First:

Nerfs that you probably are already aware of -- Small-Time Bucaneer now has 1 health and Spirit Claws costs 2, thank god.

Ladder change that you probably are already aware of -- Ladder will now have "floors" at Ranks 15, 10 and 5. So if you reach rank 15 you will no longer be able to drop from it, for example.

Year of the Mammoth changes -- http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/20475356

Rotation -- As promised, when the first 2017 expansion shows up, BRM, TGT and LOE will rotate out of Standard.

Individual cards rotating out -- A number of cards will leave the Classic set and become Wild-only cards. These are:
- Ragnaros
- Sylvanas
- Azure Drake
- Ice Lance
- Conceal
- Power Overwhelming

I am going to miss N'Zothing Sylvanas, POing Leeroy and 6 damage Ice Lances.

Dust refund -- You will get the full dust value for those cards without the need to disenchant them, up to the maximum number of copies allowed in a deck. If you have a golden Ragnaros and a normal Ragnaros, the golden copy will be the one refunded. So basically there is no drawback to getting a gold version of those cards now.

No more adventures -- There will be three full expansions per year, each with 130 cards. From the second expansion onwards, they will also make free single-player missions available. Adventures are harder to design and make less money, so I guess I can understand why they did this.

More Wild support -- If you care.

New Rogue hero -- Quest reward for winning a number of games.

Other things -- There will be limited-time daily login rewards which go from gold to packs.

All of those look like good changes overall, the only mixed bag for me is the Adventure one since it introduces more variety at the cost of making the game more expensive. I might just begin to play again, though definitely going to try doing more Wild.

Rotating out classic cards is terrible because it means they are abandoning a core set principle. Unless wild becomes good hearth is dead.

Can we **** Molten Giant and make that a Legacy card as well?

Its not even used.

Not many people stream wild so maybe I can make use of that.

Well, not now that it's unplayable, no. Which is why I would suggest reverting the nerf.

so if I understand how this works correctly, it will be free dust if you make golden PO, ice lance, and conceals before this hits, and the disenchant them after you get the free dust bonus. It net you 60 extra dust from just collecting the free dust from the commons I believe?

Also if you do not own sylvannas or rag you should absolutely craft them, but if you own their regular versions it effectively costs you 1600 to make the golden versions now, since you dont get dust from both the regular and golden version of the same card. If you have a lot of dust right now, and neither version of rag or sylvannas, the golden ones are refunded once the expansion hits.

is the core set principle really necessary for hearthstone's long-term health? even while mtg had a relatively constant core set it still got updated once a year

It basically increases the pay wall to standard each year as no cards are safe from rotation. As long as wild gets support Im fine but as I dont play every day it took a long time to get the cards I have and now I dont even want to craft specific legends because idk if Ill be able to use them in the future. The free dust thing IS pretty helpful but I still need to complain.

I think it also helps for newer players to have a set they can invest in for all future playing. Now buying classic packs will be kuch less value if you pull one of these legends in the future after the free dust period is over

These cards are being moved from the classic set to the Hall of Fame set. They won't appear in packs anymore.

the grinding/price barrier to entry has already been decribed as prohibitively high although it is still one of the most popular digital tcgs in the world so i guess we'll see how much higher the price/grinding barrier can get before it actually hits prohibitive levels

and the core set is presumably still pretty consistent if they only end up taking out or adding 5-10 cards a year or something

Removing stuff from the classic set won't be a long-term problem if they reward dust like this every time. Making decks less reliant on classic staples will raise the cost a bit, but it's also really important for keeping the game interesting.

The change I'm more worried about in terms of cost is replacing adventures with full sets. Adventures were the one thing I paid real money for, because I knew what I was getting out of it. Collecting the relevant cards from a full set will be much more difficult. I'm excited to see more cards released each year, but it will definitely be tougher to keep up. I already disenchant all of my non-standard cards, which makes me kind of sad.

That said, this game is still waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay less expensive than Magic, and I've managed to still have fun these last couple of months without having a lot of MSoG cards. You can play some pretty dumb decks at ranks 15 and higher.

I haven't played much since Karazhan came out. I came back a few days for MSOG and I've been keeping up with the meta but I haven't actually logged on in forever b/c the meta is cancerous (and the definition actually applies correctly here; I think the current meta is killing the game bit by bit).

This will be like anything else they do. If it actually makes the game fun and diverse again I'll start playing it again, but I'm 99% convinced they couldn't balance a potato and that this is going to be terrible just like everything else they do. Hearthstone has been around for something like 3 years now and they haven't managed to get it right yet, despite all that time giving them a chance to learn how to do things better.

I adamantly refuse to play any Hearthstone format that doesn't include Power Overwhelming. #MakeZooGreatAgain

Power Overwhelming ?
AZURE DRAKE ???

OH SNAP !


(no complains about others, duh)