Earlier this week, Blizzard announced that it’s popular collectible card game Hearthstone is going to see some major changes. First and foremost is a new game format known as Standard. According to Blizzard this will help them keep Hearthstone “fresh, exciting, and accessible for years to come”.

Standardizing The Card Pool

In a nutshell, Standard will function like the current play modes with the caveat that only the most recently released Hearthstone cards will be available for decks. Standard decks can be built from decks built from a pool of cards that were released in the current and previous calendar year, along with the Basic and Classic card sets.  The devs have stated that Standard will help make for a more dynamic and balanced metagame, as well as making new sets of card have more impact. In addition, they claim it will let the developers have more freedom when designing new cards. And probably the most telling comment they’ve made is that Standard will allow new players to jump in faster without having to collect as many cards. Standard will be available as a format in Friendly Challenges, Ranked and Casual- it will not affect Arena, Solo play or Adventures.

Standard format will be rolling out in the spring, allowing decks to be built using sets from:

• Basic
• Classic
• Blackrock Mountain
• The Grand Tournament
• The League of Explorers
• The Spring 2016 Expansion

Long time players will note that Curse of Naxxramas and Goblins vs. Gnomes are not included in the Standard Format. To help keep track of which cards are in part of a current set, Blizzard has come up with the idea of naming each year for a mythical astronomical sign, with the first year being the Year of the Kraken. As the years progress, older card sets will be rotated out of Standard Play. Another important note is that Adventures and Expansions that are not part of the Standard format will no longer be available for purchase from the shop. In the Year of the Kraken, that includes Naxxramas and Goblins vs Gnomes. If you have purchased the first wing of an adventure before it cycles out, you’ll still be able to buy the rest and play them. And you will also be able to craft cards from any of them with dust- even cards that were previously unable to be crafted.  So what happens to all the older sets?

Welcome To The Wild Side

Wild is the new name for Hearthstone as we know it now. Standard is intended by the game’s developer’s to bring a balanced experience and allow them to spotlight newer cards. Wild will be an anything goes type of deal. All card sets are available in this mode, and you can take on players in all the modes we currently have. In addition, Wild and Standard will both have their own rank, so you can play as you like and still earn rewards for season play. Rewards will be based on the highest rank you earn in one format, not both so no double farming. We see you over there PredictedCyborg.

Revamping and Expanding

One other feature and developer comment stand out from this announcement. The first is that the team is taking this as a time to make some balance changes to the game. Little information has been released as to what those changes might be, but its the kind of thing that any CCG needs as the available pool of cards expands and grows.

The other tidbit is one that players have been clamoring for literally since the game launched: More Deck Slots. Thats right. If you have all nine hero’s unlocked, you will unlock nine more deck slots for a total of 18. No longer will you have to throw out your Windfury/Taunt Deck just so you can build a new deck to crush an Adventure Boss.

Thats a lot of information, and it evokes some major changes in the established game. So, I’ve rounded up two of our Hearthstone players to provide their opinions on the matter, as well as throwing in my own two cents worth. Jump past the video from the developers below to find out what we think of the changes coming to Hearthstone.

Digmbot

I’ve been playing CCG’s for a long time now. What Blizzard is doing is pretty much in line with what Wizards of the Coast have been doing for years with Magic The Gathering. Hell, pretty much every CCG does it. If you want to keep the meta fresh and balanced, you cycle out old cards. I’m just happy there is a mode dedicated to all the batshit crazy stuff that can happen in Hearthstone. I’m also very much looking forward to seeing what balance changes they will make. There are some cards in the game that need a serious nerf (looking at you Piloted Shredder). And giving the devs freedom to make some truly interesting new cards, that can only be a good thing. Right? A lot of people are going to cry and moan about their favorite cards being nerfed, or not allowed in Standard play. To that I say: Get Over It. If you want the game to grow and continue to be fun and exciting, changes have to be made. Deal with it or get out. Adding nine new hero slots is a great addition to. I’ve wanted this literally since I got into the beta. I always thought the nine deck limit was stupid, so I’m not going to beat this horse much more except to say “ABOUT DAMN TIME.”

Having separate ranks for Wild and Standard is a great idea. It allows players to play in a way that they are comfortable with. Now all Blizzard needs to do is find a way to make the ladder a bit more fun. Card backs aren’t really cutting it for me anymore, I need something more. Oh, and if they could make Tavern brawl FUN instead of just a giant RNG bullshit fest, that would be good too.

PredictedCyborg

I’m not entirely sure how to take the changes.

I can see why they’re doing them of course, and finding a new meta in the new Standard mode will be interesting. Problem is, I’ve two decks that I made myself that I’ve spent ages tweaking in places to be as good as they could be and both are affected by the changes coming. My Cybeast deck is a Beast and Mech deck that’ll suffer due to the removal of most Mechs from the GvG set and my Tiny Terrors Paladin deck will lose at least one good method I had of placing my small token Minions onto the board. Sure, I can continue to use both in the Wild mode, but from what I’ve read Wild mode doesn’t include the ranked ladder – which is what I made both these decks for.

I’m also not a fan of the removal of the methods of obtaining both the Naxx and GvG cards except through the crafting of arcane dust. I have obtained all the Naxx cards, but there’s still some GvG cards that I don’t have. I made the choice not to spend loads of money on Hearthstone buying card packs, choosing to complete daily quests to earn the gold to buy my card packs, and now it seems with this change I’ll have to spend actual cash if I ever want to complete my GvG card collection.

Other things coming in the changes I’m excited for. More decks slots? Hell yeah, the community’s been asking for them since the beginning. It will at least allow for 9 slots for new Standard and 9 for Wild – so there we don’t lose out at all. And learning how to make more effective use of newer cards will be fun, especially when the next expansions come out (and hopefully repopulate the Mech population please!)

