So, when Blizzard launched Hearthstone it was a giant success. I remember celebrating 25 million players after iOS mobile launched. Players flocked to the game in droves. They told their friends who then told their friends.

It was seemingly designed to be a Magic Online for casual players who maybe wanted to fit in a quick game during lunch breaks, or perhaps a nostalgic experience for ex WoW players now waiting for their wife to get off the phone with their mother. It had plenty simple yet fun cards, as well as some off the wall concepts like Nozdormu, a dragon who made the turns much shorter and Ragnaros who threw giant fireballs. The game was living proof that that a casual first approach is the one people want….

Then about two years went by and shadows grew long across the once sunny land of Hearthstone. There were many players who seem genuinely unhappy with the state of the game. Reddit was a river of woe. Players cited things like stale a metagame, overpowered decks and non-interactive play – they said Blizzard didn’t care about them. Blizzard mostly disagreed and continued on as before.



Pic: The River of Woe on Reddit.

So, the real question is: who are these unhappy players? They are seemingly the competitive players, right? A small but vocal minority, right? Of little value economically, right? Wrong – let me explain further by way of a story.

When I was younger I played Magic the Gathering very, very, very competitively. I won Nationals in my country a few times and was ranked in the top 10 players worldwide. I made money and travelled the world playing the game. But I also played at my local comic book store, and there was the guy there who was just terrible at the game. I’ll call him Antonio (although that is not his name). I must have played him a hundred times (our store was small) and beaten him 99 times (Yes, he was that bad). I remember the painful experience of losing to him only once. I know for certain it was only once. My matchup against him was 99% favourable. He was that bad.

Then 10 years ago I quit competitive play and only played on Magic Online. So someone tells me recently that Antonio won Nationals* this year. I couldn’t believe it. I asked lots of questions. The same Antonio? How many players were there? Who else was in contention? Was he infinitely lucky? Does he have an identical twin? The answer, it turned out, was much simpler. He just got better at the game. Much, much better. Slowly, but surely, Antonio: Magma Rager evolved in Dr. Boomtonio. It took him 10 or 15 years to get there, but he made it. Is this so unbelievable? What I am suggesting is that the same thing that happened to Antonio is slowly (or not so slowly) happening to the Hearthstone player base. The player base is getting better and better, and not to an insignificant extent.

Antonio: Magma Rager Dr. Boomtonio

I read somewhere that at Rank 20 you are at the midway point of the ranked player base. Well, I play at Rank 20 sometimes and there are a ton of good players there. Almost all of them can play decently if not at the highest level. Some have legend card backs and a golden hero. This is more true during the 1st half of the month than the 2nd half. Occasionally, I play against a guy and he goes Coin + River Crocolisk. But he is not a casual player, he is an accomplished player who probably plays Magic and also Hearthstone F2P. In a month he will craft Patches, buy an adventure or two and have a deck approved by Vicious Syndicate. He is not a casual player. He has the chops to reach Legend. The stats show him as casual with a small collection and infrequent play. Stats can lie, ask Hillary Clinton.

So player bases grow up, and Hearthstone’s player base is no different. Blizzard seems to be in denial of this, and understandably so, because it goes against the grain of what brought them such wild success in the first place: the idea that the casual experience is the core success factor of the game. In business there is a common phenomenon where someone is successful, and they keep doing the same thing repeatedly until they suddenly fail. The reason is that the circumstances have changed but they are blind to that. Yahoo. Blackberry. Magic Online.

It is not my proposition that casual players have disappeared. Rather, it is my proposition that there exist two distinct groups of customers who are equally important – casual players and competitive/serious/regular/accomplished/skilled/invested players.

The common saying “The customer is always right” does not mean he is literally correct. Very often they are dead wrong, objectively speaking. What it does mean is that the purchasing decision is his decision, and any feeling he has about it, whether right or wrong, is going to directly affect your sales figures.

So here is my appeal.

“Dear Blizzard, half your 25+ million customers are begging for more competitive friendly design. That +-12.5 million people with money in hand, begging you to take it from them. And you are refusing.”

I can hear the Blizzard response in my mind already

“If we do what you say and re-orientate things towards competitive play, we will alienate the casual players. And then the game will die. It is a lose-lose proposition. Better we change nothing.”

So, allow me to suggest how you make change lose-lose choice in to win-win. You split off the competitive experience from the casual one and you give it different rules. Note that Wizards of the Coast learned this lesson long ago. Standard is competitive. Commander is casual. Draft is competitive. Sealed is casual. There are no Commander or Sealed decks events on the Pro Tour. Also understand that competitive players pay a lot more for this experience. A casual set of reconstructed decks might set you back $40 or $60 but a tier one competitive deck can be $400 or $600.

So I would do it like this: up until rank 15 you change nothing. If a player reaches rank 15 you give him the choice:

“You have now reached the highest level that casual style play can take you. You can either graduate to the competitive zone or continue to play as before. Continue or go back?”

Of course you might want to brand this all differently, but mechanically that is how it could work. Once you enter the competitive zone the game changes. The cards, the rules, the balance, the meta, the experience. It is designed for a 2nd purpose – competitive and high level play.

And so you give everyone what they want. The casual players continue with their casual environment (which also needs a redesign, by the way), the competitive players get to compete in their own high level play zone, and so Blizzard gets to keep both groups engaged, and therefore keep paying their shareholders handsomely.

So what specifically should be changed for high level players? Stay tuned for the next six articles to hear my take on it.

Thanks for reading

Wonder Boy

wonder.boy.hearthstone.1977 at gmail.com