REVIEWS: Hearthstone: United in Stormwind caught up with the quest for simplicity

Looking back, Blizzard then “killed” the decent TCG World of Warcraft to create a purely digital game of Hearthstone on its ashes. It bet on user friendliness, liking and simple game mechanisms. And these principles are adhered to to this day. As a result, it has become massively popular. However, with the current, already eighteenth, expansion called United in Stormwind, the question again arises as to whether the dogmatic clinging to these mantras is not an imaginary ball at the foot in some areas of the game.

You may have noticed the ridicule of players that with this expansion, the game has finally turned into a single player game and Solitaire. This is, of course, a bit of an exaggerated statement, albeit at its core, at least for the newly introduced package archetypes, not so much as to the point. What happened?

United in Stormwind has introduced a new type of Questlines card for each profession represented. We all still have in our living memory the legendary tasks from the expansion of Saviors of Uldum, which were relatively straightforward: you meet the condition, you get a reward. Questlines work the same way, except that it’s a series of several smaller tasks that involve a smaller reward, while the larger one is only at the very end.

Although the creators meant well, it turned out as always, if not a little worse. It sounds amusing on paper, but practice quickly showed the problem. For some types of packs, such as mage or warlock, you basically play a mini-game with yourself. The interactivity has completely disappeared from the game, dragged over by the control of the game board, which can be almost ignored. In short, you play yours and in the sixth round there is an end. The game is more reminiscent of some adventures in which you play against the computer than a duel with a live opponent.

The problem is that the arsenal of cards does not include enough technical cards that could disrupt the opponent’s game. Some professions have so-called “secrets”, which are cards that you play in your turn and your opponent does not see what kind of card it is. Then, when the condition of this card is met, usually by some opponent’s action, the effect is applied. This is the only way to disrupt an opponent’s game in his turn.

Hearthstone doesn’t want a direct interaction like Magic’s, he avoids the discard to protect the player from frustration, but at the same time he (probably) doesn’t mind non-interactive packages, fatique or OTK (one-turn kill) decks. The response to Questlines were, of course, quick packs designed to defeat the opponent before he completes his series of quests and kills you with a combo. Fans of control packages don’t like that, on the other hand, I don’t see a problem with it, if the creators can always mix with the target in a fun way and spread the archetypes. It will always be at the expense of someone.

But what bothers me is the minimal interactivity. Playing against new archetypes is boring, during which you sometimes wait for your opponent to spin his fifteen cards. However, the animations run at standard speed, so in extreme cases with a lot of cards they can spill over into the opponent’s rounds. Uf. Which reminds me that I quite remember the time when good prowess was directly part of the design of the profession. Now every profession has a hand full of cards.