I listen and read to others "takes" on whether a game or in this case an expansion is a success or failure, too many statements of "fact" begin with "I feel" - that's not a metric. If you are losing tons of players because the game is making them feel terribly and they don't want to play any longer...that's something measurable.
I really loved playing d6, but they nerfed it almost immediately (and I’m not mad, it was the right choice) and basically didn’t play until the mini set with the otk quest warlock with Tamsin and hand of guldan
Loved it in a pervert way. UiS made me start playing wild and enjoy the whole variety of possibilities (at least at first on low ranks). And also watching wild content here on YT, standard is so boring now.
For me it failure especially for wild Ignite mage , questline hunter , questline pirate warrior just broke the wild either play it or lose to it and make me want to quit hearthstone until they nerf them
Playing against Quest Mage before it got nerfed was soul destroying as was Quest Warlock - What I have found strange this season though is whatever deck I play I only seem to play against two or three different classes change the deck and you play three different classes again - Me thinks the algorithms need looking at
Even worse, if you have not been whaling and preordering EVERY single expansion you will NEVER have the tools to be competitive. So if you missed out on the Stormwind quests, that just puts you further and further behind as the next round of power-crept crap comes in.
DH was oke.Druid was oke for 2 weeks and then it died.Hunter was decent but people still played face hunter.Mage broken.Paladin just bad.Priest is good but too damn slow.Rogue oke but there was garrote rouge so everyone played most broken spec as usual.Sham was good.Lock was broken.Warrior was good and then became broken. Was it failure?It wasnt failure.Quest where just simply boring.
The fact that they won't even acknowledge that the quest lines were complete failure says it all. If they don't Hof those Quest at the rotation the game is just going to implode. I mean we already see that they're not going to change anything before this new expansion and this new expansion doesn't show anything that's going to change the way the meta is currently. It's funny watching top players review the new set and they give it all low scores because the board doesn't matter.
Personally, United in Stormwind was a bigger flop than people saying Rastakan was the worst expansion. I'm a person who plays only wild (because I hate standard), so I haven't gotten much in the way of UiS packs because I don't care enough to buy the packs. I have the shaman and pirate quest-lines, but I don't play them because they're not really fun or wacky. It's just trying to tell the opponent that you don't care about having an enjoyable presence in hearthstone, you just want to win. Personally, Standard (probably) people got a dream come true. To me, wild is the better format to play the funnier decks (like Murloc Quest Shaman, kingsbane Rogue, old Deathrattle Priest, ECT). Instead, so many people try to shove the new questlines in wild with no wild cards. In the end, biggest flop Blizzard has ever created.
If you want to play competitive Hearthstone then it is really unfun and nerve-wracking. However, if you do not care about your winning percentage, then you can play a variety of fun decks appearing on this expansion (ie DH Proving Grounds, Mage Grand Finale, Priest Deathrattle Elwyn Boars, etc - just to name some). The problem seems to be the Questlines and how meta-defining some of them are. In my opinion, this problem is not going to be solved either on the new expansion, unfortunately...
Most decks are fine imo. Cant all be tier 1. However, the demon seed numbers shouldve been altered and to not ignore fatigue. Only counterplay would be if you could shuffle cards into their deck but that would only delay. Demon seed also has insane healing. You shouldnt have the best of both worlds.
As a wild player it was the biggest failure in hearthstone history which makes me sad because i remember being so hype for the questlines. But they ended up just running the wild format
I can’t really agree on this one. United on stormwind had some downsides but I still enjoyed the hell out of it. Quest shaman and quest rogue especially
It was polarizing in that it was maybe the most fun expansion to play a deck while simultaneously being the most unfun expansion to play against certain decks. Quest Handlock (post all the nerfs) probably the most fun I've ever had with a deck in that how you treat each matchups matter whether you try to win via minion pressure/survival/quest. Death of attrition style control decks that do nothing but react/generate/remove/heal, might be the best thing to happen in an expansion in awhile. Random control priest and skipper/armorsmith/bloodsworn warrior decks from last year were cancer decks we don't need. Control with a win condition is better than attrition.
