Hearthstone is a game that I hate to love. There are so many things right with it, and at the same time so many things wrong. The meta sucks right now, particularly in Arena mode. Every time I queue up against Paladin, I let out an involuntary sigh. All these traumatic memories flood my mind, from getting beaten down by two Ashbringers in one game, to seeing my opponent’s life get filled from one when I was near victory, back up to a full 30 because of a discovered Ragnaros LIghtlord, to getting Sunkeeper Tarim’d after a Stand Against Darkness, because he discovered one through that horrible taunt-creation asshole, “Welcome to the Jungle” or whatever the fuck it’s called. If it isn’t Paladin, it’s likely Mage or Rogue, obviously, as those are the strongest–edit: the only viable character classes in Arena, (unless you’re very lucky with card quality and synergies in your Shaman draft.) Every mage matchup I have to expect a board clear at least three times a game, and Rogue will kill any big minion I play. By the time I have enough mana to play one, you can bet that ugly cunt Maiev is gonna have discovered at least one or two Meteors/Polymorphs and he’ll have like four Vilespines by then anyway. If I go second, the chance my opponent WON’T have a firefly to start his tempo-bullying to victory is almost none, and I won’t recover soon enough. If he has a Vicious Fledgling on three, I very likely lose the game. Hearthstone is a minefield of variance that creates an atmosphere of dread and impending disaster. It’s not exactly conducive to fun. There’s no back and forth these days; most games seem to play out like fucking Quest Rogue. You watch helplessly as your opponent sets up an impossibly snowbally situation you can’t recover from, and the tempo swings are so dramatic there is just no way to come back anymore. It’s depressing going 0-3 for the THIRD time in a row because of bad draws and your opponent having more removal than God. By the time he’s into his fifth Cabalist’s Tome you’re wondering whether you just concede and save yourself some time.
The crux of the problem seems to lie in the new rarity format in Arena, which at first was kind of refreshing and interesting. Seeing more epic rarity cards was fun–but now I’ve learned that the chance my opponent has a ridiculously powerful legendary isn’t all that out of the ordinary, and of course, it’s tough to play around them. Your mind isn’t trained that way; you don’t expect Archmage Antonidas on turn seven paired with Arcane missiles/sorcerer’s apprentice. And yet these frustratingly weird niche situations seem to happen with alarming regularity. And every time I’m like, “Wait, WHAT?! What the fuck man!!” One time I played a rogue with a legitimate murloc deck, and he had Warleader with four–FOUR murlocs he just played. I’ve come up against Ragnaros Lightlord back to back–not discovered through any other cards, mind you, just like–in his DECK. One arena run I had two Malygos’s. One deck I drafted had literally THREE Yasharj’s. In case you were wondering, that’s… FUCKING RIDICULOUS! Really, I often wonder why more people don’t have 0 win runs. I consider myself a good player. I’ve been playing long enough to have learned about board presence, and weighing risk; controlling the board vs. going face when your opponent just has too many cards on me. And I’ve gone 12 wins many times. But there are those days (and those days aren’t just a few) when I just can’t stop the losing streak– where my opponent just HAS the answer–Every. Single. Turn. And it is depressing going 0-3, 1-3, 1-3, then 0-3 again, etc, because of the wild amount of variance in Arena.
I think the rarity needs to be dialed back a little, maybe not back to exactly the way it was, but dialed back a LITTLE. And there should be bans. Some cards are bullshit. That’s not an opinion, it’s a fact. It’s a fact that Vicious Fledgling is bullshit. It’s a fact that Tyrion showing up as a discoverable option in Pally is bullshit. And Cabalist’s Tome in ANY form is….UH-BULLSHIT. Some cards are just too broken to be fair in an arena environment. Blizzard seems to have an aversion to fixing, uh, well, ANYTHING. They are not proactive enough, and they don’t seem to have a generous attitude when it comes to maintaining the frustrations within Hearthstone. It’s almost like they’re sociopathic. Don’t they know that there are real, lasting negative effects in the game environment? Hearthstone is alive. It is an experience. And that experience is generally delight buried in mountains of frustration and bullshit. It’s a shame, really. Many popular YouTubers in the Hearthstone community have expressed their frustrations, and all of them say the same things. “Hearthstone is such a great game AT ITS CORE, but Blizzard keeps fucking it up.” And they’re all correct of course. Hearthstone is a wonderful game with really cool card interactions. The polish is there, and it’s great. The sound bytes, the emotes, the wacky card interactions, it all creates such a vibrant experience oozing with charm–and yet there’s a dark side. Hearthstone I liken to an alcoholic, eccentric actor in the starring role of a beloved kids show. (Doesn’t everyone? No? Ok, well, just hear me out…) He has the talent, he just lets everybody down because he’s just not all there. He comes in late. He is disrespectful to his fans. He is often arrogant. He doesn’t even know what makes him special, he just does what he does and sabotages much of the progress he’s made with a three month long bender full of crack smoking, blackouts, public embarrassment and Fireland’s Portals. And everyone keeps trying to talk sense into him, but he doesn’t know he has a problem–or doesn’t care. And yet people still love him. Because he hits a nerve. He touches on something special, and he shows us a place to escape to, a place with so much promise. Another videogame comes to mind sharing a similar “personality,” and that’s Destiny. It seems there is a certain type of game developer that just is a thing, and it’s the absentee talent. Destiny, like Hearthstone, is something quite special, and at times, great. And actually, I think it may be a bit of an unfair comparison, because unlike Blizzard, Bungie has made SOME significant changes. They have taken strides. And the guys working there, though hopelessly clueless and absurd at times, have corrected many of their errors, and though they continuously make bizarre design choices, (no dedicated servers, weapon balancing that often defies all common sense, Shoulder Charge, [ok, that one is more of a personal gripe] etc.) they listen to the fans and they certainly are passionate about what they’ve created, that much is obvious to anyone. But even still, it all can often be marred by a lack of a key missing ingredient, and that ingredient is generosity, it’s the philosophy and the premise that the fan should be taken care of with the utmost thoughtfulness and care. It’s the ENTHUSIASM for giving the fan what they want. Blizzard, like Bungie, seem to be very rigid in the way they see things, and lack a kind of easy going attitude of generosity. Maybe they misinterpret it as drudgery, or think that it’s not as important as “success”, ie money, but they could learn a thing or two from the opposite end of the scale, a company like CD Project Red, who are generous almost to a fault. They put love into their projects, and of course there’s wisdom in that approach. Things seem to work out when you are more interested in the DOING than in the result. It seems radical, and for all intents and purposes, unfortunately, it kinda IS, but money can’t be the only reason to do things, in video games or in life, or even the primary reason. It will come with the joy of the art itself. (I’m talking about the creativity that goes into it, the SOUL of Hearthstone, if you will, and it is there, it must be, or people wouldn’t put up with so much of the bullshit that Hearthstone is positively infested with.)
There’s a great sense of sadness to it all. It’s an oppressive dark cloud over something beautiful. I know I said it before, but really it feels so much like a tragic alcoholic. Someone who is just too unstable to make it all work. And as in the case of the big hearted, sensitive, self destructive drunk, everyone suffers. And there’s nothing to be said about it. We just go about our days, enjoying what’s there, and say a little prayer, bowing our heads in solemn recognition of what is missing, and wonder with cynicism in our hearts if anything will change. Then our friend commits suicide, so we cheer ourselves up with a game of good ol’ Hearthstone! Then we get Meteor’d–But then we get drunk and forget all about it! Videogames!
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