Trivia / Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

• Author's Saving Throw:
  • After rabid community outcry over the reveal of the blatantly terrible Priest card Purify, Ben Brode published a video explaining Blizzard's reasoning for creating the card, that they screwed up by releasing a weak card at the wrong time, and that the card would be removed from Arena drafts to give Priest some much needed support.
  • The release of more cards with the "class cards stealing" theme in later expansions for Rogue seems to have quieted down the jokes that Priests are better thieves than Rogues.
  • At launch, a mistake in the pack coding for Mean Streets of Gadgetzan caused the tri-class cards to be dropped at triple the rate, causing players to receive a disproportionate amount of duplicates. In response, Blizzard fixed the bug and handed out free Gadgetzan packs equal to a third of the packs a player had opened up to that point.
  • Many Hearthstone forums were up in a shitstorm at the release of Journey to Un'Goro, due to accusations that packs were bugged to give a disproportionate amount of duplicates. This would later turn out to be false, but regardless Blizzard seemed to recognize that this shouldn't happen, and as such starting with Knights of the Frozen Throne, packs no longer give duplicate Legendaries (unless the player owns every Legendary from that set), and guarantee that one is opened within the first 10 packs.
  • With the release of the Kobolds and Catacombs expansions, Hunter players were dismayed to discover that Deathstalker Rexxar, whose hero power generates "Zombeasts" made up of two low-cost beast cards combined into one new minion, could not use any of the beasts from the new expansion. It was then revealed that this was not a bug, and that the Zombeast pool was not planned to EVER expand and would only get smaller with each standard rotation. Game dev Mike Donais explained to Reddit that the issue was not about the coding as many suspected, but rather that the localization teams need to translate every possible Zombeast combination and then fit the translated wording into highly specific requirements for card text arrangement. After a few days of internet outrage over the unannounced limitation, the same dev returned to Reddit to announce that they would be reworking the pool to add new and future beasts.
    • As of Rastakhan's Rumble, this change to Deathstalker Rexxar has nosedived into Nice Job Breaking It, Hero territory; the inclusion of new beasts in his Zombeast pool—and the exponential growth of options that resulted from it—has almost certainly led to Hunter's ongoing dominance in this expansion. See the Game Breaker page for more details.
  • After a patch aimed at solidifying gameplay consistency was flamed for blatantly nerfing Tess Greymane, Lynessa Sunsorrow, and Jungle Giants without offering dust, Blizzard responded with their reasoning for the patch and admitted they made a mistake by not announcing it beforehand. Afterwards, Tess had her change reverted, and players who brought Quest Druid to HCT were allowed to swap their decks before the tournament. ^note Lynessa had no recompense, but compared to the other two her change was pretty minor and was meant to be a simple bugfix, so people were more forgiving.
  • After about two years of people randomly spawning The Darkness, a minion that starts out Dormant and can only be awakened through a condition tied to its Battlecry and is thus completely useless if summoned in any way except by playing it, the addition of the similar Magtheridon in Ashes of Outland prompted Blizzard to prevent minion-generating effects from rolling Dormant minions that don't awaken naturally (the Imprisoned minions in the same set are still fair game since they can awaken by themselves).
• Canon Immigrant: Some cards that weren't originally in World of Warcraft have made their way into WoW. Three examples are Imp-losion, the Coin, and Sir Finley Mrrggleton
• Content Leak:
  • Flame Leviathan, Iron Juggernaut, Vol'jin, and Trade Prince Gallywix were all leaked several days before their proper reveal. Due to all of their (at the time) very unique effects, most players assumed they were fake.
  • Journey to Un'Goro's major details were leaked on a Chinese website a couple of days before the expansion was properly announced. In particular, a low quality image of Amara, Warden of Hope was on wide display, coupled with an explanation regarding Quests.
  • The French voice actor for Harth Stonebrew decided to have some fun and revealed one of the Dungeon Run bosses (Pathmaker Hamm) long before release.
  • Photos of 8 cards from Galakrond's Awakening, including the legendary Fist of Ra'den, surfaced on the Japanese site BeerBrick a good while before the adventure came out.
  • The day before the big 2020 info dump, gaming news website Polygon accidentally made their article regarding the event public, spoiling the Priest rework, the title of the next expansion, the new Outcast mechanic, and the brand new Demon Hunter class.
