It's March 8. Location: The Blizzard campus in California.
Pro players, streamers, media representatives and community influencers are summoned at a "secret meeting". Its topic is giving a sneak peak into Hearthstone's next expansion. Blizzard calls it "Whispers of the Old Gods", a curtsy to one of the less developed layers of the Warcraft lore. It's a dark theme, the "darkest Hearthstone will ever go," says lead designer Ben Brode. Immortal, divine beings corrupt the world of Warcraft and the cozy inn of Hearthstone. The denizens of the world change under the malefic influence of C'Thun, the many-eyed Old God, and his cultists, as well as Yogg-Saron, the horrific being with mouths where his eyes should be.
In a press conference, Ben Brode and Yong Woo of Team 5 spent an hour answering questions about the new expansion as well as the arrival of the new standard format. This is the first part of their presentation, focusing on the new content specifically, as recorded by our very own Tom "Matthieist" Matthiesen.
Why did you have the idea of giving away C'Thun and cultists with the first Old Gods packs?
Brode: Because there are so many cards within the Old Gods expansion that directly reference C'Thun - and especially because he's a legendary so he's hard to get - you will always have these reminders that you'll need these cards to build this cool deck. So we're always looking for opportunities to surprise and delight players and this was one option to make them feel good, but also empower players to build this cool new deck. We didn't want it to be upside down, like "Ah, I don't have these cards, I can't build it".
How far into development did you decide to give out this bundle? Was C'Thun's design set in stone?
Brode: As soon as we had the design of C'Thun and a bunch of cards that interact directly with him and it became one of the pillars of the set, we decided that we have to give it away for free.
Woo: The feeling of opening a pack and finding a cool card in it is such a great experience. We really wanted to feel awesome opening those free packs. And then you find C'Thun and some cultists and you're like "Yeah, I want to start building this deck and it will only get better".
"Old Gods is a theme we've been kicking around for multiple years, because it's only half explored in other Blizzard games."
Why did you decide to go with the Old Gods as a theme?
Brode: Old Gods is a theme we've been kicking around for multiple years because the old gods is a theme that's only half explored in other Blizzard games and we're excited about exploring new territories with Hearthstone. We made new characters for League of Explorers. So we were thinking about the myriad of ideas we can explore and the old gods kept popping up: Awesome, giant minions, creepy creatures.
Woo: I also love the idea of bizarro versions of things, like Mario/Wario. So that was really fun to explore. What would be the mirrored universe version of [card]Antique Healbot[/card] or some of these other guys and that's been very awesome.
Was the upcoming Standard always in mind when you were designing Whispers?
Brode: Yes. They happened kind of simultaneously. Most of it happened during the balancing phase of the project. We'd design a bunch of awesome cards and then go "Hey, we can't make this because you win on turn one because of that other card." We still care about Wild balance, so we don't want to make cards that are just awful for wild but totally fine in Standard.
There's a different tolerance to power level there.
Woo: When it comes to Whispers, in Standard it will be a larger portion of the cards you will be able to play compared to Wild. So the cards you're going to see will have more impact. This is why we keep Standard in mind.
There are three other Old Gods. Will there be cards that buff or interact with them?
Woo: Yes, there are four Old Gods in total and we'll be talking about the other three over the next few we?ks.
Brode: C'Thun has the most support in the set. In general with the Old Gods, we designed them in such a way that you're inspired to build a deck around them.
"We designed the Old Gods in such a way that you're inspired to build a deck around them."
Will you be able to have multiple Old Gods in a deck?
Brode: When we get to the Old Gods card release I think this will be obvious.
Are we going to know which cards of the old expansions are looked at as part of the balancing process for standard before we start seeing more Old Gods cards?
Brode: We're going to announce the changed cards very close to the launch of Old Gods. We will have revealed most of the set.
I guess one of the concerns is that we'll see a new Old Gods card that works well with some old cards and then said old card gets changed and we end up disappointed.
Brode: Yes, that is correct. In general - and that's a personal feeling about it - once we announce a nerf it feels extra bad to lose all those cards. I know what nerfs are coming before you guys (the entire audience bursts out laughing here) do so when I get [card]Warsong Commander[/card] knowing it's going to get changed at some point it's even more frustrating. My goal is to bury this announcement closest to the actual change.