All around failure even after all the nerfs there still was a feeling of this game became solitaire without counter play. Sadly with the card preview for next set I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a noticeable drop off on preorders because there is nothing I see that can break the quickness of questlines. By the time your about to drop your 8 mana hero card you are on the ropes and about to get blasted by the spell mage who already killed their deck and lining up ignite spam the next turn
It was horrible, people left in droves.Personally i was done withing a week, the quickest i had ever stopped for an expansion. Mini set got me back for a couple more weeks.
I think this expansion was pretty boring, it just felt monotone. I dont think any deck was op or opressive as many people complain about. The decks were just very boring in my opinion. According to VS hearthstone, face hunter was pretty much the best deck throughout the expansion
As a (mainly) wild player, I think it was a giant failure.
The Barrens meta allowed a wide variety of decks to be playable in every class. Even meme decks could work reasonably well.
UiS ruined and polarized this balance firstly by The Demon Seed and secondly by the Pirate-Raza-Even trio.
If it was up to me, I'd nerf nearly every quest.
I'm wild player and it's exactly what I would point out. Few decks were dominating the rest.
At least darkglare and flesh giant got hit. If the quests could get nerfed like warsong nerfed then things could be fun.
Wasn't the lock quest straight up banned? Lmao
Nerf Demon Seed really hard and unban it. Then nerf warrior quest.
Yeah Barrens meta in Wild was cool. I would argue Darkmoon Faire was better than Stormwind too.
As a Standard player, the only success was the Tradeable mechanic.
Quests were a huge failure. They polarized the formats to the point that only Combo and Aggro could be played.
Before anyone complains about Aggro decks, Aggro is not the problem. Aggro is only as good as it is because the Mage and Warlock Quests warp the format so much that if you don't play Aggro or one those Quests, it's an instant loss. Midrange and Control died because Combo kills you before your value matters and makes your creature removal useless, and Aggro will go under you before you can set up.
There was cool stuff that was introduced, but this is a case of a few bad apples spoiled the bunch. Quests spoiled the rest of the set because they're way too strong. When you don't remember what Turn 10 or even 10 Mana looks like, that's sad.
If they NERF the quests I'll wonder why they refused to do it all this time and make us all suffer
@@shafta2010 because they don’t care about us. Broken cards forces people to buy packs so they have a chance, and the dev team are extremely stubborn biased towards combo decks
@@shafta2010 Because the quests where the new shiny toys of the expac, and the new shiny toys/promo cards are what they do their best to avoid nerfing at all costs
United in Stormwind is a good example of "cool idea poor execution" especially with questlines. If the questlines had more deck building requirements this would have been a cool expansion
Agree
Why do people say this? They've all had simple requirements like the old ones were play taunt minions or murlocs. No one had an issue with these. It's just the rewards are a bit too crazy imo.
@@joshtaylor2882 I mean like the questlines shouldn't be supporting an already good deck. Like compare barrens/wailing caverns spell mage to questline mage. Its pretty much the same deck but better. The quests should make new decks not just slight adjustments to already good decks
Warrior quest basically is: play 7 minions, win the game
@@joshtaylor2882 I would say ur somewhat right and wrong Back then the requirements of playing taunt cards were harder to play in some cases since there were not too many good ones and u had to have a few to keep consistent, murlocs not really because it was usually aggro and was an actual deck. If the Taunt quest was in todays standards probs would be easier from how many cheap and reliable options there are, but it probs will still be a bit slow. And usually the ones that were easier to complete didn't really dominate the game they helped but it wasnt the all the reason on why they one all the time. The ones that required heavy build around such as the druid quest mage and i guess even priest quest The quest lines yes they are crazy but they are way to easy to complete comparing to the past quests, they are completed so much faster and require no build around for the most part, they are ligit pre-existing architypes that have a now defined win condition winch as u said are busted, if they went it probs wouldnt put a bad taste into the communities mouth.
It's a failure just because of the Questlines, it would probably be a balanced expansion without them.
