hearthstone Saviors of Uldum Announced as the Next Hearthstone Expansion

[Lemon1 20]

The new Hearthstone expansion has been announced, and it's called Saviors of Uldum.

 

 

The new Hearthstone Expansion Saviors of Uldum has been announced, set to release on August 6th.

 

We've known - or at least very strongly suspected - since Friday's teaser that the League of Explorers will be returning to Hearthstone in the next expansion. Now here they are in all their glory: the next expansion has been announced, and it's called Saviors of Uldum!

Set to launch on August 6th, Saviors of Uldum will feature 135 new cards. It will tell the story of the League of Explorers following the events of the Rise of Shadows and the Great Dalaran Heist, continuing the three-part tale being told throughout the Year of the Dragon. As Elise Starseeker, Reno Jackson, Brann Bronzebeard and Sir Finley Mrrgglton continue the adventure, they'll have new dangers to contend with - including persistent new Reborn minions.

Reborn cards will return to life with one health remaining after they're destroyed for the first time - perfect for the denizens of Uldum's tombs and crypts.

Another theme of the expansion is the chaotic Plague cards. These will affect every minion on the board. It's likely that there will be one Plague card for each EVIL class: Rogue, Warlock, Warrior, Priest and Shaman.

The expansion also sees the return of the beloved mechanic from Journey to Un'goro: Quests!

The new quests don't work quite the same way they did in Journey to Un'goro, however - instead of receiving a new card as a quest reward, your hero power will immediately be upgraded.

The announcement capped off by teasing "more new and familiar mechanics" - implying that Reborn won't be the only new mechanic released.

Also revealed were these four cards:

The announcement includes details of two pre-order options for Saviors of Uldum:

• The Mega Bundle, which includes 80 packs, the new Elise Starseeker Druid hero, the new Elise Starseeker card back, and a random Saviors of Uldum Golden Legendary card.
• The Saviors of Uldum Bundle, which includes 50 packs, the new Elise Starseeker Druid hero, and a random Saviors of Uldum Golden Legendary card.

For 90 days following the release of Saviors of Uldum, logging into the game will reward you with a random free Legendary Quest card.

Saviors of Uldum will also mark the beginning of a new Arena season. The current playable sets will therefore rotate out, to be replaced with:

• Basic
• Classic
• League of Explorers
• Journey to Un'Goro
• Kobolds & Catacombs
• Rastakhan's Rumble
• Saviors of Uldum

Pre-release events where you can try out the new expansion before anybody else will run from 2nd-5th August. Keep an eye on http://www.firesidegatherings.com/ to see if one is being hosted near you.

Are you excited to see the return of Elise, Brann, Reno and Finley? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

[Slam 40]

 

They have the trailer out too 

[Guest]

13 hours ago, Lemon1 said:

The expansion also sees the return of the beloved mechanic from Journey to Un'goro: Quests!

Is this sarcasm?

The quest-mechanic from Un'goro was horrible.

The idea of quests wasn't bad itself - but that you were forced to craft a legendary card for EACH CLASS just to try out the quest?

Worst design ever. I guess lots of players haven't played quest decks at all. Personally, I never got a single quest-card and haven't played it. If they would have made a general legendary card for quests (all classes use the same neutral quest card) it would have been interesting. Then you could invest 1600 dust and try the new mechanic. Like they did with C'thun. There were lots of C'thun decks, but all centered around one neutral legendry minion. (And he was for free btw.)
And - at least that's my feeling - you encountered more player who tried a C'thun deck then quest-decks. But admittedly, there are more different decks now then back then. That could be an explanation too. And of course I haven't played that many games, it could be coincidence.

 

But here we are again. Blizzard with a quite special view about how awesome they are themselves and how awesome stuff they do is...

[Smorod 33]

3 hours ago, WedgeAntilles said:

The quest-mechanic from Un'goro was horrible.

I did not like them either. One reason is that some of them were overpowered and almost impossible to counter, others did not require the player to make any effort or sacrifice to complete. The other is that one fundamental design key of card games is that you do not have (full) control of your first hand, and that makes playing games interesting because on 2 games are the same. Quests break that to some degree. For the same reason I hated Baku and Genn at first. I made peace with Baku only because I opened it. But not with Quests because I did not have any.

I hope that the new Quests will have a more reasonable power level and will require some effort, so as to address one of these 2 issues.

3 hours ago, WedgeAntilles said:

I guess lots of players haven't played quest decks at all. Personally, I never got a single quest-card and haven't played it.

That's probably the reason why Blizzard will give us all one random Quest card from the upcoming expansion for free. See, they are learning.

[Guest]

19 minutes ago, Smorod said:

That's probably the reason why Blizzard will give us all one random Quest card from the upcoming expansion for free. See, they are learning.

