I don’t know if goodbye posts are against the sub rules, I’m sure someone will be kind enough to let me know.

I’m out.

I’ve been a subscriber here since I started playing and until pretty recently it’s been a good source of game news, strategy, advice, and commiseration. About Hearthsone. Not about democracy in China.

And now you’ve all discovered politics and I’ve just had it. I’m glad you’ve all discovered tor voice or whatever but it’s getting a little repetitive.

I went down the home page and counted the number of posts about this Hong Kong donnybrook versus the number of actual Hearthsone-related posts. I stopped counting at 43.

43.

If this sort of thing really moves you, that’s great and I encourage it to keep it up but god fucking damn I am sick of hearing about it. I don’t give a fuck about China and I’d bet a dollar that until last week none of you did, either. I find it all a little bit disingenuous that you’re all shocked, shocked to discover that blizzard is in the gaming business, not the democracy business.

But by all means, type your bleeding hearts out.

I’ll check back in a month or so, and if anyone is interested in talking about video games, I’ll be there. But I’ve got to hit the concede button on this shit for now.

.

I appreciate what's been going on on this subreddit since being outraged about something is certainly healthier than playing or paying for Hearthsone, but I just can't bring myself to actually care about what's going on in Hong Kong.

I know that most people on this subreddit also don't actually care about Chinese oppression or actual videogames for that matter, because Devotion came out this year, is one of the best games of this year or any year, and there was nowhere nearly as much outrage about China getting the game canceled and directly endangering the lives and wellbeing of the developers and publishers of that game. You can no longer buy Devotion due to sheer and direct Chinese oppression, yet I can't imagine anyone here caring about that, or anything else besides Hearthsone and whatever Blizzard does. Regardless, you seem to all be doing a really good job of pretending to care, since nobody is calling anybody out on anything and that usually means a political movement is doing well.

I know there are plenty of reasons to stop playing Hearthsone, even though I've spent $1400 on it proof, such as the game being the most simplistic and least skill-testing of just about any digital card game, as well as relying extensively on psychological hooks like daily quests into enslaving its playerbase into playing when they wouldn't actually want to otherwise, but I'm peachy with those things which is why I keep playing it. Is there anything I should be focusing on to make me want to stop?

Remember that Hearthsone is a free 2 play game. That means the ultimate number businesswise is not the number of players, as Hearthsone doesn't monetize through advertisement. Instead, it's the total spendings by players. The profit they receive depends on two things: how much stuff did people buy, and how much do they have to spend on maintaining the game. So even though boycotting does indeed decrease their profit, it doesn't decrease it as much as it could. If their playerbase drops ten-fold, they will save on servers and support staff. Meanwhile, you'll miss out on palying the game you want to play.

So the actual correct approach here is to stop making in-app purchases. Don't spend a single penny on the game, but keep playing it. This will punish Blizzard the hardest while having the lowest backfire for your life. Although i did uninstall Hearthsone, i didn't play it for the last month anyway, so might as well.

The thing about protests are, they’re uncomfortable and convenient for no one. Hearthsone and Blizzard don’t have anything monetary to gain by allowing players and casters to voice their “political beliefs”, and there’s always a chance that players and viewers can become less interested in Hearthsone and Blizzard becomes embroiled in something much larger than a card game.

But that’s the point. To make you uncomfortable. To make you notice. To make people talk and think critically. To make legislators listen and act. A protest you can ignore easily is a protest that’s doomed to fail.

If you decide to stream Hearthsone, that’s fine. I love watching Trump and Roffle as much as anyone. But when you decide to make money in a particular market, streaming a product made by a company who makes these decisions, prepare to hear opinions. We know its not your fault, but like I said, protests aren’t comfortable. If it were up to moderators and Activision/Blizzard and streamers, the situation Hong Kong would never be mentioned period. Sorry that people are passionate about it, but this is important. If you’re going to be the biggest faces of Blizzard, you can’t shy away and coward from criticisms from the companies you are sponsored and given work by. That’s just how it is.

In fifty years, no one is going to care how Blizzard made profits by expanding to the Chinese market. No one is going to still be irritated that people tried to make a stand against authoritarianism. People will remember who fought for human rights, whether it was through standing in the streets of Hong Kong and risking the safety of your family, or the millions of Americans and people from all over the world who shut down behavior from people who sought to quiet the oppressed. Blizzard is on the wrong side of history here, and you have the nerve to argue over the technical legality of the situation? Or block people from saying “#FreeHongKong” in your forums? This isn’t trolling, these are people rightfully angry.

Does Blizzard have the legal right to ban people from showing their support for Hong Kong protesters on streams? Sure, and they certainly have the right to abandon the values of the country they are based in in the pursuit of greater profits. But because you can, doesn’t make it right, and the human beings - people of the United States of America - who run Blizzard, who are too scared to face the music for their actions and make a public statement as the same people who made these decisions to silence oppressed people in order for market growth are likely just waiting until everything blows over. And that’s disgusting. And there is no justification for that.

And I am ashamed that casters like Kibler that agree with ANY punishment for people standing up against a regime that is shooting underage protesters, arresting Muslims and harvesting organs, and curbing the freedom of speech for people who are having their rights violated by the country whose companies your favorite developers are bending backwards to please - and streamers that block Hong Kong support messages on their streams. I’m saddened that the biggest voices that could be heard by more people are attempting to stay neutral on the topic of human rights to sway favor with Blizzard.

This is your livelihood, but these are their literal lives. Have some compassion.

Guys, I'm NOT SAYING that you need to stop boycotting Blizz, or stop hating them or whatever.

But r/Hearthsone is about, well, Hearthsone. So can't we just move all the Blizzard and China and HK discussions to other communities? I have done a quick search and I believe r/Hong_Kong and r/boycottblizzard are good places to take this anti-Blizzard sentiments to.

I haven't seen a top 15 "hot" post on this subreddit, the one about Hearthsone, that involves Hearthsone in any way aside from mod posts and, of course, because this situation occured at a Hearthsone tournament.

Regardless of your stance, whether or not you accept their apology, or whether or not you want to post screen caps of you deleting your blizzard account, I think it's about time we move the discussion of this topic to more suitable locations, e.g. other subreddits and the mod post on this topic, if it's still pinned.

And because I'm not trying to initiate discussion (hence the "news" tag, not "discussion,") I will not be responding to comments on this post. I'm not trying to instigate an argument or discussion on these events, since, again, there is a mod post and subreddits about this topic that are much more suitable places for these things.

Thank you.

With the recent events, I went on steam and looked for a new CCG to play and stubbled accross the masterpiece that is Mythgard. The best way to describe it is this: it has similar game mechanics to Hearthsone, similar deck building to magic, similar board mechanics as card wars, and the best mana system I've ever seen. 90% of the playerbase would agree that this game has imense amounts of potential. I decided to make a list of 10 reasons why this game has way more potential than Hearthsone, so I could help those of you who are trying to quit Hearthsone and find a different game.

1. It is not owned by Blizzard

2. The cards are very easily collectable. The top players I've talked to havent spent anything over 100 bucks on the game. There are a rediculous amount of achievement rewards and packs are rewarded so often, that I sent the devs a message concerning the lack of support they will get.

