Hearthstone: Curse of Naxxramas Finally Released
Finally, after months of hype, Curse of Naxxramas is finally upon us! I know I was among the sceptics who believed that Blizzard’s projected release for July meant something like December 2015, but true to their word Blizz, have actually delivered the release on time!
Article by Tom Williams
Well… technically it’s released; four of the five wings remain locked with one more becoming available each week. This is a puzzling choice, as it means that the new cards will trickle in over the course of a month, and some classes will get their new card before others, which could create an unbalanced meta-game where some classes have more options than others. On top of this, information regarding which wings house which class challenges is scarce at best at the moment.
A wing-by-wing release works for World of Warcraft raids, where the week gives guilds time to clear the preceding wings, but for a CCG it seems bizarre. This will will also affect server load. As I write this, logging on to Hearthstone is very difficult due to the clamour of players trying to sample the new content all at once. I know that many players on the Hearthstone UK page (where I frequent on Facebook) gave up altogether on getting at the content right away. I fear this is a problem that will return every time a new wing opens (though perhaps to a lesser extent as subsequent wings are going to cost money).
Furthermore, the spoiler process was very unstructured. We got a few cards months and months ago and then Blizzard started drip-feeding us cards whenever they felt like it before splurging the rest literally hours before release, rather than having an ordered spoiler season like Magic: The Gathering or even Duel of Champions. It really didn’t help the hype overload that has surrounded the expansion. But we were finally able to reveal the collated list of cards over Twitter a few days ago.
However, despite these criticisms, the actual content itself is very enjoyable. If you have a healthy card collection, it won’t take you long to blaze through it. The Heroic Mode at least offers some semblance of a challenge and the bosses themselves have humorous responses to your emotes and hero powers that make the encounters unique and challenging. The new cards are also a welcome addition that I hope can shake up the metagame and usher in some new deck archetypes, as well as shove over a few others that are hogging the top spot. Meanwhile, our own Vincent Chandler and I have been taking a look at the set card by card, which you can check out below.
Happy Card-slinging everyone, I’ll leave you with a joke:
How does Naxxramas fly?
It has five wings.