Are you planning on introducing regular balance changes for the future to have this ever-changing metagame even when there's no new expansion coming?
Brode: In general, it's important to be conservative with changing cards. The metagame changes sometimes quite dramatically. Some games do balance patches every two weeks but the meta changes more frequently than that for card games. If your Battlecruiser now moves 2 per cent slower, it doesn't feel like StarCraft has changed too much, but if we change a number on a card that's a whole different thing. The cost of nerfing a card is quite high for us, which is why we've been so conservative. That, and sometimes it's not worth it. Obviously, when things are really bad, we step in but don't think that the fact we're changing so many cards with standard is any indication that we've changed our policy on nerfing going forward.
The goal of the changes we're doing now is to ensure standard is a dynamic environment. We really want it to change as new expansions are getting released. If that's not the case after we do these changes, we'll do other things.
League of Explorers got a very good reception especially in terms of legendary design, forcing you to build a deck around them. Especially looking at C'Thun, is that a design philosophy you're going towards as opposed to just releasing big creatures like Dr. Boom?
Woo: Overall, we love making cards that you can build a deck around. The Old Gods are very powerful, but also very unique. When you see what they do, you will say "Wow, that's crazy, I want to build around that."
Brode: In general, legendary minions, a lot of them are neutral. We want them to be more narrow: Powerful, but good in certain types of decks, not all types of decks. If I could go back in time, I would make Dr. Boom either a class card or made it a bit more narrow. In regards to legendaries going forward, we tried to make them either narrow, or class, which is another way of saying "narrow".
"If I could go back in time, I would make Dr. Boom either a class card, or a bit more narrow."
The whole idea of making bizarro versions of cards, having them corrupted, is really interesting and a way to re-use old content. What was the starting point for this, did you think like "We want to have a new Loot Hoarder, but don't want to just reprint it"?
Brode: When we started looking at Whispers of the Old Gods, we started thinking what does it mean, how does it feel. We looked at buzz words and "corruption" is the big thing, "big monsters", too. So then we started thinking what we can build. We have corrupted versions of lots of cards ([card]Corrupted Healbot[/card], [card]Polluted Hoarder[/card] - editor's note). But the idea is that the Old Gods don't just corrupt Hearthstone, they corrupt Warcraft. Then we looked for parallels in Hearthstone. If you corrupt a Healbot, you want it to do something a Healbot would do, there must be some connection there.
We made a list of "What would this corrupted card do, what would that corrupted card do" and that's super fun.
Woo: And the focus was really on the flavor. It's not like we looked at Antique Healbot and thought "Oh, we need another card that you get health back when you play it." It was more like "What would be the evil twin version of Healbot" and then we do something that's totally episode. Mechanically, they are almost mirrored. It's not about reprinting cards, it's about re-imagining them.
Lore-wise, Hearthstone is obviously secondary to World of Warcraft where the majority of the story development happens. Yet, looking at how League of Explorers introduced some new characters, are you looking to build a storyline happening for Hearthstone, or it's just fun stuff happening in the tavern?
Brode: The latter. I don't think that Hearthstone is best suited for story-telling. Obviously, adventures are better suited for that so we like to explore some story there. But the thing we are good at is exploring vibe. What does it feel to have expansion with tentacle monsters in it? That's a vibe we can sell over 134 cards. But it's more challenging to tell a compelling story in this manner.
Woo: It's not about necessarily about a narrative, but we're very interested in building a world. When you saw the awesome cinematic of Whispers, you saw Elise hanging out. We're very excited in creating this world, like who goes to these inns and how do these adventures weave in with the denizens.
"Hearthstone isn't best suited for story-telling. But we're good at exploring vibe. We want to build a world."
We're seeing a lot of corrupted minions. Will there be corrupted spells?
Brode: Yes. When you open a Whispers pack, you will know it's a whispers pack. The word "madness" is on a lot of the cards.
Woo: That's what I'm really proud of. You open a pack and it feels like the end of the world. These guys are trying these crazy things to stop that from happening, these other guys are trying to make it happen, etc.
Brode: This is the darkest Hearthstone will ever go. It doesn't really darker than the Old Gods. But we try to look at it from the fun side of them, too. It's still light and Heartstone-y but the Old Gods are here and they are not very light or Hearthstone-y. They are terrifying. But everything else surrounding them is supposed to be fun.