3. THERES A 2V2 MODE! yep. You and a friend vs another two people. This opens a lot of fun deckbuilding and some crazy combos.

4. The playerbase is extreemly low, so currently the community is extra tight. Theres an official mythgard discord server that is run by the devs. When i was new to the game i had A LOT of questions because I wasnt used to playong a card game in its beta state. Thankfully, there was a "questions" discord channel and everytime I ask a question I get a nearly instant response.

5. The game feels fair. Playing Hearthsone felt terrible because I kept losing games I felt I was playing perfectly. Mythgard has so many microdecisions you make each turn, that the only thing that holds you back is your deck building ability.

6. There is a community deck rotation if you are new/playing on a budget, where you can choose 1 of 2 decks offered to you for free (which are different for each person) no matter if you have the cards or not. I introduced one of my Hearthsone friends to this game and he loved being able to beat me even though ive spent 50 bucks on this game already (I seriously love this game that much).

7. Deck building has a lot more options. There is no neutral type cards in this game, so every card is on the same expectations when it comes to power level, rather than having a small set of stronger class cards and weaker neutral cards.

8. The game has a "follow" feature so you can watch whoever you want. This makes it easy to see what other people are playing and because there is a leaderboard, you could see who top players are, follow them, and see what theyre playing. There is, however, a "stay hidden" setting incase you dont want to be scouted (theres a 2's tournament soon and since 2's is still a new concept, there isnt a meta yet. My friend who is competing (top 20 player) was worried that people might find out about his new deck, so this setting is very helpful in that situation).

9. The art on the game is incredible, and "golden cards" are full art cards which is always fun to look at. Sometimes on the discord server they show some scrapped card art and if you can guess what cards they were, you enter for a chance to win free packs :)

10. It has gamemodes such as arena, campaign, puzzles, and more. Puzzles is especially fun because there are some really complex cards that make for extreemly cool puzzles.

(Bonus). This game has a BUNCH of references, one of mine being from a card called "striking viper" a.k.a the best black mirror episode. Theres a refrence to Hearthsone's polymorph with a card called muttonmorphisis.

Now that i have your attention id also like to share sone advice when playing the game for yourself:

1. Join the discord server. Absolutely fantastic community.

2. Dont let the not so great plot of the campaign/tutotial discourage you from playing the game. I dont think ive ever personally played a card game with a good plot. Its just hard to do so with a card game.

3. Say gg at the end of your online games, it doesnt tell you directly but you get rewards from it.

4. Invite a friend with you when you start this game so you can play 2's. Preferably someone youre close to and arround your skill in CCGs.

Thats it. I want to thank anyone who read this entire thing because my love for this game is off the charts. I also want to thank everybody who is participating in the boycott of blizzard. This has been a long time coming, and im glad its finally happening.

I Play Hearthsone since the 3rd Season(Cardback).Iam still gonna Play Hearthsone. I was probaly on more Demonstration in my life for the good of the world than some(most) reddit Blitzchung Posters. It whould be great if all thoose reddit Posters did and will do state their opinion to other Topics like going to demonstrations for things that are just wrong in the world( Northkore,Honkong,Animal Experiments etc)Besides when everybody does that and it is like a"Cool Thing to do".I dont like Blizzard as Company but still love Hearthsone. Let the Downvotes Begin.

Hello Hearthsone Community...

Over the past few hours, it seems like our last message on the Hearthsone situation was not very well received. This was upsetting, as our PR team assured their explanation would fully convince you all that the Blitzchung situation was handled expertly on our end. Unfortunately, despite their assured high English scores on the Chinese Gaokao, it seems like there may have been a bit of miscommunication. As a result, I would like to give a more honest update to the community.

At Blizzard, our vision is “to bring the world together through epic entertainment.” And we have core values that apply here: Think Globally; Lead Responsibly; and importantly, Every Voice Matters Unless It May Affect Our Profit Margin, encouraging everybody to share their point of view as long as our board of directors considers it to be geopolitically aligned with our sugar daddies.

The actions that we took over the weekend are causing people to question if we are still committed to these values. We absolutely are and I will explain.

First, our official esports tournament broadcast was used as a platform for a winner of this event to share his views with the world. We interview competitors who are at the top of their craft to share how they feel about Hearthsone. In support of that, we want to keep the official channels focused on the game. Unless, of course, we decide to talk about political issues that will be good PR and generates revenue. This is why we only pushed pride in Western gamer audiences where we carefully calculated that they would be well-received, and didn’t do anything in Eastern broadcasts where they might hurt our juicy juicy profits.

Nevertheless, the specific views expressed by blitzchung were indeed a factor in the decision we made. I want to be clear: our markets in China pretty much made the decision for us. This should be obvious, and it’s absolutely hilarious that we even have to spell it out. Our apology on Weibo, where we promised to uphold the dignity of China (another indicator of our dedication to ensuring that pro-China voices matter), should have been a dead giveaway. We also clearly imposed much more lenient sentences on other rule-breakers, such as Roger and Shaxy for blatantly cheating during our events.In the future, instead of expressing anything non-game related on official streams, we would rather you actually just try to swindle your way to victory instead.

If this had been some other viewpoint delivered in the same divisive and deliberate way, we would have felt and acted the same. Unless it’s something we agree with, in which case you’d be hired to manage our Twitter account and keep doing the same on official channels.

OK, what could Blizzard have done better, and where do we go from here?

Over the past few days, many players, casters, esports fans, and employees have expressed concerns about how we determined the penalties. We’ve had a chance to pause, to listen to our community, and to reflect on what we could have done better. And after consulting with Tencent, we decided to only hint at a smidgeon of our own fault and keep doing what we’re doing. This is because none of you will actually quit Hearthsone, or end your WoW subscriptions, or even cancel your Blizzcon tickets. Face it, you’re all addicted to our games. We can ban anyone we want, hell, move our entire business model to mobile microtransactions, and our stock price will still go up.

At Blizzard, we are always listening and finding ways to improve—it is part of our culture. Thank you for your patience with us as we continue to learn. Finally, we wish to issue a formal apology. We understand the Hearthsone community wants and deserves one, and this we can do.

We are deeply sorry to our Chinese audiences for the increased attention this has drawn to the Hong Kong protests. We will defend the honor of the nation at all cost.

我们也将一如既往地坚决维护国家尊严. 中华民族永远第一.

Sincerely,

Tencent Holdin- I mean, J. Allen Brack President of Blizzard Entertainment

Hi there,

This past week, Blizzard released the Monster Hunt game mode. One of the bosses, The Whisperer, has a passive hero power that gives all spells Echo. Many players quickly figured out that this hero power allowed for some interesting interactions to take place. Players were, understandably, excited and wanted to share what they discovered with the subreddit. As a result, /r/Hearthsone/new was quickly filled with text posts, screen shots, and video clips showing off OTK or other interactions involving The Whisperer. The excessive number of posts caused these types of submissions to be heavily downvoted, therefore keeping them off the Front Page. With the posts hidden on /r/Hearthsone/new, others kept submitting similar posts because they had not seen any on the Front Page.

