What I really liked about Knights of the Frozen Throne is that the cards introduced allow for so much synergy that the result is extremely funny in many cases. Every day I discover new effects that I didn't think could be possible, which is Knights of the Frozen Throne's main quality. With each new Hearthstone expansion, Blizzard has outdone itself, and Knights of the Frozen Throne is no exception to the rule. I can't wait to see what's next for Hearthstone and its very strong community.
Beside a new card set, Knights of the Frozen Throne brings some new, interesting stuff to Blizzard's CCG, pushing the challenge to a new level. Beware of only one thing: building a competitive deck could be very expensive.
"Knights of the Frozen Throne" was an absolute blast, especially that challenging final boss fight! And let's not overlook the fact that it brings in Arthas - gotta love Arthas, right? It's a seriously enjoyable expansion that keeps you on your toes.
The Frozen Throne era is coming to it's end so I can finally review it all in retrospect.
First of all, this new tempo of putting out full card expansions every few months is definitely not the way to go. Blizzard should focus more on quality/balance, rather than quantity and frequency of releases. This way, you just don't have enough time to collect all the cards and enjoy all new deck archetypes. I play HS every day, grinding the ladder, doing arena runs every time I have enough gold and I even bought the preorder 50 packs bundle, but even for me, there is just no way you can collect all important cards in such short time period.
The problem started when they introduced 2 legendaries for each class including the expansion-specific such as quests, hero cards and now the upcoming legendary weapons. These should be obtainable through PVE story mode that they introduced they way you could obtain cards in the old story expansion. For instance, in Frozen Throne, you had to beat Lich King with each class, which was fun and challenging, one of the best pve content they released so far, but no real rewards except alternate hero portrait. Way to go would be to give you hero class card for each class you beat the boss with. You will still have a ton of standard minion class legendaries as well as neutral legendaries package to collect, but you will also have important unlocked important expansions specific cards to actually enjoy the content during it's expansion cycle.
Speaking of hero class cards, one of the best parts of the expansion, almost all of them are highly playable, in some cases even meta defining, fun to use and just overall a success as opposed to quests from the last Ungoro expansion which was cool, but overall an epic failure. There was only one good, fun and playable quest (Rogue) and they eventually nerfed it under the pressure of crying community, now the quest is 100% dead just like all the others.
Overall, The Frozen Throne is a very solid expansion, with quality hero cards and good PVE content. I still prefer Ungoro because of it's jungle theme, but in many ways Frozen Throne was a step forward, duplicate legendaries filter was a beautiful addition for example. Blizzard just really needs to adjust the card distribution model or release cycle, because this way, there is still no way you can enjoy it fully even when you pay full game price for each expansion release. I imagine that for 100% F2P players, or people that doesn't play every day the experience must be a nightmare. 8/10
I've been playing since 2014 **** still is a good game...
However 95% of the players only care about getting Legend ASAP.
In other words, the majority of players use cancer decks that requires zero tactics, (just hit face or swarm the board )
If you can't clear the board in time as a control deck you lose.
Blizzard still hasn't really figured out how to deal with this.
They rather destroy a deck completely than fix overpowered cards, and it solves very little.
Players will always find a new way to use cancer decks no matter how much they try to nerf or introduce new cards....
This is gonna be F2P account experience. In my honest opinion this game requires you to play about 4 hours a day doing arena runs whenever you can, or spending a ton of money every time new expansion comes out. Been playing this since Grand Tournament, last expansion saved enough to get Shaman Elemental deck, which was quite good, and now i crafted Deathstalker Rexxar, because it's fun. With Whispers of the Old Gods i crafted N'Zoth, but i never had enough dust to do the Rogue and had no classess legendaries.
So here is my main concern about the game- it's almost impossible to have fun for F2P account, because most likely you are gonna play 1, maybe 2 decks. So you can either try to do something fun and fail in ladder, or play Pirate Warrior/ Ultimate Infestation Druid/ other overpowered deck. I actually watched octoberbrawl festival (or whatever it was called) and i have to agree- it WAS fun. Because the pro players had to use limited amount of cards to craft good decks. But Hearthstone has NO matchmaking at all, so you are gonna be playing golden dragon priest decks at rank 20. Or aggro decks made by people with far more experience. There should be some way to create different league for people with less packs, less cards or wins. It's just no fun to play. I really like creating my own decks with limited resources, especially if they turn out to be succesfull, but it's pointless if i know that i will lose dust needed for creating something that can go higher than rank 19. Go watch a streamer open 200 packs and complain about the lack of some cards and think about the time and effort you have to put into the game to get to that point, which is not gonna be enough.
It's just not something that you can play casually. If you get home from work, the last thing you want is frustration because you get screwed by RNG, or can't win because of the quality of your cards. Try not to get bored after playing the same deck for few months, accumulating dust for the next expansion, so you may play the next deck for few months.
At this point it's really just the sunk cost that is keeping me in this game. It can be enjoyable when you craft new deck, get good RNG and get a miraculous victory. But:
- you are gonna get screwed over every time there is an expansion by overpowered cards
- you can expect meta decks in Wild that are gonna destroy you
- the game often creates meta with one deck better than every other, so you will run into it most of the time, because people care about winrate difference
- there is no way to avoid people with far more resources
- there is a lot of crappy legendaries that you are gonna get, created by Bliizzard only to screw with you
- Arena is RNG based so you are gonna see even Kripp getting decks so crappy, that he ends up 0:3
- you are gonna get a lot of duplicates, even if you have a quarter of the expansion
So honestly the best way to enjoy this game is to create 20+ accounts and reroll the daily rewards to get the "play with friend" reward (if it's still there) and do it long enough to get a meta deck.
Dunno what they were thinking making this expansion but they outdid themselves. Priests running rampart with endless hero power and druids just skyrocketed in power. Good job blizzard.
SummaryAn icy wind howls outside the inn's walls, but the chill you feel crawling up your spine has little to do with the bitter cold. No deck is safe from the Lich King's evil influence; even the most stalwart champions of the Light have been turned into wicked Death Knights. As the agents of the undead Scourge plague the land, it falls to you...