A Message from Cory

Hello HEXers!

Cory here, just wanted to take a moment to look back on 2015 and share some of the great milestones we hit!

It’s been a crazy year. We are several steps closer to HEX being the game we all want it to be. There are some great numbers in this update that point to HEX becoming a huge success. But before we get into that, I want to share some difficult news. We will not be launching PVE before the end of this year. Technically, the PVE patch is done, but there are a few too many bugs to launch it right now and I would much rather slip slightly then give players a broken experience.

Remember, we will have a large number of players coming back for this patch. As proud as I am at what the team has accomplished, I don’t want a trivial bug to ruin what could be HEX making a great impression on a passionate TCG player. This is why we had to make the hard decision to move the launch to the very beginning of 2016. I am sorry for the delay, but it should be a short wait.

Now on to some better news about what we DID accomplish over the last year!

We started off the year with Set 2, Shattered Destiny (technically this was the very end of 2014). What an amazing set it was! It included a new keyword, Tunneling, and the inclusion of double socketing. Both brought some exciting new elements to game. Not only is tunneling a fun mechanic, it also shows off how we will include neat graphical components to help augment the gameplay experience. Seeing the card tunnel under the board was undeniably cool.

And we introduced one of my favorite things ever: the “double socket”. I often talk about allowing players to use creativity as the backbone of good game design, and the inclusion of that one additional gem really unlocked the potential of some crazy deck designs.

Probably the biggest news of the year was the launch of our first piece of PVE content, the Frost Ring Arena. Finally, players had a chance to open all those chests and use the equipment! The Arena served as a tiny taste of what PVE will offer, the chance to tune and tinker with decks to beat a range of challenges.

The Arena also started to pay off the idea of TCG building as part of a puzzle mechanic and allowed the free-to-play crowd a chance to try the game in a deeper more enriching way. As a matter of fact, the value of gold proved to be high enough to give many players a chance to try their first competitive draft without spending real money on the game.

So far we have had 1.4 MILLION Arena runs completed by over 100,000 players. And get this: 2,646 players have done the arena over 100 times! But hold on, let’s go bigger: 700 players have done the Arena over 250 times … and 152 players have over 500 Arena runs! And for the grand finale: 17 players have done OVER 1000 Arena runs! Those are some die hard PVE players!

One of the other features that includes beautiful synergy with the Arena was the Auction House. All the gold, equipment, and chests really started to flow, and through it all the players benefit from a truly open economy. Our plan was always to grow a player driven economy, which is one of the reasons we spent so much time working on the system to insure the best balance possible. One wrong move and it would all tank.

I am very happy to say that it seems like we are on the right track with the Auction House. Some of the interface still needs work and more features could really help streamline the process, but overall it has been a huge success in terms of giving players a way to trade and buy items in HEX.

So far, 172 million platinum has been exchanged via the Auction House … and 2.1 BILLION gold! An incredible 6,398,305 cards have been auctioned.

Want to know what is the most popular card in the Auction House? BURN sold 25500 times. I guess we better nerf that card, it must be broken!

From day one, tournaments have been wildly popular in HEX. Everyone knows that head to head competition is something TCGs do very well, but real cash prize E-sports was the ultimate goal for competitive play in HEX.

I am proud to say we have kicked it off in a big way with the $100,000 HEX Invitational. I have often said that I play way too much HEX, and with absolute certainty I can say I am not alone. Running either Gauntlet (the asynchronous mode we launched this year) or drafts, I am not waiting long day or night to get my fix. One of the benefits of having our game in 9 languages and played by people all over the world, there’s always someone to play with.

We have had over 67,000 tournaments fire off. That’s a LOT of tournaments, and our biggest ever was during the stress test with 748 players simultaneously. With the launch of our Invitational tournament, we have seen a huge increase in the daily attendance for our IQ events. Who wouldn’t want to play with a trip to California and a 100K prize pool on the line?

I cannot wait until the big Invitational event. We have some great stuff planned and a terrific venue picked out. I know William has done a ton of work searching the community for talent when it comes to the broadcast and I am confident we will have a high quality production that everyone can enjoy, not just the players lucky (and skilled) enough to compete for the money.

It has been a great first year for HEX E-sports. Beyond the Invitational, we also presented HEX at major E-sports events like IEM in Katowice and launched a series of tournaments with ESL, one of the biggest E-sports leagues in the world.

I mentioned Shattered Destiny earlier, so I think it’s also important we talk a bit about our third set, Armies of Myth, which was also released in 2015. This set started the deeper exploration of the coyotle, elf, necrotic, and vennen races. We added the Prophecy and Shift keywords as well as the new spider mechanic. Each of these new mechanics brought an amazing degree of top down design into the game. When you’re spawning spiders you really get what it is to be vennen, and the same can be said for the coyotle, elf, and necrotic game play.

I believe as we explore more of the world of Entrath and its different races and creatures this focus on top down design will be a big part of what makes that experience rich and textured. I am also tremendously proud of the hard work put in by our art team. We continue to upgrade the overall look of the game and nowhere is that more evident than the card art itself. Some of my favorite art in the game comes from Armies of Myth, which also brought us to over 1000 total cards in the game!

Of course, I couldn’t properly sum up the year without mentioning our community, which is unquestionably the best in gaming.

Our little community is getting bigger, with over 700,000 downloads of the game and 120,000 monthly active users. We have started to grow in a meaningful way. But size isn’t what’s important, it’s the character of our players that makes our game special. From the small things like the welcome many new players get from the veterans (sending them cards and explaining the game) to the groups of players that do community tournaments, streaming, and events. This year are community raised over $28,000 during our 4 day charity stream for Extra Life and made a total impact of $35,508, which was pretty unbelievable! All the money we raised went towards CHOC Children’s Hospitals. Even though the event is over, you can still donate at Extra Life!

The opportunity to spend time with HEX players has been the best part of building this game. I was overwhelmed at RPCON with the reception of HEX (we actually won an award!) and GenCon as always was the best possible time, catching up with die hard HEX fans as well as meeting new ones. These Cons really put the fuel back in our tank and make it that much easier to put in the long hours to finish the game.

And we will finish this game! (Well, there will always be cool new features coming, so in that sense it will never be completely finished.) I know it’s disappointing we’re not hitting the end of the year with the PVE patch, but please believe me, it is super close.

Not only that, it is another huge leap forward in both polish and systems. Each time we make these leaps forward, the next leap is that much easier. Set 4 is a great example, it was MUCH easier to engineer than Set 3, and I imagine Set 5 will be even easier. Which is great, because one of my top priorities is to get three sets out a year. I think this is critically important, and it’s something we will make happen come hell or high water.

Let me finish this off with a thank you. Many of us are four years in on this game, longer than I have personally worked on a single creative project in my life, and I have to tell you the only way we remain sane and can keep up this pace is the love and support we have received from the community and our partners (GameForge and Perfect World).

The entire team hopes you have a happy and restful holiday and that you’re ready to start the New Year exploring Entrath!

Love, Cory

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