  • Showdown at the Badlands had a pretty amusing one: a day before the official announcement, a shirt baring the expansion's logo and showing off the Maw and Paw Legendary was available for purchase from the digital Blizzcon store. It was swiftly removed, but not fast enough to stop the news from spreading. This is the first time a set was leaked by Blizzard themselves rather than a third party.
  • Similarly, a post on Twitter that showed off how Wizbang's Workshop's Miniaturize keyword worked… that showed off Mystery Egg, a card that wasn't officially announced yet. The post had since been deleted.
• Dummied Out:
  • Giantfin has had the shortest tenure of any Battlegrounds hero (tied with Mukla, but at least Mukla was re-added later). He was introduced as part of the initial 24, but was removed fourteen days later and hasn't been seen since.
  • The minion "Friend of a Friend" is a similar case. He was removed six days after being introduced, which makes sense, given his effect on the BG meta.
• Follow the Leader: Hearthstone more or less singlehandedly popularized the digital card game, and dozens of companies (including big names like CD Projekt RED) jumped into the untapped market. Even Magic: The Gathering got in on the deal. Almost as if to prove how much influence Hearthstone has had on its competition, most, if not all competitors have copied the Arcane Dust system in varying ways.
• No Export for You: Because of how signing up for Twitch Prime worked, Tyrande could not be obtained in several parts of the world unless an eligible player gave away their activation code to a foreign one. Averted as of 10 December 2019, in which she can be obtained for free by simply visiting the shop.
• Official Fan-Submitted Content: A variation. Much like Magic: The Gathering, Hearthstone has many card artworks done by fanartists. A well-known example is GENZOMAN, whose immediately recognizable style is the artworks for Grand Widow Faerlina, Secretkeeper, Spellbinder, Scarlet Crusader and Repentance.
• The Other Darrin: Many examples, especially most of the Chris Metzen-voiced characters. A non-Chris Metzen example, has Rexxar here voiced by Matthew Mercer rather than his VA ever since Warcraft III, Steve Blum.
  • This applies to characters that reappeared within Hearthstone years later, too. Compare some characters like Sylvanas Windrunner (the hero skin) and Tirion Fordring in the KotFT prologue between their original releases side-by-side and you can hear the differences. The most incredibly obvious example though, is Khadgar between the hero skin and in Rise of Shadows.
  • Another notable example is Leeroy Jenkins as as a card and in World of Warcraft, he was voiced by Ben Schulz, his voice actor from the Leeroy Jenkins Video, but as a hero, he's voiced by Yuri Lowenthal.
  • Also applies to the Polish dub, where two instances of this trope happened: first, Uther Lightbringer's voice was changed from Mariusz Leszczyński to Marek Barbasiewicz due to the former's death in 2014; later, Valeera Sanguinar's voice actress Ewa Serwa was replaced by Katarzyna Godlewska, most likely due to the latter voicing the character in Heroes of the Storm.
• Prop Recycling:
  • Most of the card artworks in early sets were recycled from the discontinued World of Warcraft TCG. This also led to some characters being depicted by artworks of other characters for want of a decent artwork of them; for instance, Malygos's card artwork actually depicts Kalecgos (who got a brand new artwork when he also appeared as a card), Mal'Ganis is portrayed by an artwork of Varimathras, and King Krush's artwork depicts Lar'korwi (whose TCG artwork mistakenly made it a devilsaur, King Krush's species, rather than a ravasaur).
  • Unused card art is occasionally repurposed for future cards. In particular, Omega Defender originally had different art, but was deemed too Mech-like and replaced with something that showcased the goblin piloting it more prominently. That card art is now better known as Omega Devastator. Likewise, SN1P-SN4P's piece was commissioned for a card called Murloc Muncher (likely a mech version of Hungry Crab).
• Refitted for Sequel: In a sense. In very early design, Demon Hunters had a unique resource called Fury that was generated by their hero power and some cards would have to be spent to play other cards. This was scrapped since it really narrowed design space, having to dedicate enough cards to generating Fury so that the Fury-spenders felt good to use. The idea of a secondary resource was refitted for Death Knights, who convert their dead minions into Corpses that can be spent on other spells. Using Corpses lets the resource be accumulated naturally rather than shoving it on card effects, removing the design issues that hampered Fury.