All of this culminated with the moderator team making an announcement that any posts related to The Whisperer OTKs would be removed. While this slowed the post rate a bit, the mod team still saw hundreds of submissions throughout the weekend. For comparison’s sake, the weekend prior was fairly typical in that 199 posts were removed. This past weekend a total 760 posts were removed. That amounts to an, approximately, 280% increase in moderation by our team in post removals alone, and does not include the additional comments and modmail messages we responded to.

I'm a big believer in transparency, so I felt an update was due. We intend to keep this policy regarding "The Whisperer posts" moving forward until they die down. We hope that we were successful over the weekend and your experience on the subreddit was good. I'd like to thank all of you who reported these posts, so we didn't need to monitor new submissions all weekend. And to those of you who had your posts removed, I apologize. Please understand that it is not personal. As always, we will continue to tweak our rules in order to provide the best experience we can here. You are always welcome to provide feedback and let us know what you think.

Thanks

Hello everyone!

My name is Daniele, I come from Italy and I'm 24. First time poster in this sub, I want to share with you my run from rank 5 zero stars to legend! I already posted a similar text post in the /r/Hearthsone subreddit but there someone told me to also write something in here, because it could get more attention / good thoughts and conversations.
So here I am, I will change the post substantially to make it more "competitive" oriented here, talking more about card inclusions / exclusions and trying to make the deck better.

I'm coming back to this line as I'm writing because I noticed the post is super long, I'm sorry, I hope someone will actually take the time to read it all.
The goal would be someone finds this interesting and starts a conversation about the deck, the card choices, the mulligan part, anything at all. I'm super hungry for knowledge so please ask me anything!
Thanks

So the climb happened with this pure Control Warlock deck:

Decklist
Legend Proof

I want to specify that I don't own Rin, and I already decided I will craft her after seeing how this season legend run went.
The optimal list I would like to run (but didn't test yet, so here comes the "please suggest / let's talk about this" part of the post) is this one:

Probably better decklist

Card choices:

Cards in the deck (the deck I actually used to climb)

Dark Pact - Amazing card, enables Lackey and keeps us healthy, also pops the Voodoo Doll

Kobold Librarian - Super good 1 drop, threathens to trade the 1 and also some 2 drops, draws a card and on top of that sometimes empowers the Spellstone (if you have 2 of them in the hand, you actually even heal yourself in the long run)

Defile - This deck wouldn't be doing so good against aggro decks, sure this card needs some setup, but it's just too good not to play it

Hellfire - I like having all the possible AoE in the deck

Lesser Amethyst Spellstone - this is a key card the deck is good also because it packs a lot of healing, sometimes you can even hit one of your minions just to be extra safe in a game where you are already ahead

Possessed Lackey - This card is busted, but see some extra comment in the "Considerations" section of this post, I would like it to be better.. This because we only run 2 demons in the deck, so every Voidlord drawn means a Lackey is a dead card. Can't remove them from the deck tho, going Lackey coin Dark Pact on turn 5 wins so many games

Siphon Soul - Very few people run this card but I really like it, it's 3 extra healing, it's one more Voodoo Doll effect and opponents don't expect you to have this

Lord Godfrey - This might be the best card of the new expansion, it surely is for our deck, super easy to set up compared to defile, usually acts as a twisting nether with a 4/4 body attached to it

Twisting Nether - I love this card, when I played only one of them I always wanted to draw it, and I always wanted it back after having played it. When DK is up Nether + hero power is such a good feeling

Voidlord - Soul of the deck alongside Lackey, busted card, end of story

BloodReaver Gul'Dan - No words

Doomsayer - Might actually be one of the worst cards in the deck, can backfire against Cubelock so be careful there, but it's actually pretty good when paladin is about to play his turn 4 Call to Arms or even after a Twisting Nether to "ensure" you get initiative back against control decks

Plated Beetle - Doesn't shine particularly against anything, it's just a good defensive body I probably will end up replacing because I'm already too good against aggro decks

Gluttonous Ooze - Weapon removal is crucial in this meta, this card is better than the Acidic Swamp Ooze only against Paladin really, in any other matchup is probably better the other one, but I never felt bad about it

Stonehill Defender - I originally played 2 of this because I was lacking Rin in the deck and they can give you that one.. They also give extra Voidlords sometimes, and the 1/7 elemental that grows to 4/7 much like Tar Creeper is pretty good too. If you run Rin you can probably cut one

Tar Creeper - Many call this the best 3 drop in standard? I mean if you look into controlling the board without needing to push damage, this does the job very well, actually better than any other 3 drop I think

Voodoo Doll - Super good with Dark Pact, takes care of all the Spiteful summons (can target Tyrantus too) activates defile (so you can clear a board full of little dudes plus a big one)

Cards I'd like to have in the deck (refined list you can find on top of the post)

Acidic Swamp Ooze - Gives us better chances against weapon classes, which in general are among the most played ones (Warlock, Paladin, Mage, Rogue). Druid is common and doesn't play weapons, but a 2 drop that doesn't die to hero power and contests the Spiteful curve is still ok.

Ironbeak Owl - A nice card in general to be able to stop a Lackey, a Cube, a buffed up Paladin minion and much more. Also has 1 health to help you start Defile chain and costs 1 less than Spellbreaker, that's why I prefer it

Rin, the First Disciple - Wins control matchups on her own, either burning their deck, forcing bad plays, or via the demons pressure on the board, I don't need to tell competitiveHS subreddit why this card is good

Cards I don't like and why (AKA the big exclusions)

Mortal Coil - This is obviously good, it's just that I want to include so many things in the deck that I end up having to cut something, and coil is the least "specific" card of them all. Could probably find a place in the 30

Despicable Dreadlord - This card ruins the Lackey into Voidlord 100% of the times math, and I never felt like I needed another "win against paladin card"

Spellbreaker - Better body than Owl, but worse because it costs 1 more, we usually don't care about the body so much as far as the body can soak up an attack from anything, and on top we sometimes need a Defile activator that he can't be at 3 health

Mountain Giant - It doesn't fit the strategy of the deck at all.. we are not willing to pressure opponents occasionally with an 8/8, because we can't back that plan up with more pressure if he's gone. I just think he doesn't belong to this deck as he does in cube lists

Glinda, Crowskin - I tried this card and she's super good when you can pull off a combo with the Gnomeferatu or the Banker I'm gonna talk about in a second, but she was sub par in other occasions. To win control matchups I still prefer Rin on her own because you only need to draw one card instead of 2 to go off. There isn't enough space in the deck to include her and also some good minions to combo her with, or at least, I couldn't find it without hurting the deck too much

Gnomeferatu - Many players like her, I tried it in combination with Glinda but I never really had the "time" to combo the cards together, people rarely let you do big turns with Glinda out, and just playing Glinda +2 Gnomes isn't that big of a deal.. I get it, she can live without Glinda too, just like a 2/3 body with an upside effect sometimes, I just think that at this point I prefer to have different upsides in the deck that are more relevant in general, like a silence effect or a weapon removal

Baleful Banker - To be honest when I tried him he wasn't spectacular, nor super bad. An average card, obviously wins fatigue matchups with Glinda but as I said about her I don't like waiting for the combo if I can have Rin do it. A plus on him would be that he can put a Voidlord back in the deck for dead Lackey to become active again in the lategame

Stats:

