used to be peak, now it's trash

The short version is that Hearthstone faced the same problem all card games faced. You have to constantly add in new cards and gimmicks to keep the meta and game play interesting (and also the investors happy because you need to sell cards at the end of the day). In order to make players wanna play and buy these cards, you have to power creep them. Eventually you end up with way too many cards and gimmicks in the game that the game has lost its identity, but also most of the old cards are unplayable because they're just too weak after 10 generations of power creep. I started playing in 2015 right around the time the Black Rock Mountain Expansion was added all the way to around 2018. I did feel a slight decline in quality around 2017, and after Ben Brode left in 2018, all of it just went to shit. But early Hearthstone really was peak. The decks and classes all had a ton of their own unique identities that mirrored how the characters played in wow. Face Hunter, freeze mage, control warrior, patron warrior (my favorite), handlock, demonlock, and so many other ones (mill druid probably my all time favorite deck to play). Turn 2 coin (always) huffer (YEP) will always be one of the most aids interactions in all of gaming. There was also a very vibrant community with a ton of good streamers like Forsen, Rekful, Reynad, Dog, Savjz, TrumpSC, Kripp, Amaz, Firebat, and so many more. And Blizzcon would be fun to watch because back then most of the players would be these streamers. Since then the game's gone completely to shit. I think around 2016 the oversaturation of cards became an issue, they introduced standard where you only play cards from 3 sets. And while i cant speak on the state of the game for the last couple years, i also have 0 desire to play it these days. If I were rating this game back in 2015-16 it would be around a 9. Today it would be a 3. So just like Sam I was going to give this a 6, but tbh battlegrounds is a pretty fun gamemode and it did bring me back for a year or so. So for that I'll give it a +1.

Comments 3

@sam Jun 11, 2026

Wayyyy better review than me lmao. Had to give you the noob react because you used my score and edited upward though. I will admit I really enjoyed Kripp Reynad and Dog back in the day. Was really nice to kind of “organically” learn of decks and strong cards from the community. It felt like going to a card shop and seeing a better player teach me about the game (not sure if this translates for people who actually have that experience but just trying to compare it to something). Until that became the way to be the best and meta-decking was the only thing anyone did. It’s really interesting to me upon reflection how twitch and social sites have impacted meta play in games. I thought it was isolated to games like league and hearthstone but I think your HS review really helped me realize that it was a timing issue, twitch was getting really popular around this time and HS was a freemium game that was really easy to copy/paste step by step instructions to create win conditions. So definitely worse in HS than other games for me. I will say that meta decking and the power creep were probably two of the biggest reasons I stopped playing (in addition to never ending chase of new cards), but over the years I’ve begun to stop viewing as much instructional meta-explaining content online about games because it ruined my experience in so many beloved games. Appreciate your take and thought it was really on the nose and insightful

@bill Jun 11, 2026

@sam I think HS and all strategy games are impacted by meta play way more cause there is no skill barrier. The decision is the skill. Like I can watch 100 hr of faker or zywoo gameplay, and I still wouldn't be able to replicate any of it. Whereas you watch someone play a deck and you can just copy their decisions and that is the entire game.

@degenerate_dong Jun 17, 2026

@bill rs tho, when is pan_tf going to review tf2?