by OtakuMZ - 7 years ago     show comments

The announcement of the announcement’s announcement for Knights of the Frozen Throne happened a few days ago. We have all craved for a Lich King themed expansion for a long time and this will be the first expansion with the new “missions,” how exciting! On the other hand, I heavily question the design decision Team5 made with the death Knight alternate hero cards. All of them, one each for the existing nine classes, will be Legendaries. Although fitting for cards that are carrying unique effects, it once again will raise a lot of critique of this design decision. Why, read along!

First, I make an unconfirmed assumption upon which I base my arguments: we will get two legendaries for every class, one “normal” and one class hero. I assume this based on the similar Quests in Journey to Un’Goro. Quests had a unique feel and made the whole experience of the game exciting and fresh. The main critique of quests was that people needed all those Legendaries to in order to enjoy the full potential of the expansion. This problem was very much accentuated because a huge part of the other new cards were designed around the Quests for them to work. With other Legendaries, the problem is less intense because few are necessary for a particular deck in the same way that Quests are. Although I don’t always find critiques from free-to-play (F2P) players compelling, I agreed with them that in Un’Goro it was indeed a problem.

So why does Blizzard seemed destined to repeat this questionable design decision? I think people are overestimating the problem (no, I am not on their payroll, just to be clear). We still do not know the whole picture and do not know if the problem is as considerable as it was with Quests. From the one Legendary Hero that has been revealed, Deathstalker Rexxar, the new Hero does not seem to change the feel and game-plan of the Hunter class too drastically. Again, we assume that the other Heroes will be roughly equivalent in that sense. It seems that, unlike Quests, it seems that decks that use Hero cards will still be playable, albeit at a lower power level, without the new Legendary. True, the Legendary Hero enhances the power of the class by a lot, but so do other powerful Legendary cards like Tirion Fordring and Fandral Staghelm.

Also unlike Quests, the Hero cards are going live after major changes designed to make collecting building more efficient. With this set, Blizzard is guaranteeing us one Hero card for completing the set’s missions. On top of that, Blizzard has also tweaked pack openings so that we are guaranteed at least one Legendary within our first 10 packs and that we will not open duplicate Legendaries. With those changes, it will be much easier to get a couple exciting Heroes to play with right off the bat and a full collection over the lifespan of the set.

Regardless of the cost of the expansion, most people I know will be eager to kill their heroes and revisit what was arguably the best World of Warcraft expansion of all time. What do you think of the new Hero card type? Are you happy that they are Legendaries? Let us know in the comments below.