What do you mean that my hunter quest is unbalanced? Can't everyone just deal 28 damage on round 7?
If you are wondering, this is satire
Yeah not to mention decks like deathrattle hunter and big spell mage which had really cool support got lost in the shuffle.
I couldn't even bring myself to get level 100 in the reward track this expansion. It was just that miserable to play Standard or Wild constructed. That, to me, qualifies it as a failure.
Same deck variety didn't exist and it felt like hitting my head into a wall.
Honestly, i got 90% of the reward track through battlegrounds, and rerolling any "play in standart mode" most of the time.
Same here
I didn’t get last months card back I played so little
what is a failure is your brain process thinking,there is something called CASUAL you DONT HAVE TO PLAY RANKED ALL THE TIME
Either the quest lines get hall of famed permanently or there are three decks that are meta and whatever aggro you prefer.
They HoF'd Baku and Genn early because games were too consistent and repetitive and didn't want them dominating the meta for over a year. Sound familiar?
and what about wild?
@@jhinabloomingflower807 I play wild mostly. Banned/Hall of famed as well.
i really hope atleast something will be strong enough to compete with power level of quests and metta wont be the same again, doesnt matter what it will be
@@jhinabloomingflower807 Honestly I don't think wild can really be solved efficiently without just changing the mode to be more dynamic. effectively make another legacy format, that removes the truly problematic cards (sorc apprentices, quests, etc) while keeping the vast majority of other cards. Then you can have a truly wild format that has literally everything for those degenerates who want to play the banned cards.
It was great playing against quest hunters and quest warriors every game been so much fun....NOT! =)
There’s GOTTA be a happy middle though 😩
100 % failure in everyway... Some deck archetypes were good and fun and NOT toxic such as Quest Rogue or Big warrior .. but that's about it .
Stromwind in the trashcan.
The Rogue questline is what all over questlines should have aimed for where you get a big payoff but it's limited
@@Abrody1477 yes exactly.
I would agree except the rogue quest devolved into “stealth Scabbs, play battle master.” It being a value card is cool but the stealth spell and the extremely broken sap ruin it being fun for me. It’s the same problem as the other quests, it wins on turn 7-8 with no interactivity, because even if you play a taunt they just sap it and play battle master.
I blame Demon Seed and Ignite for this meta.
Each phase of Demon Seed should go to 10 health so they have to basically lose their entire bar (die) to become a lich. So they might be at 10-15 when it finally activates instead of 30.
And just change Ignite to target minions. I feel like I could survive through a Quest Mage if they couldn't just go infinite scaling damage as soon as they draw their entire deck.
I feel that the main problem the Demon Seed brings will simply remain, and it’s that it’s affected by fatigue as well, which penalizes heavily all control decks, completely taken out of the equation. The only times I’ve won vs quest lock as a control deck is whenever they outdraw their quest reward when their hand is too full, that’s the only way.
U r right, i can take any damage from mage questline if the ignite is not infinite. And as for Demon Seed, i still can get few win from it.
Considering 3 of the questlines got nerfed, and there were more that could’ve been debated for a nerf, I’d say the failure was really in the balance testing than anything else.
I'd say the nerfs were not enough. At the very least hunter should be nerfed
I do think this is an interesting discussion, and because of that interest I feel compelled to share my own fairly unique take on this. As some of you may be aware, there is now a mod for Hearthstone that specifically makes it accessible to the totally blind. This mod came out near the beginning of August, so to the blind Hearthstone community, ′which sprung up quickly after′, the entire game is new. It is therefore difficult for the totally blind, like myself, to share this opinion about the state of the game, because from my perspective, finally, at long last, I can play a game I have loved from afar. A game I could only listen to before. That, to me, is far bigger than any concerns about the meta, or the success of the expansion. I don't say this to cast any shade on this video, in fact I do think the video is great, but as an advocate for accessibility I do enjoy sharing a different perspective with people when the opportunity presents itself. Thanks for reading!
I consider it a success in how influential it was and how cool the tradeable keyword is. But for me, I consider it unsuccessful since it has made me not want to play standard for over a month.
