Analytic, educational Hearthstone
Blizzard has been working on improving the Hearthstone Championship Tour (HCT) each year, and things are finally starting to be in place in the 2017 season.
However, I am slightly concerned that what Blizzard is aiming for is not the ideal format for a collectible card game, and while they may be reaching their goals, those goals are not the best possible goals for the game.
Continue reading “Hearthstone Championships could be more exciting with different scheduling”
Hearthstone Championship Tour’s (HCT) Spring Championship 2017 was played from 7th to 9th July in Shanghai, China. Sixteen players from four regional playoffs had qualified for this major tournament with a $250,000 prize pool.
In this post, I take a look at the decks and results, including class distribution, archetypes, archetype performance, and ban decisions.
Continue reading “Hearthstone HCT Spring Championship 2017 decks, results, and analysis”
Hearthstone Asia-Pacific (APAC) Spring Playoffs 2017 were played this weekend to determine the final four participants for the upcoming Spring Championships.
In this post, I will take a look at the decks and results of the single-elimination playoffs stage (top 8), including class distribution, archetypes, archetype performance, and ban decisions.
Continue reading “Hearthstone Asia-Pacific Spring Playoffs 2017 Top 8 decks, results, and analysis”
The Swiss portion of Hearthstone Championship Tour (HCT) 2017 Americas Winter Playoffs was played yesterday, and the drama in the Hearthstone community over the Swiss format continues. Let’s take a deeper look at the tiebreakers and how different formats can change the results.
Continue reading “A deeper look at the Hearthstone Americas Winter Playoffs 2017 tiebreakers”
For the 2017 season, the Hearthstone Championship Tour (HCT) switched to Swiss format. While this change was requested by many players during the previous seasons, the implementation elicited a bunch of criticism. To be honest, I do not think it was as bad as the loudest critics said, but I think a proper examination into a fair and exciting Swiss tournament format for Hearthstone is warranted.
Continue reading “What is the most fair and exciting Swiss format for Hearthstone?”
One year ago, I examined the 2016 Hearthstone Championship Tour Europe Winter season on this blog. Back then, there were several lessons to be learned. Now with the Hearthstone 2017 HCT Europe Winter Playoffs just finished, it is a good time to take a look at what was discussed one year ago and compare it to how this tournament went.
It is not a rare sight to see competitive players complain about the ladder system in Hearthstone: it happens at the end of every season as the competition for those coveted top 100 spots is fierce, and perceived to be in in a large part a matter of luck in addition to skill.
In this post, I will examine the current ladder system, showcase why it is fundamentally broken for this particular environment, and propose an alternative model that could be used to fix it.
Continue reading “The Hearthstone ladder is fundamentally broken – and how to fix it”
Recent days have seen quite some debate on the income available to players and teams from professional Hearthstone: Hearthlytics disbanded despite a competitive roster as they were not able to make ends meet and Orange left Archon as he wanted to take a different direction than the team – something generally interpreted as meaning that Orange wants to focus on competitive play and Archon has become more and more of a streaming organization as of late.
This is not new: Reynad has led Tempo Storm to the direction of streaming and content creation for a good while already, and after Ostkaka won Blizzcon in 2015 there were several discussions where people wondered why he was not making the most out of his win by streaming a lot to generate a steady source of income. Streaming, not competition, has been recognized as the most steady source of income available in professional Hearthstone.
Continue reading “What if Blizzard supported Hearthstone teams with sales of custom card backs?”
At the time I’m writing this, the 2016 European Winter Preliminaries are currently underway to determine the participants for the 2016 European Winter Championships. It has been a long and winding road already, and Blizzard is no doubt working hard to improve their game when it comes to promoting Hearthstone as a top-class esports title.
That said, a lot has happened on the way that should warrant careful examination by Blizzard staff in order to really make Hearthstone a legitimate contender with the level of professionalism associated with such status.
In this post, I will go through some of the glitches that have caught my attention, and that should have caught Blizzard’s attention as well.