On March 12th Blizzard announced its newest expansion for their virtual TCG game- Hearthstone. This expansion is now live, adding 135 new cards, new hero portrait, new mechanics, new game mode and more. Original trailer for Witchwood below:
Notably, this time Blizzard rose to the occasion and the expansion became available in both Americas AND Europe at the same time. And the servers didn’t even metaphorically dissolve like they always do (although trying to get the game started at launch was a slog). Witchwood itself is well… Absolutely crazy. As always when the meta-game shifts dramatically, things go wild, but this time there’s a specific culprit.
One of the cards, called Shudderwock, in reference to a monster from Lewis Carroll’s Alice Through the Looking Glass, in particular seems to be breaking the game in half and the thing is… We’ve seen it coming. I know I have. The problem isn’t even that the card is unbalanced (although it kind of is). The problem is that once it’s played in succession, the animations are taking waaay to long to resolve, leading to players sitting in front of their screens with turns taking forever.
Personally I can confirm it’s a fun to play card and it’s as crazy as I imagined it, but even I can see a problem here.