Blog

Patrick Sullivan

When I go to large, competitive World of Warcraft TCG events on behalf of Cryptozoic, many players want to talk to me about issues they have.  Since they are competitive players, and I’m vaguely the representative of competitive development, mostly the questions regard power level.  As in, “Why does Curse of Exhaustion cost so much?  Couldn’t it cost seven or eight?” or “What is going on with Avatar of the Wild?  That card is way over the top.”   Rarely are they wrong in an objective sense; the cards they highlight as being “too weak” are cards that aren’t part of the competitive scene, and those that are discussed as being “too good” are often format-defining cards.  And since the whole point of development is to make sure the game is balanced, why would we print cards of such varying power level?

The last part there is something I believe is a huge misconception about the role of development.  While having a “balanced” game is important, it is a subset of a larger goal—that the game is actually enjoyable to play at all levels.  The game being balanced (which I loosely define as having a variety of decks and archetypes at the top levels) helps the game be enjoyable, but it’s hardly a goal within itself.  We intentionally get pushy with certain cards, and ratchet down the power level of others, as a matter of course during a development cycle.  So how are these decisions made?  While there are no hard principles guiding these changes, there are a couple of recurring themes that come up in our internal conversations.

Putting the power level in the right spots:

Sets will have a focus—class matters, the graveyard, a certain damage type, and so on.  We want those themes to stand out, and not just in volume.  We want these cards to be exciting, especially the ones that require players to overhaul their deck entirely.  On the flip side, we need to tone down the cards that go against the tide, allowing the themes in the set the opportunity to flourish.

Contrast “damage type matters” in Scourgewar block to Worldbreaker.  Scourgewar is a “shadow damage matters” set, but unfortunately the way this most frequently manifests itself at common is Shadow Resistance allies, which explicitly punish you for buying into the theme of the set.  We consider this to be a pretty big mistake now, and the amount of Nature Resistance in Worldbreaker is dramatically ratcheted down from where it was at in Scourgewar block.

Nice Shadow damage wand; take 4

You can find examples for this in some of the Constructed-level cards.  Trade Prince Gallywix and King Genn Greymane are both way over the curve for decks willing to play a bunch of Goblins or Worgens.  A lot of the Stash cards are pointed towards top tier play, and a bunch of the Dragons are over the curve compared to other generic allies.  We want our new mechanics and themes to stand out, and so those cards are often held to different standards than if they were to appear elsewhere.

The “Blow my brains out” test:

You could also call this “The fun test”.  In other words, imagine I get a text from Ben Cichoski that says, “Someone just did really well in a tournament with four copies of Card X in their deck.”  If, with no other information, I would want to blow my brains out, then we probably shouldn’t be pushing that card towards Constructed play.  Cards that fall into this category are potentially abusive combo enablers (Curse of Exhaustion), single card soft locks (Evasion), or cards that can generate stalled boards (Gnomergan Auto-Blocker). 

Surviving a Blizzard in the TCG is about as fun as it is in real life.

That isn’t to say we shouldn’t print these cards at all; they do appeal to a certain category of player, and we would be remiss if we didn’t print cards for them.  Still, we should be comfortable that these cards aren’t going to be prominent constructed players unless the metagame gets out of whack.    Cards that fail this test include Blizzard, Netherbreath Spellblade, and Band of Vile Aggression.

Where should we give some help:

I guess this is the thing that most closely resembles “balance” but it’s a little bit different.  We want to give love to certain classes that haven’t been featured in a while, but it also translates to specs (maybe we get a little pushy with a non-Fury Warrior Talent that doesn’t promote a solo plan, so people have an incentive to move away from Death Wish) or play patterns (all of our Shaman decks are rush?  Maybe make a good healing ability, or tone down another awesome burn card).  This also relates to Horde/Alliance development—we made a real sicko for Alliance beatdown in the next set because we felt Broderick Langforth and cheap ferocity allies creates too much of an incentive to play Horde if you want to play rush.  You’ll know her when you see her.

What's the deal with this card? It's awesome! That's the deal!

So, take a card like Avatar of the Wild.  In my mind, it scores an A+ in every category:

1. Dual Class Epics are a new thing we’re rolling out in this set.  Plus, ramping is sort of a theme with the green dragons, and Avatar plays great when you make a bunch of extra resources.
2. I would be thrilled if Avatar of the Wild was showing up in winning decks.  It’s fun and has a broad level of appeal.
3. Both Druid and Hunter have been lagging for a while in top tier constructed.

In my mind, development is failing when the questions we ask begin and end with, “is this card too good?”  Rather, we should be asking, “Why are we making this card as good as it is?”  If we ask the right questions and answer them accurately, I believe we can maximize the amount of fun all players have at every level of play.

-Patrick