Well, if there are 9 quests again and you get one for free that's better then nothing. However, it will still make a deck  unplayable if you do not craft a legendary card. Every other deck can be tried in a budget version first. And only if you like the playstyle you can "upgrade" the deck and invest dust.

(Or - Odd/Even - you only need a neutral card to craft and then you can play any even / odd deck of each class.)

 

[Smorod 33]

3 hours ago, WedgeAntilles said:

Every other deck can be tried in a budget version first. And only if you like the playstyle you can "upgrade" the deck and invest dust.

That's a valid point, I never considered things under that angle. Quests are not an isolated case though. There were also no budget versions of Kingsbane, Chef Nomi, OTK Paladin or Togwaggle Druid decks, to name just a few.

It may not be Blizzard's intention, nor interest, to allow us to test all the decks before we craft the cards. Some archetypes have decent budget decks, some have budget decks which do not really fly (which is counter-advertising really), and some don't have a budget version at all. There are plenty of other deck types out there which have one if you like to test things out. There are also Whizbang the Wonderful and now Zayle if you want to play with cards that you don't own, as well as some tavern brawls and arena - although I understand that some concepts are specific to constructed.

For Quests and other legendary cards which define the deck, I believe that the idea is that budget players do these decks if and only if they happen to have received the card in question. There has to be some advantage to putting money in the game after all. Blizzard is not a charity.

[Guest]

43 minutes ago, Smorod said:

That's a valid point, I never considered things under that angle. Quests are not an isolated case though. There were also no budget versions of Kingsbane, Chef Nomi, OTK Paladin or Togwaggle Druid decks, to name just a few.

Those are just decks that center around one card - but the whole expansion centered around quests. All the stupid marketing-talk about Unguro was centered around quest. Well, not all, but most.

It doesn't matter if you can't play a specific deck. But if you are "banned" from practically the complete expansion? That's a joke.

Take a look at other theme-decks.

C'thun - you got C'thun for free.

Jade-mechanic - you could test this deck out if you like it. And if you do you can craft Aya Blackpaw because she is very strong. But you can play the decks without her.

Odd / Even - craft one card and unlock the whole Odd / even mechanic for every single class at once.

Those were times Blizzard made hundred of millions of dollars with Hearthstone. Obviously that isn't enough for Blizzard. They need to queeze out more money. More expansions, more adventures, higher prices, more and more and more.

Sure, they can do that. But they should accept that more and more people see Blizzard not longer as a company that earns money by making awesome games - but as a company that doesn't give *filtered* about anyhting except money. Money, money, money. More, more, more. Who cares about games? Blizzard doesn't, that's for sure. And the problem is: From a pure financial aspect they are correct. No great game can earn as much money as "games" like candy crush. Or Hearthstone. Because you can squeeze much more money out of a skin, diamons to boost your progress, cardpacks and stuff like that. Very little input, huge output.

Games like The Witcher 3 or Cyberpunk 2077 can never compete with that. Both games have earned a lot of money / will earn CD Project Red a lot of money. But the ratio is 10 or a 100 times worth compared to candy crush.

That's why you need to WANT to make GAMES. Not just money. If you just want money - yeah, make Hearthstone, Candy Crush...

And here we are - Blizzard / Activision. Or Bioware / EA.

If you want to make great games (and earn good money, but not the most possible) - well, hello CD Project Red.

You can decide for yourself that a gamer prefers.
 

I am looking forward to see Blizzard / Activision crash.  And I am quite confident we will see them fall. Bioware too. And much faster.

Because somehow I have a little faith in mankind left, a little faith that says: You can't keep making money with games that get worse and worse (but cheaper and cheaper).

Other companies thought they could do it too - Lucas Arts. Well, didn't work. Not in the long run.

[Arcling 877]

Well, this trailer looks like fun, unlike playing the game. I wonder why they removed The Villainous Nine trailer though...

[Smorod 33]

15 hours ago, WedgeAntilles said:

I am looking forward to see Blizzard / Activision crash.

I respect your opinion to some degree, maybe you have a deeper understanding of the video game business than I do. Although you comparing Hearthstone to Candy Crush certainly hurts.

But then there's just one thing I do not understand. If you believe that Blizzard are jerks and their games are complete *filtered*, then why are you still commenting on almost every article on this site, which is dedicated to Blizzard games? Why do you keep playing their games? You should act according to your beliefs and claims, otherwise you lose credibility.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Smorod said:

But then there's just one thing I do not understand. If you believe that Blizzard are jerks and their games are complete *filtered*, then why are you still commenting on almost every article on this site, which is dedicated to Blizzard games? Why do you keep playing their games? You should act according to your beliefs and claims, otherwise you lose credibility.