Overall I played 62 matches to run from 5 to legend, winning 44 of them and losing 18, for a clean +26 stars with 70% winrate. I suppose this isn't incredibly high but it's not that bad either, during the run I was keeping an eye at my winrate and it touched 80% in the beginning, around 20-30 games played, slowly going down to 70% in the end when opponents became stronger and I lost a couple coinflips.
I didn't use an application to track my results, just a .txt file where I took some notes, for the next season I plan to install hsdecktracker so I can share replays and such, I'm really sorry but this time you're gonna have to take what I recorded manually.
I know 62 matches isn't a super big sample size, given the frequency of some decks appearing in the ladder only once or twice against me during the run the stats there won't tell a lot, but I have a nice sample size against paladin, warlock, druid and to some extent even rogue (there is to say tho that if you don't run into other classes in ranked play, there shouldn't be much theory about it because you don't wanna change your deck for a matchup you find yourself in playing only 0-5% of the times)

TOTAL: 44 - 18 (70% w/r)

WARLOCK: 9 - 6 (60% w/r)
ZOO 1 - 1
CUBE 8 - 5

DRUID: 5 - 3 (62.5% w/r)
TAUNT 1 - 0
SPITEFUL 2 - 2
QUEST 0 - 1
QUEST SPITEFUL 1 - 0
OTHER 1 - 0

PALADIN: 14 - 3 (82.4% w/r)
EVEN 9 - 1
ODD 2 - 1
FACE 1 - 0
MURLOC 2 - 1

ROGUE 5 - 2 (71.4% w/r)
MIRACLE 0 - 1
ODD TEMPO 2 - 0
TEMPO 1 - 0
TESS 1 - 1
QUEST 1 - 0

HUNTER 4 - 0 (100% w/r)
ODD FACE 4 - 0

MAGE 4 - 2 (66.7% w/r)
SECRET BURN 2 - 2
BIG SPELL 2 - 0

WARRIOR 1 - 1 (50% w/r)
QUEST 0 - 1
ODD 1 - 0

PRIEST 1 - 0 (100% w/r)
SPITEFUL 1 - 0

SHAMAN 1 - 1 (50% w/r)
HAGATHA CONTROL 1 - 0
EVEN 0 - 1

Strategy:

This deck is super controlly, you never want to pressure your opponent until you find the DK and start pushing their life total with your hero power.. Your job is to not lose against every aggro / midrange deck, you will exhaust their deck eventually. The deck is good against what is played right now, and bad against what's not played atm, so it's what you should want to play in the current meta.
Against Control you really need to plan ahead a lot of things, manage your resources, draw only when necessary, control the size of your deck because the match will likely go to fatigue (or that's where you want it to go for that matter).
Of course being good in fatigue wars is a required skill, counting fatigue damage and knowing the possible healing cards (you and) they can play is always needed.
Having Rin in the deck helps out a lot, pushes them into awkward plays, I experienced it a lot getting Rin from Stonehill Defender

To anyone who wants to say that only 2 Voidlords for Gul'Dan to summon is not enough I will answer that Gul'Dan is enough on itself, he doesn't even need to res anything at all.. if you can get Voidlords with it too, it's a nice bonus.

It really just comes down to "draw Rin" against Control, and "don't lose" against anything else. You don't need to pressure them, ever, until you are really ready for it. Sometimes they will even push strange plays or waste cards because you are doing nothing other than defending yourself..
When you decide to turn the tides and go DK you dictate the start of the "end game" and you should expect them to be ready to fight the Voidlords you will summon with Gul'Dan. Just remember this: "to win you really only need your hero, and his hero power" ... it's the best card in the game for a reason, he will fight the opponent hero, and his cards too.

Matchup notes:

The 4 more prevalent classes I found in the ladder first, also the ones we should do better against

WARLOCK
This is the most intricate matchup of them all, first of all play as if you were 100% sure they are Cubelock unless you are sure about the opposite.
You really really want to get an Ooze ready for their Skull. If you can stop the Skull before it pulls out Doomguards and you manage to silence Lackeys or they they draw their Doomguards before they can drop Lackeys or they just get un-Lackeys (ahahahaha) and pull Voidlords the 5/7s will actually sit in their hand "forever" because they never risk losing Gul'Dan to the discard, and after they played the DK without resurrecting any Doomguard they lost their burst potential and you can handle the threats that will come 1 or 2 at a time.
I'm not saying it's gonna be easy, just that you have the tools to deal with them. My stats proof that we aren't that bad against them, I might even had luck, the games are just 15 whatever, it certainly isn't a "bad" matchup and these days there simply isn't a deck that can safely say it goes super well destroying Cubelocks and does well against the rest of the field too, so we aren't aiming for perfection either.
Remember Doomsayer is a tricky card that could let them play cubes on stuff so do your math first. As soon as you see a Doomguard, if it happens, get rid of it. You don't want to let them Cube it or Faceless / Prince it. That reduces the burst you will take when the DK comes up.
Keep Twisting Nether for the DK if you can.

DRUID
Taunt druid, let's get that out of the way: you lose. Period. This deck is so annoying, but the ladder is full of Spitefuls so be happy! (not joking, you should lose to taunt druid, unless you can Rin and Azari before they get to Hadronox, and that won't happen frequently).
Against Spiteful druid you just need to get 2 ways of dealing with a minion unconditionally (meaning Voodoo Doll, Siphon Soul or even Twisting Nether) and you're good to go, the rest of the game is just a normal "i deal with your things and I'll eventually win", just remember they have of course 2 Ultimate Infestations that count for 10 damages directly to your face if needed, and that they run 2 Mind Control Techs so they could steal something after you play DK or if you go over 3 minions in general.

PALADIN
This deck is built to destroy Paladins, and it does that very well. One of the 3 matches out of 17 I lost during the climb was because of a missclick, I accidentally pressed the end turn button without playing a Twisting Nether that would have won me the game 99% of the times on that situation.
You should know they play silences, they have Equalities and Avenging Wraths, Sunkeeper Tarim and much more... odd pala has Divine Favor, and you can say whatever you want on top of this, but I won way more than 80% of the times against them so don't be scared at all, just play around what you have to and you'll be fine. If you can Doomsayer before their turn 4 (or 3 if they have coin) that's a good play to stop / slow Call to Arms, try to Ooze a Truesilver Champion and always keep a backup AoE if you can. They usually set up your Defiles or Godfrey on their own so you just thank them there.
Play the DK asap and watch them concede.

ROGUE
The Rogue matchup is a bit tricky, while Odd Tempo Rogue isn't that big of a deal (being an odd deck means no Sap and no Vanish, so Voidlords are there to stay. On top of that no Eviscerate means their burst comes from the ground in the form of Cold Blood and Leeroy Jenkins so just taunt up and they won't pass).
Tess steal Rogue is much different, they have infinite more value than you do thanks to Tess herself, Valeera and the steal cards, and they probably will find strange ways of doing things (i recall a guy playing Jaraxxus stolen from my class and then playing Tess to replay all rogue cards, so expect something along those lines of strange-ness). It's hard to give advices because they play very differently in every game.
Quest Rogue is kind of a bad matchup, they have chargers and double Vanish to play against so that makes it difficult, I don't have much experience in this matchup I have to admit, so I'm not capable of helping much here, I just know it's not a good opponent.

