Blizzard has been cancelling many interview segments since the incident with blitzchung.

It could be a good move for them, because while they may look bad in the short term by trying to clam up, it makes sense for them to wait until Blizzcon to make their next move. I don't think that they'll be able to escape from demonstrations at their convention by walking on eggshells in the aftermath. That ship set sail as soon as they made the decision regarding the players and the money.

A lot of people were hoping that Blizzard would follow up quickly and roll back the punishments in light of community sentiment. It would make sense if they heard the outpouring of disappointment and disapproval from their fanbase, and decided that they could modify their decision.

However, that's not what happened. J. Allen Brack released a statement the next Saturday that had no fragrance of regret about making the decision in the first place. It came across as completely unemotional and completely un-Blizzard. It read more like a public statement that you would get from a government official than one you would get from the CEO of a game developer whose reputation has been built on their remarkable conviction of putting out a quality product. Blizzard's reputation was laid on a foundation of principles that they used to produce games of a quality and consistency that rivaled any studio out there. They didn't seem to conform to the types of boundaries, or be constrained by the immutable boxes that many other game developers appeared to struggle with.

It's hard for me to express my disappointment with the situation as I understand it. I don't truly understand what is going on over on the other side of the world, I haven't been there and I can't imagine what their experiences are. But from my vantage point as a player from the US that grew up with their games, whose ideas about what it meant to be a company with integrity, were modeled after the company behind StarCraft and Warcraft. A lot has changed with time, and the world is a very different place now in a lot of different ways.

That’s impressive. You going to arlington?

I would like one of two things to happen, and they are not mutually exclusive.

1. The statement released by J. Allen Brack should cost him his job. That type of unapologetic and unemotional response is the antithesis of what I believe Blizzard has built their brand on.

2. Blizzard should release a follow-up statement saying that they do care about the sentiments of US players (or expand that to any population that is protected by laws concerning free speech), but that they as a company have strings that got pulled hard and were forced to do what they did. Personally, I believe that they were threatened with expulsion from the Chinese market if they didn't swiftly and harshly snuff out sentiment about Hong Kong.

What I'm looking for in #2 is essentially calling a spade a spade. I'll go a little bit hyperbolic here, but come out and say that this guy is lucky he's still alive, so he should consider himself lucky that he's (supposedly) going to be paid the money that he earned. Let's interview him again in a couple of years if he hasn't died in a freak electrocution accident while upgrading his PC's PCI streaming card.

what on earth

I assume the player who drops that card doesn't get another six mana that turn right?

Card looks very strong

The new auto chess type game looks kinda fun

dota underlords good bit of fun (and it's free!) if you like auto chess, especially with it's huge update this last week

Never quite understood what auto chess was, until watching all the HS streams last night.

Yeah, no thanks.

Battlegrounds is the most fun I've had with any auto-battler type thing. I understand TFT and played a little...just didn't enjoy it much. I think playing it does a lot more for you than watching it. The decisions you have to make with all the variables being thrown at you with so little time. I haven't used my brain in an enjoyable way in a video game in quite some time. I look forward to playing quite a bit more.

I was interested till I saw you had to spend £45 on a preorder to get a key. Lol go **** yourselves blizzard.

That seems pretty harsh. Especially considering that they increased the amount of packs that you get for those pre-orders without increasing the price.

The mode will be free to everyone at some point. It's going in to open beta relatively soon.

It starts open beta next tuesday. The pre-order thing was just a week earlier access.

Gaaaaaaaaaarbage format

Game is done

I do wonder if battlegrounds is kinda sorta gonna kill the game? I don’t like to be all doom and gloom, but after playing high legend the last 2 months, I don’t feel like the player base is big enough to be split between multiple formats. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t feel like battlegrounds will really bring in new players, just cannibalize the existing player base.

Just like how you could get access to Riot's card game preview/play segment, you can watch streams with your twitch attached to your blizzard account and have it unlock. Just find a couple small streamers (0-10 viewers) with drops enabled and let it run while you're sleeping. I agree it's kinda meh, but it's for early early access and it's getting a lot of people to watch the game whereas they may otherwise just skip it. As someone who's around Twitch a lot, I don't hate the marketing idea.

Also, lol at not preordering if you're going to put any money into the game anyway. Sorry.

+1 I love it! Never played an auto-battler before. Blizzard did a great job with this. Should help keep Hearthstone fresh for years to come

Just wanted to state the obvious:

Blizzard has absolutely ruined HS with the return of evolve. Prior to the wild cards coming back, I was playing HS more than I ever had before, at higher ranks than I ever hit before. I was enjoying the game so much. Checking my tracking software, I haven't played since October 14th. Just an absolute and total fail.

Or maybe a success if the goal was to drive people to battlegrounds by making HS unplayable.

Yeah i havent played much at all last few weeks. Been playing battlegrounds a fair bit though.

I'm pretty addicted to battlegrounds right now. kinda surprising since I had no idea what auto chess was.

Also been playing a lot of Battlegrounds and haven’t played a game of standard in over a week now for the only time this year excluding weeks I’ve been out of town. That being said, Battlegrounds is starting to get kinda boring. It just doesn’t have the strategic depth of Hearthstone. Given it’s a beta, though, I expect it to evolve (no pun intended).

I just started playing HS a couple weeks ago and am enjoying the hell out of the 1v1 mode. Wish I'd discovered it years ago.

Battlegrounds though is something of a frustration. I've played a few games of it and it seemed frantic and a bit confusing. In one game was even in first after several rounds until a guy crushed me with hugely upgraded minions. But that's probably just because I'm not familiar with all the abilities and effects yet to be able to formulate a gameplan under time pressure. I can see it being fun after you've mastered all that.

Battlegrounds is great IMO. It needs new rotations pretty quickly but it's pretty awesome.

For sure. I would love to see them add some more dragons when the new expansion hits. Right now the games are starting to feel pretty samey.

Finally won a game of BG. Then another one in a row. Not really a brag though, because my MMR got hammered down to like 3200 before it happened. The game is hella addicting and fun once you sort of get the hang of it, though I still prefer 1v1.

I was in 8th place with 1 health. And won. With demons.

Well, it was 80% demons for most of the game. I was AFKay and got Siegebreaker as my first minion. For most of the early-mid game, my board was like Siegebreaker, Siegebreaker, the 2/4 buff demons, a soul juggler, a Crowd Favorite and an Amalgam.

I was doing OK in the midgame but then I sold half my minions to pick up Brann. Lost a couple big fights with only 4-5 minions on board when I sold off for Brann and upgraded Siegebreaker.

After getting Brann I started buffing like crazy, at which point Crowd Favorite was mostly carrying.

I leveled super aggressively and was OK taking damage because I figured I'd get a big Battlemaster, and I never did. I tried to pivot to a menagerie build but it didn't really work. I ran Lightfang for two rounds. Kept trying to force a Hydra (bought 3 of them, never combined them) but it didn't really work. Finally I picked up a random murloc and turned it into a poisonous. Bought Malgannis three different times.