How One Card Broke A Card Game

[@likky1]

If only they had a thing where the game just waits for animations to finish before passing the turn and starting the timer right when the player can play cards

[@gickygackers]

Imagine

[@MrMoustachioo]

I know right, because this animation thing is still a problem against decks that play stupid amounts of cards in a turn and its even happening in battlegrounds...

[@gickygackers]

@@MrMoustachioo battlegrounds is still a hassle on mobile. I am limited by the game aesthetics, not my real actions per minute

[@shawnsanchez7545]

I cannot imagine how crazy the game must be written that they can't change it to the turn timer starting on your own turn...

[@amberlee4536]

literally the most obvious fix known to mankind, "make your turn start when your turn actually starts", and yet

[@narfd.8837]

I am confused as to why anyone would EVER have animations count towards the turn timer of ANY player! That basically begs to be abused. Either remove that fully or make it so that the turn timer could not fall below a certain amount before the current player has the ability to take a non-automatic action.

[@thisishandlenumber2048]

Unfortunately that could also be abused by bots since they can move so much faster than any human could. The very first Noz abuse was by Blizzards own AI in the singleplayer modes because their turn took a fraction of a second even though the animations were much longer. The problem isn't that animation times count towards the turn timer its that the other players animation times and "start of turn" animations count towards your turn timer. If they just set your turn timer to start when the card drawing animation finished (or something similar) then 99% of these problems would never pop up.

[@stevensanchez1192]

It's called a bug, if you were a game devloper it would be easy for anyone to look at the bugs you made and critizes them starting with "why would anyone". Granted this seems like something that could be fixed with enough tinkering but given the rumors I wouldn't be suprised if blizzard's game devlopers are underpaid.

[@Evoleo]

Hearthstone is a multiplayer game, and the turns timers are obviously handled server-side, while the animations are purely client-side

[@narfd.8837]

Funny that people defend this. Sure, having animations not count towards timers would be abusable, but at least you couldn't skip entire turns anymore like this. If fucking Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel can get that right (except for bot protection, which basically doesn't exist), then Hearthstone should have been able to as well. Bot prevention could be handled client side and server side by counting the time between player actions (client side) and if it's the same time 5 times in a row, that would almost certainly be a bot. Further you could try to count inhumanly quick actions (under 0,2 seconds) towards the same strike system. You cannot fully prevent bots from appearing, but those measures alone would at least get rid off the simpler ones, which are usually the majority of them.

[@Evoleo]

@@narfd.8837 I'm not defending it, I'm just saying that there are technical reasons for why this exists and is pretty untrivial to fix

[@Xyraphella]

There also was a thing, when u can back him to ur hand and replay him and it set ur turn to 15 seconds and this made it posible to do infinite turn with aviana kun thing

[@jancerny3315]

Oooh i forgot about that. Good one!

[@PeterZaitcev]

However, they fixed it

[@pontchristophe3938]

@Hysteria favorite move. With a knife juggler. Just one.

[@jvaitniker]

Aviana+kun combos were my favorites

[@heramaaroricon4738]

One of my colleagues during education did that once. So stupid

[@Terminarch]

8:55 Oh my god this pisses me off so much as a programmer. Patching edge cases rather than fixing the ACTUAL problem of the timer running before you can act.

[@Cremig]

My first thought was Shudderwock, they had similar problems with that card.

[@weaselhatgaming1010]

The card that pushed me away

[@hipeopleTI]

@@weaselhatgaming1010 the card that put me into legend, then i quited. Really never got close to legend again, shudderwock was just stupid.

[@kid10249595]

Yeah I remember in my extremely brief stint in playing hearthstone getting burned numerous times by that card. Literally quit the game because of it and other very overpowered cards. Just wasn't fun honestly to watch or play against players that cheese their way to wins through mechanic abuse.

[@hipeopleTI]

@@kid10249595 jokes on you shudderwock got me to legend, it was fun sometimes people just conceded on saronite extractors.

[@Fulldre]

One of my favorite decks of all time

[@g_eddie]

Your Hearthstone developers were so preoccupied with whether they could make Nozdormu, they didn't stop to think if they should.