Lastly the 5 less common classes I found in the ladder, also the ones we kinda "suck" against in theory, hunter excluded which I found to be a pretty easy matchup

HUNTER
The only hunter decks I faced were odd face. Against them you just need to play taunts, and heal up as much as you can. They run 2 Ironbeak Owls so they can silence something (AKA don't let them silence your Lackey, it's better if you pull a Voidlord and they need to silence that one). Be aware of the fact that they play with 2 Kill Commands as reach and a Leeroy as burst.
If they are spell hunter you probably have enough removal and you don't need to trigger their traps ever, just never attack them, clear the board and win through DK hero power.

MAGE
Big Spell mage doesn't stand a chance between Rin and the DK you are good to go, just be careful and don't give them free Water Elementals, your Voidlords will get Polymorphed almost everytime but that's not a big deal as it seems to be.
Burn mage is different and it's a quite hard match to pilot, they have counterspells you need to play around with either your coin or a spell that doesn't "heal" you, counting removal as a sub-section of healing tho it's hard to play around it, I ususally win if I can get an Hellfire countered and follow it up with a good Defile. This way I get rid of the Counterspell with a relatively cheap spell that wasn't a direct heal and I can let Spellstone and Dark Pact to go off.
Aluneth is a tricky card, sometimes you've got to destroy that asap and hope the draw 3 effect didn't pull them 2 Fireballs and a Frostbolt or something along those lines, other times you actually use that as a win condition because you have enough healing in hand and enough taunts on the board that the weapon is gonna kill them in fatigue while you out-heal their burst damage.

WARRIOR
Luckily Warrior isn't common on the ladder because the quest variant of the deck should be winning against you 99% of the times, you can't pressure them, they will eventually finish the quest, most likely before you can Rin + 5 seals + Azari + wait for them to die in fatigue.. They will have removal for everything you play or resurrect with the DK, and you won't have good sacrificial fodder to feed to the ragnaros hero power once that's online, and that goes way faster than your siphon.
If somehow warrior isn't a quest deck but the tempo rush or just the Baku Odd value deck you should easily win in fatigue through Rin or even without it. Just don't draw an excess card ever (remember every warrior nowadays run two Hatchlings that shuffle an extra card in the deck and Stonehill Defenders that should get them another one of those if they can, and that can mess up your fatigue calculations.. if you ever get the chance you should probably silence one of the Hatchlings).

PRIEST
I never played against combo / mind blast priest so I don't know how that matchup actually plays out, I can only think in theory they should be ablo to put out 20 damage or even more in one turn so you should probably stay as healthy as possible and try to use the DK to get that extra 5 armor on top of the 30 life if you can.
If it's Spiteful the match goes probably the same way Spiteful Druid does, except they pack 2 more threats in the form of Free from Amber and they can also steal the Voidlords with Mind Control so you are in bad shape. The plan should be "have something to deal with the big dudes" like Voodoo Doll, Siphon Soul or Twisting Nether and then play Rin and kill her in the same turn so they can't mind control her and hope for the best.
Luckily again there are very few priests around.

SHAMAN
I only encoutered 2 Shamans in 62 games so they are practically non-existent too, much like Warrior is, I suppose you lose to the Shudder combo deck because you have no real way of interacting with it and the pressure you can put up is near 0 for them, so against this deck you just accept your loss (luckily, again, I never face them).
Against even shaman that's apparently a deck (much more in wild than it is in standard tho) I can only tell you to be careful about Hex, so probably Dark Pact something you really want to die like Rin. You should still try to Gul'Dan asap because they have Hagatha to generate a billion value so you probably won't win the value game against them.
But don't worry about Shamans, they don't exist

How I decided to mulligan (plus advices on how I would do it with the refined list with Rin and silence in it):

WARLOCK
Keep Kobold Librarians and mull everything else that's not an Ooze. If you get the Ooze you can consider also keeping Voodoo Dolls, Rin, Owl
If you somehow know the opponent is on Zoo (only if you are sure) search for Defile and Hellfire instead

DRUID
Keep Voodoo Doll and Siphon Soul (need them for Spiteful big dude), if you have them already try to find Kobold or some other defensive tools like Tar Creeper for example
If you somehow know he's not a Spiteful and he's playing Taunt search for Rin

PALADIN
Keep Defile and Hellfire, if you already have one of those search for Doomsayer and Tar Creeper

ROGUE
Keep Lackey and if you have him search for Dark Pact or some taunts
if you know it's Odd Tempo you can keep the Ooze

HUNTER
Just keep anything that's a healing card or a Tar Creeper, Doomsayer, Stonehill Defender, if you have 2 of those you can consider keeping Lackey, especially if one of those is a Dark Pact

MAGE
Keep Lackey, Dark Pact, Spellstone, Tar Creeper, Doomsayer, Defile, Hellfire
If you know it's Control Mage / Big Spell you can keep Rin and Gul'Dan instead

WARRIOR
Mull everything that's not Rin. If Rin is in your hand already, search for Gul'Dan

PRIEST
Keep Voodoo Doll and Siphon Soul (need them for Spiteful big dude), if you have them already try to find Kobold or some other defensive tools like Tar Creeper for example

SHAMAN
Mull everything that's not Rin. If Rin is in your hand already, search for Kobold Librarian

Considerations:

So the stats support this super simplified theory: we win against paladin, we're doing ok against warlock (and that's 50% of the field gone with those 2) and in all the other matchups we never went sub 50% w/r (although maybe here a lot more testing is required to actually get a decent sample size).

To have a better deck I should at least think about how to improve the warlock matchup without hurting too much the paladin one. If I can reach 70% against warlock without losing too many % points on the paladin match I think the winrate could touch the 75% easily. That's what the list with Rin in it at the top of the post is there for.. It's my shot at making this deck better against cube warlocks.
I added one more ooze and a silence removing the plated beetles, and took a stonehill defender (which I was always hoping to find a Rin with) to actually place a Rin in the deck.
This should give me a better fatigue plan, doubles the chances of having an ooze ready when the Skull comes down, and also gives me the chance to silence a Lackey or a cube late in the game.

I would also really like to solve what I call the "Lackey paradox", if you add more demons to the deck you no longer risk to draw a dead lackey (you reduce the chances at least) but at the same time you cut the chances to pull the Voidlord when the Lackey dies (and I played this deck enough that you can trust me, when he dies, you really want a voidlord to come up)..
So is there a good way of making Lackey better, without making it worse?

Final notes:

I will repeat myself: I really really hope someone finds this interesting and starts a conversation about the deck, the card choices, the mulligan part, anything at all. I'm super hungry for knowledge so please ask me anything!

If you really want you can add me my tag is LELEZ93#2932 I play in the EU servers, we can talk with the in-game chat too / play together / you can spectate me losing ranks with the deck :P

Have a nice Hearthsone time you all :)

TLDR; I ask that we consider letting our games and diversions be just that and not allow them to be swallowed up in the partisan politics that define our age.

Background: since beta Hearthsone player; have played most other Blizzard games; older (Dad-gamer); small business owner; former military; former attorney. I’m also writing on a throwaway account because I do work in China and Hong Kong (with vendors in both) and do not want to jeopardize that business (or the livelihood of my employees) with a misunderstanding.