That is a fair question. However, one important thing: I always stress that Blizzardgames are well done in the technical area. Combatsystem, character-control, stuff like that.  Story, characters, storytelling, dialogue - horrible, yes. But the gameplay is well made. Most of the games I do not play.

HotS: Haven't played since 2 years.

Overwatch: Never played at all

WoW: the same

Starcraft 2: Only play maybe 2-3 hours / month with a friend with the coop-commanders. More to stay in touch and talk with him then actually playing the game.

Diablo 3: I played a lot, because I liked the gameplay. Story was aweful but I haven't encountered another Hack and Slay that has a combat-mechanic that comes even close to that of Diablo 3. Van Helsing? Torchlight? Victor Vran? There are lightyears between the combat of those and that of D3. In the last 1-2 years I played maybe 1-2 hours / month, mostly while listening to music or something like that.

That leaves Hearthstone. A game I still often play a few games a day. Why? I am not exactly sure. If I just have 20 minutes there is no huge point in starting a "real" game. But 2 games of Hearthstone? That's fine.  And going to Rank 5 has still some strange fascination, that's why (to my own horror) I played 3 hours Hearthstone last weekend.

Or if I watch a LoL E-Sportgame. Why not play Hearthstone on the second screen? It's not like I miss a lot if I don't watch for a few seconds and concentrate on Hearthstone during this time. And if the LoL game gets interested I just concede the Hearthstone game. Or that I make a missplay because I only take 5 seconds to look which card to play - I don't care about that.

And there is the last element: If I do the daily quests, I manage to get enough dust to have one or two Tier 1 decks. If I stop playing Hearthstone and just play 2,3 games a week, I can quit the game competly. Would that be good? Probably. However, I played Hearthstone since the release. And giving up something like that is not that easy. You feel like throwing away a nice collection.

 

That's why - yes, I still play Blizzard products.

However, I am not ready to pay anymore for Blizzard-games.

In earlier years, I always bought the games.

SC Broodwar. Diablo 2 + AddOn, (I admit that I played Diablo 1, but it was a copy...), Warcraft 3 + Add On.

Diablo 3 + Starcraft 2.

I always bought the games after release. I gave them my money gladly.

Because games were great. Then I got more and more disappointed.

I bought Diablo 3 AddOn for a reduced price IIRC.

Heart of the Swarm wasn't worth more then 15 bucks to me.

Legacy of the Void I planned never to buy. Then I bought it in combination with the Nova-Missoion DLC for 13? bucks.Because we had a LAN coming up - and by buying the last part the whole Lan could use it if I was host to the game. (Everybdoy else only bought Wings of Liberty). That's why I "sacrifised" myself. And I was surprised, the Nova-Missons were actually fun. Decent story, interesting characters, I was indeed glad to have bought it.

Necromancer: Never bothered with it, isn't even 5 bucks worth to me.

Hearthstone: I bought the welcome bundle for 5 bucks several years ago, that's been it.

 

10 years ago I bought every game after release for full price. Now I buy it with 50-75% discount, if at all.

 

And why do I comment? Not sure. Because I have a small hope that Blizzard will get back to what they were? Maybe.
Because I want to voice my disappointment? Yeah.
Maybe I even hope that others read my comments and realize: Yeah, that's true, games 10 years ago where much better. And repeat my statements. To a point that even Blizzard realizes that they are doing something wrong. That's ridiculous, of course, I know that.

And the last part: I wanted to optimize my Hearthstone-decks, my Diablo 3  builds and got to this site several years ago. And I liked the community. That's why I stick around.

I do try to point out positive things about Blizzard, I do not want to be only negative. The guy who hates everything.

I always say that gameplaymechanics work great.
I like how Blizzard handels Hall of Fame.
I defended the last Hearthstone adventure and claimed that 2800 gold was worth the price, because you got enough in return.

However, I just can't defend the general path they have taken. And that's what makes me sad and leads my big postings about Blizzard: Blizzard DOES invest in the games. A smooth gameplay like in SC 2 and Diablo 3 is a masterpiece. That's incredible hard to make, that takes lots of skill and dedication. And that's why I just do not get it why they *filtered* on the story, why the make the story this horrible, why they use dialogues that a drunken, drugaddicted half-wit couldn't write worse.

 

Sorry for this long posting again, hopefully I could present my inner thoughts in a matter that is understandable.

[Lemon1 20]

On 7/2/2019 at 8:16 AM, WedgeAntilles said:

Is this sarcasm?

The quest-mechanic from Un'goro was horrible.

It's certainly delivered with a knowing wink!

That said, I for one had a lot of fun with the Un'goro quests - I was trying to make Lakkari Sacrifice work competitively right up until the day it rotated ?