Exactly
The idea behind the questlines giving rewards and one big payoff is amazing, the reality is that it warped the game around them too much
I think that the only class who were cool the entire expansion were paladin or chaman, because they were always changing:
Paladin become a divine shield handbuff, a libram and an aggro secret deck. The chaman got the elemental, quest and n'zoth battlecry deck, who were kinda fun. And now there is even some good Elwyn boar or big demon dh which are very cool deck to use. Even if the meta wasn't perfect it was still fun (exept when you face a warlock).
I think if there's a lesson to be learned here, it's that you cannot have quests give rewards that are too powerful or significant. They have to be balanced rewards but they can't be game-ending. Quests in prior expansions buffed decks but didn't just let you win on the spot. Ossirian Tear, Sulfuras, Ascendant Scroll (?), etc., all provided nice boosts but you could still best them.
And if theyre game ending rewards (like priest quite littarly) they should be very hard to get/complete and not come earlier then turn 10 (like priest)
To be fair sulfuras does kind of win you the game one you get it played
Or if they're gonna be game ending; make it as tedious to compete as the Priest Questline.
@@Emperorhirohito19272 Can very easily lose versus swarm decks or aggro. The HP is very strong and essentially puts your opponent on a timer, but the win can be delayed. Compare that to the current Mage quest where you literally cannot inhibit your opponent's plans at all.
@@ZKEUS yeah I get that but compared to others, especially the uldum quests like Osirrian tear it’s way more game ending. Plus a taunt handbuff warrior isn’t that bad against aggro in the first place
I had some amount of fun in the few last days of UiS Wild meta after the banning of Demonseed Warlock but it's still polarizing. Sometimes even playing Pirate Warrior you don't finish the quest because you win with hyper aggro alone.
Before UiS meta I played a lot of Raza Priest and hit legend with it many times. People don't like it but compared to what we have now, it's way more balanced now and you felt like you had more time to disrupt it than the best decks now.
I feel the amount of times a card needed to be nerfed is a big indicator of how much of failure an expansion is. It baffling that only 3 quests have been nerfed so far and I imagine will get nerfed again if they print more support for them.
Spot on Zeddy.
Just to add to what you have to say, yesterday I was OTKed by quest rogue using the 4 mana Edwin buffed to around 18 attack and giving it charge using Mr Smite after I cleared all his threats as a control warlock without quests.
So the mini expansion for United in Stormwind added more toxic cards like Mr Smite and made it worse for the control players. This game would be better off without this expansion and the mini set.
This is my two cents if I have to review this expansion with its miniset.
The quest lines really killed the expansion, I didn’t even get lvl 100 on the reward track because I got bored so quick and quit playing. I hope alrerac changes things up in a big way.
No expansion has made me as pessimistic about the game in a long time.
United is Stormwind was a huge failure. The size of which, will not show its full extent for some time yet.
Not only is the game incredibly toxic and stale in both Standard and Wild with it being dominated by aggro decks that win on turns 6-8 (4-5 in Wild).
But moving forward, nothing in Fractured in Alterac Valley looks like it can make an impact to do anything to this meta. Further from that, unless the yearly rotation and new core set completely guts these decks, we'll see it continue on for all of next year too. While, Wild seems like it will be irrevocably broken until the next new ridiculous mistake gets printed that outperforms Quests.
The health of the game could be in dire straits if Bli$$ard only looks at the metrics. Since if (When) Alterac flops because none of its cards do anything against the hyper aggro meta, they'll see it as a reason to continue printing more broken aggro/combo cards to make sales. Much like how when Rastakan didn't exponentially increase powerlevels of meta decks (With it's weird mish-mash of cards that had no place due to being for unsupported archetypes) they decided to go back into blatant powercreep in Rise of Shadows.
Gigantic failure imo, I was super hyped for it because well quests, first few days I really liked it but when it was known what is broken, and what you simply cannot play not even as a meme it got so fucking boring, looking back at old quests these ones actually feel so God damn boring.