• Sleeper Hit: Keep in mind that this game, at one point, had only 2 people working on it. It's not only one of Blizzard's most profitable games in years, but it's also joined the likes of Yu-Gi-Oh! and Magic: The Gathering as one of the most popular Collectible Card Games ever made.
• Surprise Release: Unlike previous and future expansions, every single new card from the League of Explorers set was revealed at Blizzcon 2015 with no preview season, and it was released at the end of the Hearthstone panel about a month ahead of the normal schedule.
• Throw It In!:
  • In its initial stages, the game had two heroes for each class: one for the Alliance and the other for the Horde. As the Alliance Warlock was Wilfred Fizzlebang, a playtester joked that there should be a Lord Jaraxxus card and Ben Brode agreed.
  • When designing the Witchwood set, Blizzard needed artwork of a giant snake for some generic card. An artist sent in a picture of a giant python coiled around a tree, which was deemed to be not big enough, so the artist decided to be cheeky and responded with a snake bigger than a village. Blizzard loved that one enough to make it into a Legendary card - Baku the Mooneater.
• Trolling Creator: Ben Brode, giving bad tips and laughing at Thijs' expense. You listen to that laugh of his and tell me if that's not a troll-worthy laugh. It's even become a Memetic Mutation in Hearthstone circles.
• Unspecified Role Credit: A particularly egregious example in recent times. IMDb lists a lot of voice actors from both America and Canada, but not all of them have assigned characters. And while several of those actors have been confirmed, it ultimately remains unclear as to who anyone else voiced, or if the list is even accurate.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Many other characters were considered to represent the hero of their particular class during the game's alpha stage: Tirion Fording for Paladin; Edwin VanCleef for Rogue (both ended up as their respective class's Classic Legendary); Hemet Nesingwary for Hunter (who ended up being a rather disappointing neutral Legendary in GvG); Kael'thas Sunstrider for Mage and Tyrande Whisperwind for Priest (who later ended up as an alternative heroes for those who used join the Twitch Prime feature with their account).
  • The Hero Power of each class used to be different: Rogue's Dagger Mastery used to be able to give Valeera's weapon +1 attack permanently if she already had one equip instead of destroying it (later changed to temporary and then remove this effect all together) and Priest's Lesser Heal did not heal targets, but rather gave +1 Health to the next minion Anduin played (remove because the developers felt that it strayed too far from the priest's healing-based nature).
  • Numerous cards and mechanic were also programmed into the game but was later removed. Most notably is the fact that the player going second was considered to be given a 0 mana 1/1 Avatar of the Coin and start with 35 health to compensate for the lost of tempo before settling on the current mechanic. The Hearthstone wiki even has a separate page for these.
  • With a mix of Accidentally-Correct Writing, a fanmade expansion had Ben Brode reveal that Sir Finley's cardtext was originally "Always the first card in your deck." Originally meant to boost the consistency of Murloc decks, they decided he wasn't that fun and reworked him into what he is today.
  • It was reviewed on the November 20th Card Review for Kobolds and Catacombs that the Secret mechanic was originally considered for the Rogue class, but the developers thought that Rogue was just way too busy with their Combo keyword and return to hand mechanic and thus was given to Paladin.
  • The planning stages of Rastakhan's Rumble shows some interesting offerings. First of the Loa Spirits were going to be Shrines that couldn't attack or be attack and provided strong effects (i.e. Shrine to Shrivalla allowed your spells to be cast twice, Gonk's gave your hero Windfury). Others included Jan'Alai letting you summon back all minions you killed with your hero power, Gonk would refresh your mana crystals if you overkilled a minion and Hakkar giving only your opponent corrupted bloods.
    • The biggest change was Krag'Wa was originally the Warrior Loa which drew the 3 highest cost minions from your deck. So who did Shaman have? They had a unused Loa named Bethekk the Panther that would've dealt 10 damage to all enemies if you played 10 spells.
  • RegisKillbin spoke to the lead writer for Book of Mercenaries and got an interesting bit of info. Apparently, had they known about the Diablo crossover event for Hallow's End 2021 in advance, Tamsin would not have summoned Anetheron in Stormwind, but rather Diablo himself. That would have made it the first official crossover in Hearthstone's lore.