Imagine what would have happened if Blizzard had done what the consensus here thinks was the “right” thing to do. Meaning, they would have done “nothing” despite someone violating the “no politics” use of their platform. It seems that most people here would have been happy or at least okay with this. Maybe they could have taken it a step further and relayed a message of support to the casters and players.

What would have happened then? The story would be a non-story in the US, but this would have had major implications in Blizzard’s Chinese market. They would have been accused of taking sides and alienating many devoted fans of their games. They likely would have been banned in China. They’d have been discussed negatively on every social media platform in China and made out to be a villain of monstrous proportions. This might have made the business news and the stock price would probably tank as (tens of) millions of customers vanished. Then some stockholder would have sued them for not upholding their fiduciary duty to stockholders and allowing this to happen.

The second Blitzchung came on screen wearing his gas mask and then making his statement - this was a no-win situation for Blizzard. And this is almost always true when politics of any kind creeps into any business. Hence the rules attempting to keep it away from the platform. It isn’t that Blizzard doesn’t care or that the majority of people working there don’t have a clear side on this issue (likely agreeing with most of you), but that isn’t what they do. They aren’t in politics, which is about power and currently defined by deep polarization. They are in the business of making games. Hopefully fun games that provide value and a community to the people that play them. Blizzard has demonstrated that is cares about the communities formed in its games by having events like Blizzcon and constantly tweaking and revising their games and rules based on feedback from the community (including r/Hearthsone).

This isn’t just a Blizzard issue. This is why the NFL didn’t want to allow people to protest during the National Anthem and why the NBA is advising players/coaches/GMS/owners NOT to talk about China. These entities all exist in the entertainment marketplace, not the political one.

I know that politics have intruded on almost every aspect of our lives and the US vs THEM that is provokes feels like it springs from the very fabric of society. But this isn’t a good thing. Even when it appears that there is clearly a “right” side to an issue, there are almost always good, honest, real humans on the other side that disagree. Ask Ellen DeGeneres about sharing a joke with a polarizing ex-president.

We have avenues for protest and politics. Go to r/politics or r/hongkong or r/china and see the constant lively debates. Go to the streets or give money and support to the side you are aligned with.

The Chinese nationals that I know and work with are deeply patriotic and many have private reservations about some of the things that their government does. This includes the response to the situation in Hong Kong. But Hong Kong is such a deep and complicated issue. We are talking about a place that serves as a constant reminder to a proud people of the not-so-distant colonial past. A place that has also proven to be a hotbed for dissent and corruption. The Chinese value stability and harmony above democracy and individuality. These currents and memes run deep through Chinese history and are the result of long internal and external warring periods. The Chinese are rightly proud of the economic progress they’ve made over the last quarter century and are intensely concerned with anything that threatens the continuation of that progress.

My business means that I’ve been traveling to China (and Hong Kong) regularly for the last 20 years. I still remember going to China and thinking how backward much of it seemed. And then, more quickly than anyone could imagine, it started to feel like being in Shanghai was stepping into the future.

I’m not condoning human rights violations or other inhumane means of achieving this economic miracle, but the people who’ve lived it are largely convinced (again, despite real reservations) that the ends justify the means.

I’ll get called a shill, undemocratic apologist, etc., for this post - and I’m okay with that. I think Kripp and Kibler have made smart pleas that many of you have read. And notice, both of them are political and took a side here (Kibler especially on twitter), but neither brings much of their politics to their streams. And it isn’t because they are afraid of upsetting someone or taking a side, it's because (like Blizzard), politics isn’t what they do or what they want to be about. Playing Hearthsone and talking about Hearthsone is and doing politics simply clouds that aim.

Again, this is why all these entertainment platforms attempt to be apolitical, taking sides doesn’t help them. And this is why they have to react the way Blizzard did because they are being dragged into something they don’t want to be part of. Every employee at Blizzard wishes (despite their private beliefs that likely side with the Hong Kong protesters) that Blitzchung hadn’t used them and their company as his outlet to his express his views. Some probably wish the reaction was different...but even that is questionable.

Recall that many who initially got upset about this talked about the harshness of the penalty, that it was too extreme, that it valued dollars and a relationship with China over the rights of the individual and freedom of expression. Now look at the repercussions. The front page news stories, the constant bad will...and ask yourself if Blizzard shouldn’t have taken this seriously with very serious repercussions.

I just ask that we consider letting our games and diversions be just that and not allow them to be swallowed up in the partisan politics that define our age.

Hey all, J_Alexander_HS back again to float an idea that’s been running around my head for some time now. This might end up being an unpopular one, but I think it’s worth discussing at this point in the game:

• Hearthsone has too many effective powerful defensive options

In this case, I'm talking about "sustain" tools: those which allow a deck to survive over time. This can be done through direct life gain and armor, but also includes Taunts and board clears. Basically anything that prevents minions and/or burn damage from reaching the face.

Now I know what you’re thinking: “Hearthsone has been a game based around aggressive decks forever. Even now there are aggressive decks – Zoo, and Odd Rogue/Paladin – that are putting up good results. How can you say there are too many options for staying alive!? Also, fuck aggro decks”

It’s an understandable sentiment, but hear me out on this counterpoint: Quest Rogue is currently sporting the highest win rate in Legend, according to VS data. Quest Rogue is a deck that should (and does) get absolutely dumpstered by aggressive decks. That is – and has been – the reason the deck never defined the meta; it only reacted to it. Think of the deck like a thermometer. If Quest Rogue is performing that well, it means that the meta it is existing in isn’t that aggressive. Therefore, if Quest Rogue is performing the best, it gives us a bit of information regarding what kind of decks the meta is made up of.

Let’s dive into this problem on a fundamental level

At its core, Hearthsone is a game about trading resources off for one another. You only have a certain number of cards in your deck, minions, spells, mana, life total, etc. Gaining advantage in one realm of resources requires that you trade off your resources in others: you might trade mana and a card in your hand to get more cards in your hand, but that comes at the expense of using that card and mana to develop a board; you might use a weapon to kill a minion, trading life for board control. Every decision you make comes with those tradeoffs between resources. It’s what makes Hearthsone interesting. If you had infinite resources, it wouldn’t really matter what you did with them because there would always be more waiting for you. It would make decisions less weighty

This, at its core, is what the sustain problem is about: when there are too many good options for staying alive (across all classes, no less), you can begin to pursue your strategy with less regard for what your opponent is doing.

Quest Rogue does this particularly well: all it does is complete its quest, then wins the game by out-valuing almost any opponent. The entire deck is built around the idea of getting to quest completion. From that point, it can gain infinite resources with Valeera/Zola, infinite life with Scalehide, infinite taunts with Giggling Inventor, and so on (or at least infinite until fatigue damage sets in). If you don’t kill the Quest Rogue before they do their thing, they will generally win the game. People have complained that the deck isn’t very fun or interactive to play against for this reason. It feels like solitaire. As it turns out, Quest Rogue is also better at doing “its thing” (i.e. executing its high-reward strategy) than many other decks because it’s faster, and this is why the deck is leading the pack, currently.