Out of everybody i used to go to fireside with local to me (15 or so), im the only one who still plays HS. And i barely play anymore. Ive gone from a few hours AT LEAST per day, to maybe a few hours per week. And United in Stormwind was the smoking gun. It just seems like the direction of the game is so linear everytime they release a new set. I paid for the expansions, and i have no idea why when I havent actually played with like 50% of the cards in the set, because 'the meta' wont allow it. I hope things change going forward, but Hearthstone isnt the game it once was, and people are starting to see that and unfortunately leave.
The answer is it was a failure. Questlines ruined hearthstone because you couldn't interact with the opponent. As consequence, the only option left was to go aggro and attempt to defeat the opponent before they could complete the OP quest. For example in Wild, a hunter can complete the first part of the quest by playing rapid-fire and thus permanently upgrading their hero power to target minions. This upgrade was too easy to accomplish and had no drawback to the player. The designers really permanently ruined Hearthstone as a result.
We all know it was a failure. They amount of nerfs required to bring things somewhat in line is evidence of a playtest/design failure. If the game was a printed physical CCG then this set would have destroyed the game for the entire cycle.
I deleted hearthstone because of this expansion. Nothing will make me come back since my entire collection has been powercreeped within 1 year.
I've never been a huge constructed player but I used to be motivated to climb ranks. This expansion, constructed has never felt worse, especially in WIld. This is the most disapointed expansion since Gadgetzan for me. What an absolute fail
Do they have a play-test team? Because in this expansion it looked like the live client was the play test environment.
It wasn’t a failure, just two archetype got shelved, making cards live in the shadows of mages, warlocks, hunters and warlocks. The trade mechanic was phenomenal
true ,you did have to mention warlock twice since it was so polarizing :P
Mage was never good lmao every other class was better at one point the expansion let every class be meta for a bit seems better than other expansion where some classes were dead Garrote/Quest Rogue, Quest/Elemental Shaman, Handbuff Paladin, OTK DH, Shadow Priest, Aggro Druid, Aggro Hunter, Quest Control Warrior, Quest Warlock and Quest Mage which is worse than these other decks before they were nerfed
I was super stoked for the idea of a Maestra rogue deck. I loaded one up, and played against two quest mages.... who proceeded to complete their quests by Turn 3 or 4 and kill me. Haven't been back to standard since.
They should create a new game mode where you can use ALL CARDS without nerfs named "Wildest Wild". Then they delete all questlines (or most of the questlines) from wild and make a decent patch with nerfs, so we can enjoy playing wild without getting destroyed because we didn't played a minion or a direct effect card until turn 3.
Back in the day, to make a OTK you needed to draw almost your entire deck and a lot of things could go wrong or you could die until you get the combo in your hand.
Now, players start with the simplest combo ever in their hand.
I find hearthstone a really cool game but a terrible experience for those who decide to start playing it. The only thing that supports this game is the "old community", and even them are quitting the game, because there is literally ZERO benefits in playing more hearthstone, particularly when you can t even play a decent interactive deck.
Blizzard is killing hearthstone and trying to milk it as much as they can before everyone stops playing it.
United in Stormwind was the worst expansion in Hearthstone for me. The Quests were unbalanced, what lead to the most boring meta since Dr. Boom. Everyone just played Decks that won in Turn 6 without any chance to interrupt them. While interesting, balanced or fun Decks didn't had a chance. The main problem was that the developers didn't realize the core issues of TCG game design. Simple Issues like face-charge, zero mana costs, infinite card draw, mana-destruction, or that fatique damage as a punish effect can't just turned into a win condition. Another one of the worst designs was the Quest-Combo-OTK Demon Hunter. Absolutely no one is interesting in watching his opponent playing with himself. I mean absolutely every issue was blatant obvious so either the devs are totally ignorant and incompetent or what is more likely they tried intensionly to make overpowered designs to push the polarization.
This expansion stopped me from playing completely the previous one I played very little. I doubt this upcoming one will change anything.