[@eveandromeda]

They didn't have the time to stop and think, they only had 15 seconds on the clock

[@Aivas1]

I mean in the alpha or beta I can't remember which, there was a card that would literally flip the screen horizontally. So, you can probably imagine that because they were one of the first few online card games, they went a little wild with what they could come up with. As a result, you get stuff like Nozdormu.

[@recoomedabest9970]

@Random Username then it lags, the card is awful. The design is fine, it wasn't meant to be competitive and never was

[@rheawelsh4142]

Imma be honest considering these issues it doesn't seem like they could either

[@ffarkasm]

The Nozdormu-problem is still the biggest shame in Hearthstone's history. Not for it's impact, but for its persistence over so many years.

[@NickolaySheitanov]

Games shameful to begin with

[@Shack11]

My favorite part of the story was how it was never actually solved. It really got brushed under the rug and that's it.

[@derEdelRitter]

I thought it was gonna be about shudderwock in regard to the animation problem, since the usual battlecry combo with it literally forced opponents to look at the copied battlecry animations for several minutes

[@Cuestrupaster]

Shudderwock was a whole new level of problem...

[@JoshSweetvale]

My jaws that bite! My claws that CATCH!!!

[@RMGamer31O]

This isn’t just a Shudder problem, too. Similar issues can arise with quite a few cards. Some that come to mind are Tess, Yoggs, and the Xyrella hero. I kinda wish Hearthstone had a proper stop between your turn and villain’s turn to check if animations were still going, and if they were, pause both player’s timers until they’re done.

[@RedWolfCid]

shudderwock was fun though.

[@SimoneBellomonte]

@@RMGamer31O "villain's". xD

[@Silkentwilight]

Rarran you have found your niche. These historic look back videos are amazing. You’re a master and it’s fun to watch you evolve. Great work ser.

[@Rarran]

If I could make these videos instead of the daily ones, I would and I will try to get there!

[@mehshutup3041]

@@Rarran yeah, weekly videos is okay

[@Fekus2]

It's said that the developers tried to fix Nozdormu, but at each try they only had 15 seconds.

[@Owlr4ider]

Animations in general are very problematic in hearthstone. Be it for various APM decks to specific cards with insane animations, regardless of regular or shortened turn timers. This is especially annoying in single player content with massive animations and dialogues that are unskippable. At the end of the day hearthstone needs to solve its animation issue, either make it skippable or properly freeze turn timer progression during them so they don't waste any time for either player.

[@nikkosmit6985]

Pretty sure it is skippable now for a while. Just tap the animation/card

[@Owlr4ider]

@@nikkosmit6985 Very few animations are actually skippable. Most aren't.

[@nikkosmit6985]

@@Owlr4ider can’t you just Click them?

[@Owlr4ider]

@@nikkosmit6985 No... Some happen between turns, some have voice attached to them, some just ignore clicks, etc... Remember we're talking about animations as a whole, from the animation of drawing cards to the various pop ups in single player content to cards like Ragnaros shooting his fireball and many many more. P.S all the above examples aren't skippable and waste a ton of time, be it in single or multiplayer.

[@redwings13400]

Yeah, I've noticed that. I feel like as cards are getting more complicated, more and more cards are having incredibly long animations, which is bad for both the pace of the game, and for the ability of players to make decisions based on these animations. I honestly think its gotten to the point where Hearthstone needs to do something like double the speed of all their animations.

[@RaiderhornBAR]

It's common language today in gaming culture to use "broken" naturally as a synonym of "overpowered", which having also been the case for quite a number of years now, people have arguably forgotten what broken means. It's rather refreshing to see a video return to being about a card in, well, actual game-breaking moments! Visually and informatively at that!

[@JoelRiter]