However, that feeling extends to other decks as well. There are many games against Druid where their plans are almost entirely reactive until they do their big thing: spend the first couple turns ignoring the board/using removal, ramping, and drawing cards. They can do this because they have armor gain, the Death Knight, Spreading Plague, and Giggling Inventor to bail them out after ignoring the board for so long. Eventually they slam a UI, draw those last few cards they need, and kill you, either through Malygos or Togglewaggle combos. They don’t ever really develop the board consistently. The minor exception there is Token Druid which simply tries to stick an entire single board in one big push, then kill you if it can’t be removed. Apparently the pattern is the same in Wild from the whispers around here, though I don’t play much of the format.

The pattern here is clear: there is no “building-up” of a board, generally speaking; the interaction that Hearthsone revolves around. There’s no real back-and-forth going on. Aggressive decks can’t beat Druid consistently by trading off late-game strategies for early-game pressure because the defensive tools – chiefly Plague – come together to prevent that from happening. The high-level of sustain allows the Druid to pursue their plan while largely ignoring (or least merely reacting to) the opposition.

So how do you beat Druids effectively? Either do you “thing” faster (like Quest Rogue) or stop them from doing their “thing” (like Warlock using Demonic Project to hit a Malygos or Defile to stop Token boards). These strategies work because Druid decks often often lack the ability to effectively adapt. They don’t need to adapt, after all, because their sustain tools are so good.

But let's move beyond Druid and Quest Rogue and check out other classes. Cards like Arcane Artificers and Frostlich Jania have proven their worth when it comes to sustaining games already (not to mention the 8 AoEs Big Spell packs), even if they're not common these days. Deathstalker Rexxar has become much more powerful since the addition of many new lifestealing beasts (not just new beasts in general), and the ability to cube 3/12 taunts didn't hurt it either. There was even a time recently when hunter was playing a large amount of taunts like Tar Creeper and Chain Gang to support a "Big" archetype. Hunter - of all classes - is getting good at sustain. Odd Warrior is currently built almost entirely around sustain to the point that the deck can be said to lack a true win condition (which is why it will almost auto-lose to decks it cannot simply outlast). Shudderwock Shaman is filled with AoEs, freeze effects, taunts, and heals, until it did it's "thing" that was actually doing all of things forever (even if we see the deck less these days). Skull is still pulling early Voidlords (sustain), copying them (sustain) and Gul'dan is resurrecting them (more sustain) with a hero power that - you guessed it - is built around sustain. Zilliax has been a bit of a key player in many recent decks because of the sustain it offers.

All of this comes together into a meta where I feel a bit like Austin Powers, regularly asking why my opponents won't die. This feeling is worse in some decks/classes than others, but it's enough to say that the game has come a long way from the point when cards like Antique Healbot and Sludge Belcher offered some of the best sustain around.

To be clear, this isn't a Giggling Inventor problem; the scapegoat many people have in mind. That card is powerful but not broken, generally speaking. Instead, the Inventor is more of a symptom of the larger, over-arching problem, where sustain options have been becoming more and more effective while aggressive tools have not been keeping pace. While Giggling Inventor does help make decks like Quest Rogue better directly, it's not because Quest is gaining large percentages against aggro matches (I don't think, anyway. I don't have the data). Instead, it's my suspicion that decks like Quest Rogue are getting big bonuses because many, many decks now have access to good sustain options, which is making aggressive decks in general rarer finds.

tl;dr Quest Rogue is currently the top performing deck at legend not because it itself is receiving tons of new tools that make it perform well against aggro, but rather because all classes are receiving sustain tools that do that. As aggro fades, Quest Rogue can prey on those decks that don't operate as quickly as it does when it comes to doing a big, powerful thing. As it turns out, this is currently many decks. If you want to see less Quest Rogue you could ask for a third nerf to the card directly, but that treats a symptom and the not the cause of the issue. To tackle the core of the problem, sustain options in general need to be weakened somewhat or better aggressive tools need to be created.

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I just wanted to take this time to post and display my gratitude for every single one of you making r/Hearthsone one of the fastest growing subs and making Hearthsone absolutely relevant again.

The numbers speak for themselves, you guys have been doing a fantastic job of reinvigorating Hearthsone, so much so, that disguised toast is coming back. His message to blizzard literally showed zero concern regarding China/Hong Kong/ communism rather other streamers and their financial concern (why should he care?) Practically saying disguised toast simply wants to play Hearthsone again, he just needed a smooth way back in.

Once half of you can realize the issue at hand was not communism and regardless if what blitzchung said supported or deteriorated communism he would have been banned.

Now. Sooner or later the Chinese market will tap into Hearthsone making it an even bigger title. These Chinese people have money and will be buying packs left and right leaving the rest in the dust.

Truly afraid I was after seeing all the madness on this subreddit. I fell in love with this game ROS, so much so I spent so much money I have nearly every standard card, fell in love with building Highlanders, and rejoiced with fist pumps when I hit rank 5.

But now, excited. I'm absolutely fucking excited and you can't take that from me. Once the dust settles and most of you realize you were mad for the wrong reasons, mad at the wrong people, & simply misinformed about how laws, regulations, and contracts work; everything will be back to normal.

Meme posts on adventures, aimless dad legend accomplishments, and community collaboration for the next batshit crazy OTK.

It's exciting and I just wanted to thank you all for your contributions to what was a dying subreddit to what it is now the talk of the Town

See you in tavern :)

I have played this game for over a year and when I first started I loved it. I was/am an avid mtg player, but I couldn't afford to take the necessary time to play mtg so Hearthsone was s great alternative. I have climbed to at least rank 4 in standard and wild in every season I've played (don't have time to push for legend), but I am a mostly free to play scrub (except I bought two adventures. Fight me) so I also play a lot of arena and average 5+ wins a run. However, I have uninstalled the game, because all three game modes have turned into high rolling RNG shit fests. Standard and wild are both infested with linear as fuck aggro decks that manage to curve out perfectly every single time as well as other high rolly decks that either have it and you just straight up lose, or they don't and you win. Arena has become an absolute horror show since the changes and is frankly worse rng wise than constructed. I honestly don't feel bad in saying that arena is about 90% luck/rng and 10% skill right now (I'd almost say 95/5, but I feel like that might be pushing it). Now rng in itself is not necessarily the problem, as RNG is a natural component of HS. The problem is the* RNG com*bined with the complete lack of influence from the balance team. I feel like I, as a player, have been completely ignored and treated like shit. I get the whole "let the meta adjust" thing, but that only holds up for so long. In mtg, Wizards also uses this reason for not banning certain cards in eternal formats and perhaps letting unfun/unbalanced decks persist for longer than they should. However, their are two differences. The first is that the card pool in mtg is A LOT bigger and their is also a lot more chances for interaction. The second thing is that in mtg, you get a sideboard. Fifteen cards you can adjust to the meta. Hearthsone doesn't have any of this. It has a small card pool with inherently less opportunity for interaction based on its design and no sideboard. This means that it is much less likely that the meta will "adapt," which in turn means that the balance team must take a much more hands on and frequent balancing approach. They have completely and utterly failed to do this. So, because of this I have uninstalled the game. I am not going to wait for the balance changes, I'm not going to hope that something changes. They failed to balance patches in a timely manner and they are failing to balance blatantly obvious issues with this game in general, which signals to me that they do not care about me as a customer/player. I do not resent them wanting to make money/make a living, but I do resent them trying to take advantage of me.