The keyword was a great success tbh but the rest I couldn't really enjoy and I'm mostly a wild player the wild meta was so easily shattered by the questlines
I enjoyed the expansion. Played almost exclusively fel DH with the card that copies your left and right most cards. Probably because it wasn’t that popular a deck, it felt like no one was prepared for it - it just stomped aggro decks with aoe and healing and double Jace could beat most control decks. Quest mage was hit or miss - they struggled with frost spells if you didn’t play minions or trigger their secrets, but it could equally go the other way with the right run of cards.
So many cool cards, none of them see play. That just sums up the year of the gryphons expansions
You put it well. I play mostly wild and facing pirate warrior 5 times in a row all the time is annoying, and if I switch to standard it's the same. Luckily I found some fun in playing a pure quest paladin in wild but that's about it
Mage and Warlock ruined the game for such a big portion of the cycle, then they overturned pirate Warrior. Things could’ve gone much better.
I miss those days were you could put a bunch of murloc cards, or a bunch of elemental cards in any class and have an actual chance of winning some games.
ive barely been playing standard. just battlegrounds. until i got the new 4 drop that discounts big minions by 3. now big deathrattle priest is my go-to. super fun would recommend
Cancer questline expansion with insane fast meta, hope after alterac we move away from this.
Alright, I might have a bad take here, but I honestly believe that this sort of super consistent, 1 note meta is exactly what happens when people rail against created by. Was it excessive in barrens? Yes. Did I hate it? Yes. But when literally everything that makes games play out differently from one another is either killed outright or in principle, this is exactly the meta you get. Super consistent decks that will play out the same way 100% of the time, regardless of anything your opponent does. Pirate warrior will always draw ancharr on turn 2-3, hunter will always just point spells at your face, and demon seed will just draw their entire deck and kill you with infinite fatigue. When random is eliminated from the game, stormwind is what you get in return, and I hope hearthstone devs find a middle ground between absurd random and whatever stormwind was.
Big time this. Blizzard makes too much discover and RNG, people bitch that the games are too decided by chance. They say okay, now decks are insanely consistent and can do the exact same powerful thing every single time. People bitch. I admit the questlines are way too strong and kinda ruined the game, but the player base also doesn't know what it wants
I think a main positive of the expansion is there was a lot of support for archetypes, these quests got loads of support, which I think is great. However, quests have become oppressive as they block out other archetypes and strategies from the game
Yep! They should have made support for other decks for the mini set but instead we got me Smite and a 3 manna deal 4 damage pirate for warrior
Depends on the perspective: Players and content creators? Complete failure. HS team? success, this meta was exactly what they wanted (sad).
It was. It was the only expansion I stopped playing after 2 weeks in. Games were decided too fast. Solitaire games w/ quests and now Mr. Smite is back…
What they did good was class identity.
it really is funny how some people are defending the Stormwind meta, saying that the cards were well designed and it is good to have a game plan. I remember people on reddit were raving on how diverse the meta is with mage, warlock, druid, warrior, DH, hunter, rogue, but just skipping over how the meta was either combo or aggro. I am completely fine with combo decks existing but it should never be so easy to complete the combo. I remember when exodia mage was actually hard to play and required good game sense, and now spell mage just has to complete quest and toss some spells at the opponent's face. Even Mechathun decks back in the day was very fringe and not easy to pull off. Combo decks should lack some consistency so that other decks can catch up and actually play, but right now combo decks are so consistent they literally counter almost every deck. I almost quit hearthstone about a month back and ranked in any mode just felt like a chore. i usually climb to D5, but this season i just stopped at G10. It was simply not fun to play constructed.
This expansion was a big fever dream.
Demon Hunter? Quests heroes? What you talking bout naxx just came out let's duel!
Thanks Blizzard for removing XP rewards for Stormwind achievements a week before the new expansion start! No one needed that XP anyway.
Aww, why did you have to mention Firebat? That one still makes me sad. Good on him for seeing the writing on the wall, but I miss him.
You can follow a line and play your green cards and then the 5 mana 7/7 green card and win or you can actually try to think by yourself knowing that your decissions during the game doesn't matter and lose
the demon seed would be so easy to balance and make it good. just make fatigue not count
Being table to play all your deck by turn 6 is still not balance nor healthy for the game !
