Hearthstone: Dawn of the Mammoth

 Speaking of which, that image I mirrored up there? Seems to be a pretty interesting roadmap to 2017. I'm not sure if the imagery around the three expansions are supposed to be hints, or if I'm reading too much. The first one does have weird looking leaves and ferns... which isn't the first thing I would put in for Un'Goro crater and dinosaurs, but ancient ferns are kind of, well, thematic? The second card has a blue hue of magical runes, so maybe Dalaran, or a Malygos-themed expansion? There's also a little tavern brawl insignia thing between expansions 1 and 2, which looks kind of suspicious. The third expansion at first glance looks to be just a sheet of paper, but there's a huge bag of gold next to it that might be decoration or a hint. Another Goblin-styled expansion? Or have they not planned that far ahead?

In any case, though, it might just be them putting random cool-looking effects to throw us off and the expansion after Un'Goro might be something completely random, like, oh, I dunno, the Lost Treasure of Murlocia or something like that and nothing to do with arcane runes. 

Call me Phantom Assassin one more time,
I dare you.

And whatever the next expansion is (*cough*Un'Goro*cough*) we're getting a lot of freebies. Daily login rewards, plus, at long last, Maiev Shadowsong! Maiev is a Rogue skin, and all you have to do? Play ten games. That has got to be the least stressful way to get a hero skin, far less troublesome than other free hero skins like Morgl and Liadrin. I really hope Blizzard makes more of these hero skins -- I honestly don't imagine it to be any harder than recording some voice-overs, animation similar to the Golden Cards... not every hero skin has to be as fancy as Medivh's insane crow animation or all the pretty moon rune motifs that Tyrande has.

Also, Maiev Shadowsong isn't my favourite character in Warcraft III, not by a long shot, but this does mean that Valeera's most likely going to join Anduin Wrynn in the bench of unused heroes for a long, long time. I do like Valeera's voice over a fair bit more than Anduin, though, so maybe I'll break her out sometimes.

So yeah, whatever the expansion is, it's nice to see that Hearthstone at least isn't afraid to evolve and make the player experience a lot more pleasant. The fact that they're willing to do such radical changes like going back on their previous affirmations is definitely a good sign -- not that they're fickle, but that they're learning about what's best for their game.

In other news, Pokemon Go, if you're still playing that (I still have it installed on my phone but haven't touched it in a couple of months) has now been updated with Johto Pokemon! It's about fucking time. Now give us a proper battle system.