Excellent point. I play Pokemon myself, and due to the nature of the game there haven't been too many truly broken cards. I remember just a standard rotation ago Arceus Dialga Palkia GX was called a broken card by everyone because of it's once per game attack which allowed you to take an extra prize (your game winning resource) and deal extra damage for the rest of the game. It was a powerful deck in standard, absolutely. However, a testament to it being overpowered and not broken is expanded where it is rarely used. The standard did not allow for many counters let alone other win conditions to happen (as a control player, it truly was the bane of my existence for that standard). Like I said, it's incredibly rare for cards to get banned in Pokemon (with the exception of legacy formats). Should ADP have been banned in standard play? It's hard to say. They released a standard legal ADP deck that was easy to obtain, so many players were able to get their hands on the best deck in format and I think that had a large hand in the hatred for the deck (which isn't the problem, it would have been played in abundance regardless, given that people like to win and I love how easy it is for players to get their hands on meta cards and decks for relatively cheap). Compare that to the current BDIF in format which sees a decent amount of play, but does not dominate in the same way. Or compare that to YuGiOh, which again many cards are necessarily broken it's the interactions due to the nature of not having a standard rotation. The most broken cards tend to be utility cards like Pot of Greed. It's usually not a single busted card but broken mechanics between certain cards. MTG on the other hand... Never play Vintage l. Especially the way it was truly meant to be played. Outside of that, I think standard versus expanded formats again give us a good idea if a card is truly broken or just powerful in the standard vacuum. Just interesting how much more potent powercreep is in MTG versus Pokemon (Pokemon looks a lot more powercrept on the surface but in expanded formats, many older decks are still viable and just improved with newer utility cards, versus something like oh I don't know, Jace). The example in the video shows what a truly broken card is. More then just a BDIF, or a card overused for it's power in standard, but one that literally breaks the game and makes it impossible to overcome due to the rules and how it must be played out. TCGs are just very interesting games to me.

[@Squidmoto3]

@@JoelRiter I mean half of the supporters are literally required to play the game, pokemon has some absolutely awful balance.

[@JoelRiter]

@@Squidmoto3 the difference is the supporters are extremely easy to get a hold of and cheap. If boss's orders was a chase card or even worse professor's research, you would be absolutely correct. But I can buy a full set of four of all the most used supporters for under 30 bucks. And Pokemon is extremely fun to play. If anything hearthstone is a mess due to it being strictly online and thus has no real world value. If blizzard stops supporting it, then what? And the resource system is not exactly wonderful. You have a similar idea to a mana curve in MTG without having to count on the potential to draw unwanted resources. Each TCG is relatively unique in some aspect. Hell, even the modern mess that is Yu-Gi-Oh has its own merits despite Konami being Konami. If it's not for you, that's fine, but there's a reason Hearthstone isn't considered one of the big three but MTG Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh are (in that order). Now I can get into the actual design and theory and why each supporter has different applications depending on the style. I'm a control player so I use quite a bit less draw support then most other decks. Even then, it's rare for there to be a truly broken card or deck in the game (with the exception of standard when we had to deal with ADP but there was a lot more reasoning to that then just a single card, Zacian V truly broke it in unison but again rarely sees play in expanded). You prefer Hearthstone, that's fine, but it's no more or less superior then any other TCG. I mean I could argue that, but you enjoy what you enjoy and I can see what someone would enjoy Hearthstone more, might not fully understand it, but I can see enjoyment gleamed from it.

[@JoelRiter]

@@Squidmoto3 and as for balance, let me give you an example. Mew Vmax is hands down BDIF right now. But it still doesn't win big tournaments due to how streamlined it is. It becomes a solitaire match that anyone of any skill level can play. Rapid Strike Urshifu has won far more tournaments without being as consistent because it allows for more decisions to be made. You might always have what you need to attack for high damage with New, but that's it. No true counter play. I can easily beat either of those decks with Durant Mill right now due to the excessive options I have, but that also leads to bricks quite often. Like any TCG it's a balancing act and you have to understand what you are playing and how to pilot.

[@DevinDTV]

only brainlets use "broken" to mean "too good"

[@sandythamtono2081]

Nasdormu would totally be welcomed in yugioh where people take 10 minutes for 1 turn

[@kwayke9]

He'd lowkey be an insane floodgate lol

[@ComradeVenus]

Nazdormu sounds like an awful designed card. Messing with the time limit just seems like a recipe for disaster, especially because of card animations.

[@XenithShadow]

Even without of all the bugs it cause it was terrible for the game since it made the game functionaly unplayable on mobile as it just take longer to play stuff on a phone than with mouse and keyboard.

[@ComradeVenus]

@@XenithShadow i mean yeah, outside of bugs it messes with something in the game that simply shouldnt be messed with.

