With the upcoming Hearthstone adventure, One Night in Karazhan (spoiler page here), the Hearthstone team felt some questions were left to be answered. Via Twitter fans could send in questions marked with #AskBrode, of which some would be answered by Ben Brode himself. We've transcribed all questions and answers and, to make it more convenient, divided them thematically. At the end of the Q&A Brode stated that he'd try to answer a couple more questions via Twitter directly, so be sure to keep an eye on his Twitter account!
One Night in Karazhan
@millere2773: Why did you go with a silly party theme for Karazhan, instead of a darker theme like the original raid?
We actually considered Karazhan, back when we were thinking about our first adventures, but we ended up doing the Curse of Naxxramas instead. We love Karazhan, and it has always been one of our favorite raids. We just came off from Whispers of the Old Gods, and we wanted to do another spooky translation. On the Hearthstone team we are more and more understanding what is and what isn’t ‘Hearthstone’. Often we have explored dark places, but always in a funny way. Kel’Thuzad is a fun character, and Whispers of the Old Gods is not dark entirely, but fun and light-hearted as well. That fun and light-hearted twist on things is kind of our thing now. So when we had the idea to do Karazhan, but fun and light-hearted in an enchanted fun tower where things are going a little haywire, that really hit us.
Fun and light-hearted is kind of our thing now.
Then we had the idea that Medivh was throwing a party there, and that you have to help save Medivh’s party. The whole thing just took off and we were really excited about it. It was also exciting to explore Karazhan in a different time than when anyone else had explored it, back in its prime. This is a place that has an Opera House and a Banquet Hall, and we wanted to know what it was like when there were actual parties happening there. We just couldn’t wait, and that’s why we ended up going that direction.
@btreif: Why is Firelands Portal a common? Seems like a slamdunk Arena card, and Mages don’t need the help there.
I’ve heard a lot of the feedback about Firelands Portal, and how Mages are already very strong in Arena; they don’t need another strong card. Actually I think this brings up a much bigger problem in Hearthstone, which is Arena balance in general. We already struggle with Arena balance. I don’t think think the solution, though, is to never make strong commons for Mage or Rogue, or only make non-situational cards for classes that are weaker in Arena. It is a problem though, and we do need to fix it. We’ve been looking into some other technology, maybe rewriting some of the ways Arena works so we can control the drop rates of individual cards, potentially, in a way that doesn’t affect our building design for strong commons in all classes. I think that might be a better direction to go. We’ve also been looking into more radical changes, but I don’t think constraining our design makes the most sense.
@Maxter454: Will there be something connected to Rafaam? He appears in the middle of the new adventure cinematic trailer.
With the last few cinematics we’ve tried to reference our previous cinematics. You can actually find Elise Starseeker in the Whispers of the Old Gods cinematic, and one of the gnomes from the Goblin versus Gnomes cinematic too. We like to bring some of those characters back, and maybe in future cinematics you will see more of them. In this case that’s all it is, Rafaam is stealing a book from Medivh because he is the Supreme Archeologist, and you might see him again in the future stealing things from other cinematics.
@CampiMTG: Will we be able to use the Medivh Mage skin in the wings of the Kharazhan adventure?
You will definitely be able to use the Medivh hero skin for missions where you will choose your hero. In some of the missions you will be given a hero. It is of course a little bit weird, because the time lines are a little bizarre, but give it a shot and I think you’ll be surprised what happens.
The future of Hearthstone
@WillJackDavies: Will Priest be viable on ladder after the release of Karazhan?
The thing about Priest, and I think about decks in general, is that you don’t play them in a vacuum, you have to play them against somebody else’s deck. So your deck is good or bad, depending on what other people are playing. After one night in Karazhan, the meta is going to explode, but it’s hard to tell what decks people will be playing. Priest and different Priest decks might be good or bad against the new metagame. We’ll have to find out, but I do think we’re releasing some cards that might have an impact on Priest. I think Book Wyrm is a nice tool for Dragon Priest, and we have some nice Priest cars to unveil soon as well.
