The new cosmetic Hearthstone Signature cards didn’t have the impact the team expected. Changes and compensations are on the way.
The March of the Lich King Hearthstone expansion brought a new cosmetic item: Signature Cards. The idea behind this new card variant was to celebrate the new set with unique card art. However, the Hearthstone community was not very excited about these new Signature Cards. What were the problems, and what changes are coming?
The Hearthstone community and Signature cards
Since Hearthstone announced Signature cards the community has shown its reserves. While the concept of "full art cards" is something attractive in a game in which art is simply marvelous, the implementation seemed to be off.
To begin with, at first sight, Signature Cards are too grey. This has a tremendous contrast with most of the game art. While the intention was for the cards to "feature an icy sepia style, evoking the Lich King’s powers over Frost and the Undead", the cards were not alive enough. Not even for Undead standards.
Imik, an engaging community member, even suggested changes that could help solve the mentioned issues. His alternative art trended on Reddit for weeks.
If you compare Signature cards to the last cosmetic card addition, Diamond Cards -or even the OG Golden Cards-, the new variants have no animation. The lack of movement, combined with the gray tone, was a killing combination.
Last but definitely not least, despite Hearthstone's extended duplicate protection that allowed re-rolls, there were still some cases in which Signature cards caused a loss of value. While the scenarios were minimal, if there are something players hate is the feeling "unlucky" or, even worse, "scammed".
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Devs respond
Yesterday, Chadd "Celestalon" Nervig, Hearthstone's Feature Lead, announced that the team would be implementing several changes to future Signature card sets. In a Forum Post, he acknowledged that "the reception to Signature cards hasn’t lived up to our hopes".
"Your feedback has been clear: we haven’t hit those goals. We’re taking that feedback to heart and are already planning significant changes for our next round of Signature cards."
After going over Hearthstone's community feedback and his own thoughts, Celestalon shared that "for the next expansion’s Signature cards to be bright, vibrant, and colorful." What's more, he also mentioned that new sets will feature animations similar to the Golden versions.
The blog post goes over some other small art-concept changes. You can check the full statement here.
Compensation
Many players complained that the extended duplicate protection didn't cover every duplicate case. To solve that, Hearthstone announced changes to the system that would prevent players from getting duplicate Signature cards, and more important, compensation for the affected players.
The two cases eligible for compensation are the following:
- If you own Signature Lor’themar, you effectively missed out on a Hearthstone Legendary card, so we’ll be giving you 1 random Legendary card from March of the Lich King.
- If you own both Signature Grand Magister Rommath and the March of the Lich King Tavern Pass, you effectively missed out on a Hearthstone Legendary card, so we’ll be giving you 1 random Legendary card from March of the Lich King.
Eligibility will be based on the above criteria as of December 20th at 10 a.m. PDT. Eligible players will be granted this compensation at login, later that week.
This final line hints that we will probably see a patch on December 20th. While it's close to the holidays, it respects the 2-week window that devs take to check how the meta has evolved after the expansion launch.
That's all for now, but stay tuned to Esports.gg for more Hearthstone news and updates. See you next time in the Tavern.