@@FMEaque if fatigue mattered they would struggle as they wouldn't be able to play their hole deck as they would die to fatigue
"Failure for the health of the game" but are their overall metrics up (users playing the game, etc...) that's the real metric of whether it's a success or failure.
Thats hardly a metric to follow for players, if you want the most players make a gatcha games with waifus. Theee you go.
When it comes to making a competetive and fun card game the metric is is the game and fun and are the decks toxic.
And thats the game people want to play
@@C3l3bi1 Maybe. As I listen and read to others "takes" on whether a game or in this case an expansion is a success or failure, too many statements of "fact" begin with "I feel" - that's not a metric. If you are losing tons of players because the game is making them feel terribly and they don't want to play any longer...that's something measurable.
november 2021 was the first month i didn't hit wild diamond rank due to the questline pirate warrior and questline odd face hunter meta, pretty sad
Totally agree with everything you said in this video.
Great video, totally agree. But if you think Nova can hold a candle to the cuteness of my cats oooh you are wrong there buddy
The problem of this meta is that don't have decks to counter or give some troubles to the warrior and warlock decks. They have to do something.
I really loved playing d6, but they nerfed it almost immediately (and I’m not mad, it was the right choice) and basically didn’t play until the mini set with the otk quest warlock with Tamsin and hand of guldan
Loved it in a pervert way. UiS made me start playing wild and enjoy the whole variety of possibilities (at least at first on low ranks). And also watching wild content here on YT, standard is so boring now.
Success for aggro users and failure for control users
For me it failure especially for wild Ignite mage , questline hunter , questline pirate warrior just broke the wild either play it or lose to it and make me want to quit hearthstone until they nerf them
7:59
"Best deck deez nuts"
Edwin "garrote kill turn 8 lol" Van Cleef
I only just made it to level 100 on the battlepass, that shows this wasn’t a succes in my eyes
Playing against Quest Mage before it got nerfed was soul destroying as was Quest Warlock - What I have found strange this season though is whatever deck I play I only seem to play against two or three different classes change the deck and you play three different classes again - Me thinks the algorithms need looking at
I'd say it was a success.. in that I successfully quit the game after 6 years.
Even worse, if you have not been whaling and preordering EVERY single expansion you will NEVER have the tools to be competitive. So if you missed out on the Stormwind quests, that just puts you further and further behind as the next round of power-crept crap comes in.
My favorite part of UIS is queuing into Wild and playing against standard decks because quests are just too OP not play.
I was so excited at many cards revealed for this expansion. But they never came into relevance. Questlines... 😭
„Bad time in Stormwinds“
Can you make a similar video like this for Wild mode? It literally took just 1 expansion to ruin the mode entirely....
DH was oke.Druid was oke for 2 weeks and then it died.Hunter was decent but people still played face hunter.Mage broken.Paladin just bad.Priest is good but too damn slow.Rogue oke but there was garrote rouge so everyone played most broken spec as usual.Sham was good.Lock was broken.Warrior was good and then became broken.
Was it failure?It wasnt failure.Quest where just simply boring.
United in Stormwind was a Focking mess. I cannot see this Meta anymore
Failure is too kind a word for it. Constructed isn't even worth touching as long as the Stormwind quests are still in the game.
Yes. As a standard player most definitely. Super boring watching decks just do their thing and not being able to do anything about it.
This expansion literally drove me to quit HS as a standard player. The play pattern was so mind numbing boring I decided it wasn't worth my time.
I've played since beta and UiS was the first expansion where I got legend. I enjoyed it until warlock quest just got out of hand.
Remember how a few months ago we were complaining about infinite value priest and now that deck doesn’t even exist?
The fact that they won't even acknowledge that the quest lines were complete failure says it all. If they don't Hof those Quest at the rotation the game is just going to implode. I mean we already see that they're not going to change anything before this new expansion and this new expansion doesn't show anything that's going to change the way the meta is currently. It's funny watching top players review the new set and they give it all low scores because the board doesn't matter.