@epicYoungGKong: Will Paladin have any cards that do something whenever/after you heal, to complement the huge amount of heal the class has?
While Paladin has a lot of healing effects, we actually want to position Priest as the master of healing. So its hero power can heal, and that gives it an opportunity to have a lot of those ‘trigger on heal’ effects because you know you will always have access to some kind of healing effect. I think we want to maintain some things that are unique about each class, and for Priest one of those things is that they have a lot of effects based on healing. I don’t think that spreading it around in different classes will be good for the game, so healing is really one of Priest’s ‘things’.
@YurkaHS: When will there be an API out for Hearthstone? I would love to see my winrate, fastest climb to legend etc.
I think an API for Hearthstone would be really cool. We aren’t currently planning for that kind of feature, but we have talked about it in the past. It would be awesome when we get around to doing it.
@Chauffeurrr: Will Classic remain in the Standard format forever? Will some cards be removed from Classic or added to it?
It’s possible that in the future we will remove or nerf more cards from Classic
We just went through the set rotation, and the idea is that the Basic and Classic set will be evergreen, which means they will always be part of Standard. I think there are some risks with having certain cards always be there, because the idea of Standard is that the set rotates all the time. This is our first year, and we are still figuring things out. It’s possible that in the future we will remove or nerf more cards from Classic, but I’m not sure when we will do that. If Standard isn’t changing as much as is felt needed, we might take some steps in that direction.
@WSquared88: Will we be seeing any more minions with the [card]Foe Reaper 4000[/card] effect in the near future?
I really like the Foe Reaper effect, in fact I like all the effects that affect combat. So any card that makes you do your math differently, or choose your attacks differently, I’m really fan of. I certainly think we could see that type of effect more in the future, and also look into other effect that affect combat in fun and unusual ways.
@Boucinhafamily: What is the process of coming up with a new expansion theme?
We all get in an office together and set up a big white board. Then one of us writes down all the ideas that get shouted out in the meeting. We have a column for flavor ideas, like Karazhan, a column for mechanical ideas such as interactions with your hero power, which is what we ended up doing for The Grand Tournament. When we have compiled the huge list everyone can put down dots near the ideas they love most, and then we start narrowing it down. Sometimes an idea just catches fire and we get really excited about it, which is actually what happened with One Night in Karazhan.
General questions
@LewisJLF: Are there any plans for developer blogs/commentary on the vision for each class and where they stand? If so, when?
I think it’s a cool idea. A lot of the guys on the team have been excited about writing blogs, and I will mention it to them. I think it could be really cool!
@AdoisBest: Which cardback is your favourite?
My favorite cardback up until recently was the Legacy of the Void cardback. If you’re playing on a mobile device or tablet and you tilt it you can see different stars as you rotate your device. But I actually love the disco cardback for One Night in Karazhan, I’m really excited about that.
(Hearthstone Senior Producer) @ywoo_dev: Who is your favorite producer on Team 5?
I actually have a lot of favorite producers on Team 5 and I’m just going to list them out: Christian, EDP, Echo, Steve, Terry, Neil, Brian, Jason, Keith… Did I say Tim? Tim. (Everyone but Yong Woo)
@Nateson153: How did you start as a game designer?
Actually I got started because one of my friends got a job at Blizzard thirteen years ago. While they were working during the night they would order pizza, which I would deliver to them since I worked at a nearby pizza place at that time. I got to know some of the people there and ended up getting a job myself, testing Warcraft III and World of Warcraft. I really loved the job and I got more involved in testing the editor for Warcraft III, designing my own maps. That’s what really got me into learning the first things about game design. I was working on licensed products like the World of Warcraft TCG, which got me into a position on the Hearthstone team, where I’ve been for the last eight years.
@FleshBurna: Would you rather fight 100 duck sized horses or 1 horse sized duck?
I would rather fight 1 horse sized duck. I feel that as long as I won’t get surrounded I’ll be fine.