I just think I could take the new Standard/Wild mode changes if they hadn’t also come with the ‘retirement’ of any method besides dust crafting the cards from Naxx/GvG. That bit’s really not sitting well with me even after a week of hearing the news of changes.

Lonesamurai

Although I’m not much of a TCG player, I’ve followed a lot and played a few over my many decades and packs and decks and Flavours of the month come and go in the TCG market

hearthstone is no different and I quite like the idea that we’ll effectively have two types of game now, Wild play for the crazy oldschool stuff and the upto date gameplay minus older cards to keep the game fresh and upto date

I do understand why some people would be surprised/annoyed that their favourite card is being nerfed or removed, but that’s how these games work.   Unlike other games though, at least in HS, the cards are still around, and it will make for some fun tournies in the future

Well we’ve already had one story about people cheating at a game getting a little karma for it. Now we’ve another, although the ‘karma’ doesn’t seem to be coming from a desire to rid a game of its cheaters – just to spread malware.

The game in question is Hearthstone and one particular scam is from a malicious program that says it is a gold and dust hack, instead actually being “Trojan.Coinbitclip” – a piece of malware that scours the user’s clipboard for Bitcoin Addresses and swaps them out for similar-looking but useless strings of random letters and other gibberish. Losing Bitcoins may not be such a bad payback, depending on how much value you place in them, but it’s still got to sting.

Another program that is just a scam is one that came disguised as a Hearthstone deck tracker – a grey area in the game right now as it tracks what you’ve already pulled from your deck – called Hearthstone Deck Tracker.exe. Instead it is a program called Backdoor.Breut – malware that logs keystrokes, steals passwords and can access the webcam as well. Deck Trackers are technically not cheats as you could do the same with pen and paper, but they’re not exactly popular with all the community playing the game either.

If you want more information, check out Symantec’s report on it. Either way though this is just another good lesson is why in the end it doesn’t pay to cheat in video games.

Amazon has steadily been making inroads into the gaming space in the last couple of years. Now, they’ve announced Lumberyard, a free 3D game engine. Lumberyard can be used to develop for PC and consoles, but thats not the only thing that makes it so interesting. Capitalizing on the acquisition of Twitch, Amazon has built Twitch tools directly into the engine, allowing developers to more easily integrate Twitch features and connectivity.

Lumberyard is free to download- Amazon plans to make all money off of  multiplayer features and web services supporting the games. To that end, Lumberyard, which is currently in beta, is being rolled out alongside a multiplayer service called GameLift. GameLife has a $1.50 per 1,000 daily active user fee plus any other standard fees for Amazon Web Services that may be used. GameLife is billed as a convenient way of including and deploying multiplayer features. Since these features are normally out of range for smaller developers, this should allow developers to include features they might otherwise cut.

Other tools in Lumberyard also include Twitch ChatPlay, which will allow viewers to use Twitch chat to control the game- basically it’s baked in “Twitch Plays” support. And they also have a feature called Twitch JoinIn that will allow broadcasters to invite audience members into their games.

With Unity 5 and Unreal Engine 4 having royalty and licensing fees if a project launches, having a solution that could be potentially 100% free if you don’t use Amazon’s web services, Lumberyard is certainly looking like it might shake up the existing development space for a lot of developers. Of course, we’ll need to see how the first Lumberyard developed games fare, but seeing some diversity in the game engine market certainly can’t be a bad thing.

Check out Amazon’s Lumberyard announcment video below:

Armored Warfare is a free-to-play tank fighter game, and with its next update will come a new map: Coastal Threat.

As the trailer says, it takes place in a former tourist hotspot that’s happened upon some “harder times”. You’d expect to see things like boarded up shops, but instead the tanks will get to rumble through an urban centre – including a beach and a charred forest. That means that there will be a lot of close-range combat as well as some strategic placement of artillery to control an enemy’s advance from far away.

The new map is a PvP one and 1200×1200 metres in size, meaning plenty of room to rumble around and do battle

Also coming in the new update (0.13) will be a new dealer and a refined matchmaking system. There’s also been changes to the reward system for PvE matches, meaning that there will be more opportunities presented to players.

Armored Warfare’s update 0.13 is due for release on February 11.

Unsung Story was Kickstarter backed about two years ago, in February 2014. It came from Playdek and was a turn-based tactics game that promised a blend of RPG and strategy elements. The campaign raised $600k and a further $60,000 past that with a due date of July 2015.

Like many games recently it had that date pushed back, and that was fine. The last update was in October of last year showing off a simple combat system. Now they’ve given a new update and it’s not good news – active development on the game has ceased as a small internal team tries to keep the studio together through taking on small jobs. They won’t say the game’s cancelled, but it doesn’t sound good.

The news comes from an update post that lets people know that the company lost a load of members back in October, and so a serious rethink of the direction they were headed was in order. Their current plans are thus:

“We now have one internal team capable of working on a single project, and for the financial strength of the company we need to focus on a few products in the near term that have the ability to get to a retail release before Unsung Story is able to. While this is a difficult choice to make, it is one we need to do for the ongoing financial health of the company.”

Which means they’re taking on jobs from other developers and publishers to bring in the money. As for Unsung Story, they’re trying to work out what to do next with it:

“For Unsung Story, we will explore options for outside development help, and will look to see if we are able to bring on an outside team that can assist us in furthering development. While we aren’t assured this will come to fruition, we do want to make sure that we are exploring any options at hand that can make progress on the game.”

Again, doesn’t sound good. Needless to say, the backers aren’t going to be too happy with this development.