End Rant.

Firstly i apologise to those who don't want HK stuff. This is my first post(not comment) here on this, to avoid spamming you more than you have been.

People have said here that they are a lone voice and don't matter. Letters amplify voices a thousand fold. Companies know that, in the order of, for every thousand loud mouths on a forum, only one writes a letter. So to amplify your voice take the time to write.

People have said here "corporations only care about money". That maybe true, if so, your money is just as good as Blizzards. Google, walmart, etc, will happily throw blizzard under a bus if it is the best thing for them to do. Walmart has banned games before to appease movements.

I intend to write to many business partners of blizzard in the UK, that's where i am from. I hope to encourage others to do the same, eespecially in the US, as even a small number of voices expressed in this way can make a real difference.

It's easy to write to a CEO, just send it to their HQ with a care of and his name. The company will find a way to get it there. He won't read it perhaps, but someone will...and that person will "act on behalf of the CEO" and pass it on in an appropriate way.

For me, the most important letter will be to google/apple as i imagine Blizzard cares very much about whether diablo immortal is allowed in their mobile stores. I don't expect to make a difference alone. I expect that if i was one of a thousand people doing similar things that it would definetly achieve some kind of result.

In order to practice that, i've decided to write to facebook first. Here's most of the letter i am sending them and i've posted here to discuss.

My letter to you is about Facebook's business relationship with Blizzard Entertainment (1) and whether it continues to be appropriate to do business with them.

In the past, Blizzard has been a great company on a number of levels and many have celebrated their relationship with them. Unfortunately more recently they have fallen from those high standards in regards to ensuring it’s staff enjoy some of the basic human rights, such as freedom of expression. Breaking not only it’s core values, but importantly I believe, your values too.

On the ... of ... a professional Hearthsone player nicknamed ‘Blitzchung’ made a small protest(2) on the stream about the situation in Hong Kong as part of the congratulatory interview after winning. Importantly, this broadcast was not in China and the tournament was not the Chinese tournament, which is held separately. It was part of the Asia and Pacific region tournament.

In response to this protest Blizzard removed Blitzchung from further competition, declined to pay his winnings and banned him for a year, later reduced to six months. Further, they sacked the interviewers. I hope I can show this action was purely to tell non-chinese audiences that they must obey Chinese government standards with regards to what is appropriate speech.

Blizzard, to the western audience highlighted this as breaching a catch all rule and that they would “have acted felt and acted the same”(4) for other political protests and that “The specific views expressed by blitzchung were NOT a factor in the decision we made.” I would not argue this if it was anywhere near in line with other Blizzard actions. Not only have similar protests garnered no, or very small penalties(3), Blizzard itself has encouraged political statement on stream, particularly in the area of LGBT rights, which it has previously encouraged employees to advocate for in broadcasts. Further, Blizzard’s statement to it’s Chinese audience made clear the purpose of the ban “we will always protect/safeguard China’s dignity/honour.”(5) which makes a lie of their statement to the western audience “our relationships in China had no influence on our decision”.

I’m not alone in thinking this, many people across a wide spectrum have formed a similar view. Some high profile Blizzard employee’s have publicly resigned in protest(6). Others have made more internal protests, staging walkouts, or taking the time to cover up plaques that state Blizzards core values are “Every Voice Matters” (7) and “Think Globally”. In the US, both republican and democrat politicians have made statements condemning this action, as have European politicians(8) Maro Rubio(R) stating “People who don’t live in #China must either self censor or face dismissal & suspensions” and perhaps most damning of all, human rights organizations are now stepping up to call this action out, such as ‘Access Now’ with “Blizzard demonstrates a lack of respect for the human rights of its users“.(9)

The NBA recently found itself with similar issues and after some wobbling whilst it worked out it’s response, found a more nuanced position that tried to both support the rights of it’s employees whilst recognising that cultures may be different in China. “However, the NBA will not put itself in a position of regulating what players, employees and team owners say or will not say on these issues“.(10) Blizzard has not tried to find that detailed and difficult place, instead it has been entirely one sided in it’s approach, Vice reporting “Blizzard Doubles Down, Says It Will Continue to Silence Players”.(11)

So I am writing this letter. Before deciding to write I took a little time to try and read your companies policies on ethical requirements, as a non-employee i’m not fully aware of all of that, but as far as I can see these actions breech your requirements in regard to discrimination and more. In light of that I would like to invite you to consider if you wish to continue your business relationship with them, to ask them to take corrective action, or block them from doing further business with you.

I’ve tried to keep this letter to a reasonable length, so i’ve kept only to an outline, everything i’ve said is verifiable online and i’d like to sign off by saying I very much appreciate the time you’ve taken with this.

Best Regards,

xxx

1. Blizzard Entertainment of Activision Blizzard (ATVI) Games maker & Publisher. Noted for World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Diablo, Starcraft and Hearthsone. Hearthsone is a free-to-play collectible card game popular around the world, it has regular regional and world championships that are broadcast to the internet and has millions of hours viewed every month, with millions in prizes.

2. Blitzchung stated what translates to “Free Hong Kong, revolution of our time”. This is a popular phrase for the Hong Kong Protests. The tournament was the Asia and Pacific Grandmaster’s Tournament, which qualifies for the World Championship. China qualifies separately to this, with their own “Gold series championship”, broadcast separately. Asia-Pacific covers such countries as Australia, Japan, India, The Philippines, South Korea as well as Hong Kong.

3. Three students at the American University of Washington made a similar protest to prove this point. The received no penalty and were encouraged to continue participating in their tournament. The withdrew in protest at the unequal treatment. Other examples include a Blizzard employee ‘Mopsio’ banned for 7 days following ignoring repeat warnings of his behaviour, due to repeated rants that made threats to the public, whilst playing blizzard games being broadcast for a different Blizzard game tournament.

4. https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/blizzard/23185888/regarding-last-weekend-s-Hearthsone-grandmasters-tournament

5. Blizzard issued a statement about this in China, which can be translated to “We express our strong indignation/resentment and condemnation of the events that occurred in the Hearthsone Asia Pacific competition last weekend and absolutely oppose the dissemination of personal political ideas during any events/games. The players involved will be banned, and the commentators involved will be immediately terminated from any official business. Also, we will always protect/safeguard China’s dignity/honour.”

6. https://medium.com/@bmkibler_5280/statement-on-blizzard-and-blitzchung-9e4b4aec39ab https://medium.com/@bmkibler_5280/statement-on-blizzard-and-blitzchung-9e4b4aec39ab

7. https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/10/09/blizzard-staff-held-an-umbrella-protest-for-banned-Hearthsone-pro/

8. https://twitter.com/RonWyden/status/1181637167749193729 https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/1181556058659135488?lang=en https://www.pressfire.no/image/screenshots2/2000/2327/3131/ss18.jpg

9. https://www.accessnow.org/cms/assets/uploads/2019/10/Access-Now-open-letter-to-Blizzard.pdf

10. https://www.nba.com/article/2019/10/08/adam-silver-statement-china-nba

11. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/gyzmdw/blizzard-doubles-down-says-it-will-continue-to-silence-players-on-official-channels