Hearthstone: Year of the Raven!

And, of course, as someone playing on the European server, I can't actually play the new-and-revamped ladder because Blizzard made a boo-boo. Whoops! More Wild Arena for me, then, which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. Not sure how I feel about the new ladder -- it theoretically sounds awesome and a lot less doable for people to actually grind to Legend rank over a longer period of time, but we'll see.

But hey, the next Hearthstone year is announced, and it's the Year of the Raven. It really means nothing, because we do know that the sets are rotating out (Old Gods, Karazhan and Gadgetzan are the ones moving to Wild now).

We also get a bit of a tease for the three expansions of the Year of the Raven, but honestly? It feels gloriously vague. The first one looks kind of... Emerald Dream-y? Or maybe something to do with sunken Naga cities? The second one is definitely something to do with Voids and Ethereal portals, because the aesthetic is apparently pretty similar to a lot of the newer content in Legion. The third one looks... just weird. Something kind of tiki-y or troll-y? Could be anything.

We're also getting a fair amount of cards being Hall of Fame'd, which is neat. Ice Block is the card Blizzard has been none-too-subtly hinting that it's going to be dealt with by nerf or by the hall of fame, and it's definitely the one everyone saw coming. But something I thought was absolutely shocking is Coldlight Oracle -- especially since barely anyone plays with Coldlight Oracle anymore other than maybe Kingsbane Rogues and some really bizarre versions of Murloc Paladin (Divine Favour's almost always better anyway). I guess it's just pre-emptively trying to prevent too much abuse with Coldlight Oracle? Definitely feels that a design space deal is going on. Molten Giant is the third inductee, which is hinted at but not something I took seriously. But it's being reverted to its pre-Old-Gods-era Zoolock 20-mana Molten Giant form, and moved to Wild. Considering how rampant the Naga Sea Witch + Giants deck is in Wild... they probably need to nerf how Naga Sea Witch interacts with giant decks, otherwise it's Wild that is going to have fucked-up balance. It'd be two steps forwards, one step back if they nerfed Patches and Raza for Wild's sake, but left Naga Sea Witch unchanged.

So I guess I have to craft two Molten Giants now to receive the full dust refund when Raven Expansion Numero Uno shows up, huh.

There's a bunch of new extra stuff -- Lunara from Heroes of the Storm is showing up as the Druid alternate hero, who's going to be earned in the same way that you earn Maiev Shadowsong at the beginning of Year of the Mammoth. Quests are being changed to reward slightly more gold... but the big thing that doesn't really matter to me (but matters a lot to a significant portion of the fanbase) is the addition of a Tournament Mode. Neat, but not my deal, because I'm far more interested in the shiny new druid portrait than this huge, entirely brand-new mode with huge ramifications to how we play Hearthstone.

Overall, though, it's a neat bit of announcement. The Hall of Fame stuff and speculating on the Raven Year's expansions are definitely the highlights of the announcements. I'm definitely not a big fan of how Kobolds and Catacombs have turned out to be, finding the metagame excruciatingly boring pre-nerf, and not even feeling particularly revitalized post-nerf since we just reverted back to the pre-Shadowreaper-Razakus decks, while retaining the Voidlord Warlock decks. Eh. Overall, though, definitely a shot in the arm Hearthstone desperately needs.