Personally, United in Stormwind was a bigger flop than people saying Rastakan was the worst expansion. I'm a person who plays only wild (because I hate standard), so I haven't gotten much in the way of UiS packs because I don't care enough to buy the packs. I have the shaman and pirate quest-lines, but I don't play them because they're not really fun or wacky. It's just trying to tell the opponent that you don't care about having an enjoyable presence in hearthstone, you just want to win.
Personally, Standard (probably) people got a dream come true. To me, wild is the better format to play the funnier decks (like Murloc Quest Shaman, kingsbane Rogue, old Deathrattle Priest, ECT). Instead, so many people try to shove the new questlines in wild with no wild cards. In the end, biggest flop Blizzard has ever created.
I don’t think I’ll be preordering the next expansion just out of fear the current meta will wipe the floor with the new cards
If you want to play competitive Hearthstone then it is really unfun and nerve-wracking. However, if you do not care about your winning percentage, then you can play a variety of fun decks appearing on this expansion (ie DH Proving Grounds, Mage Grand Finale, Priest Deathrattle Elwyn Boars, etc - just to name some).
The problem seems to be the Questlines and how meta-defining some of them are. In my opinion, this problem is not going to be solved either on the new expansion, unfortunately...
How is that not only a good morning video? UiS was a FAIYLJOUHR!!!
Most decks are fine imo. Cant all be tier 1. However, the demon seed numbers shouldve been altered and to not ignore fatigue. Only counterplay would be if you could shuffle cards into their deck but that would only delay. Demon seed also has insane healing. You shouldnt have the best of both worlds.
As a wild player it was the biggest failure in hearthstone history which makes me sad because i remember being so hype for the questlines. But they ended up just running the wild format
welll for me it was a succsess, because it give more things to buy with gold. Sadly i miss tiki lord (
It wasn’t quite a failure,it was just imbalanced,some cards would better not exist
"some" KEKLEO
Success? By which parameters? It is strong but damn it is boring
I can’t really agree on this one. United on stormwind had some downsides but I still enjoyed the hell out of it. Quest shaman and quest rogue especially
been dealing with bully mage all expansion
It was great!
Made me quit the game.
It was polarizing in that it was maybe the most fun expansion to play a deck while simultaneously being the most unfun expansion to play against certain decks. Quest Handlock (post all the nerfs) probably the most fun I've ever had with a deck in that how you treat each matchups matter whether you try to win via minion pressure/survival/quest. Death of attrition style control decks that do nothing but react/generate/remove/heal, might be the best thing to happen in an expansion in awhile. Random control priest and skipper/armorsmith/bloodsworn warrior decks from last year were cancer decks we don't need. Control with a win condition is better than attrition.
All around failure even after all the nerfs there still was a feeling of this game became solitaire without counter play. Sadly with the card preview for next set I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a noticeable drop off on preorders because there is nothing I see that can break the quickness of questlines. By the time your about to drop your 8 mana hero card you are on the ropes and about to get blasted by the spell mage who already killed their deck and lining up ignite spam the next turn
ActiBlizz: “UiS can’t have been a failure, we made so much money”
Feels like the amount of cosmetics went up by 400%
i absolutely and completely agree.....go zeddy!
It was horrible, people left in droves.Personally i was done withing a week, the quickest i had ever stopped for an expansion. Mini set got me back for a couple more weeks.
Any expansion that makes non-Control players miss control is a massive failure. (Barring Control Warrior and Rez Priest; those archetypes suck.)
Stormwind is a complete tragedy. I stopped playing HS expect dailies. fck this expansion and them quests
Sucess for noobs and failure for pros
Worst expansion in history + quests will be still OP long time
I agree completely. United in Stormwind is an overall failure.
failure it made me want to play less. Tradable is a great keyword though.
I think this expansion was pretty boring, it just felt monotone. I dont think any deck was op or opressive as many people complain about. The decks were just very boring in my opinion. According to VS hearthstone, face hunter was pretty much the best deck throughout the expansion