[@folx2733]

What this video doesn't tell you is that this card was an actual MEME for years because of how bad it was. Terrible stats and effects for 9 mana with the negative effect for both players. Other than that 2 at a tourney, the clips you see here are from low rank shenanigans. It was never a popular or common card to see

[@stevethebarbarian9876]

Nozdormu is, in my opinion, the worst-designed card ever made. The game’s bad designs peaked in the first ever set, and it literally could only be uphill from there.

[@warmike]

just pause the move timer when animations play, other online tcgs do that

[@MrLolguy93]

Ben Brode laughter is a national treasure

[@Hephaestus_God]

All you have to do is just start the timer once the player is able to play a card. I don't see why they can't make this simple change to the entire game that people wouldn't even notice. They have the code for when you can start playing cards just stick a delay on the timer until then. Instead they hot fixed it for like 6 years

[@TheMrCarnification]

smol indie compani

[@LesbianWitchAcademia]

I can't believe you left out the actual most important thing Noz ever did, enabling an infinite length turn with Aviana and bouncing him.

[@pieromorantearenaza4801]

Heartstone player: complains about a game breaking card ruling the game Yu-Gi-Oh player: first time?

[@aster-disaster]

"Later he was rotated to Legacy which means he'd never be able to interact with new cards" Wild players would like to have a word with you (I don't think he's caused anything new there since but out of Standard doesn't mean the card doesn't exist) Very neat video though! I didn't realize how much of a menace Noz was early on

[@The-jy3yq]

Well, there's a whole 'nother heap of problems in Wild going on While standard is beloved and gets a lot of care, Wild...is wild, alright I love getting killed on turn 2 because the enemy rolled arguably not bad

[@HobGungan]

I play Wild exclusively out of the traditional game (i.e. not counting Battlegrounds, Mercenaries, Adventures, or Tavern Brawls). I hate Standard, I don't want to give up on cards it took me forever to collect playing (mostly) F2P since 2014

[@FireSiku]

I think it would be amazing if you could cover (or give a shout out) to the story of the Illidan legendary (before he was changed to Xavius) because it is a card that also LITERALLY BROKE THE GAME. But it did so in a very different way, one that did not affect players at all. However it had the amazingly UNIQUE ability to summon a minion in the middle of interactions, leading to break the game in various ways including: - Allowing a player to have more than 10 cards in hands (without using the legendary that increase the limit) - Forces your opponent to play any battlecry minion you want, such as Jaraxxus to kill them instantly. - Allowing a player to have more than 7 minions on the board. - You can force the client to think that you've sent your hero portrait to your hand. - Cause a card to be discarded from your hand, every turn for the rest of the game. - A million and one other softlocks, as highlighted by HysteriA

[@jacksonmagas9698]

Or the knife juggle combo with that naxxramus card that has dethrattle return a minion to your hand. You could return a card to your hand part way through it's summoning which allowed all sorts of insane things (especially with Chameleos)

[@lolmonkyboi]

I think the bigger issue fam is the games handling of animations. I dont feel it stops the timer to wait for animations to finish, but last i played was like two years ago when i quit lol so maybe its different now

[@ananmaysahu4563]

nope you're exactly correct.

[@jarredwithers9628]

Love the more video essay type vids you've been putting out my dude

[@GoblinSlayerZach]

Never played this game but I do play card games, I’m amazed they let this one card wreck so much havoc for so long and in so many ways. Nice vid~

[@Clickstop24]

I dont know much about hearthstone but this card seems exceptionally bad outside of this one specific niche, so that probably why it lasted for so long: no one was playing it.

[@shylogik]

@@Clickstop24 As someone that has only played yugioh, usually it’s best to remove cards like this even if their not actively played, cards like this are just waiting for a random one off to completely break the game, and when you have to design cards around other broken cards you know you have a problem.

[@dragullongblackfang8073]

@@shylogik ah the snake rain / block dragon problem in yugioh to be fair snake rain is still a problem it just konami is ultra careful with that

[@shazzakip2]

I suggested years ago during the Jabberwocky era to just not start turn timers until after the card draw. It's honestly such a simple fix and the fact that it's still an issue shows where their priorities lie

[@Lucario1121]

This card and Shutterlock made me realize Blizzard are not good card game designers

[@KestrelForever]

I feel like the much more sensible option rather than adjusting interactions here and there and everywhere would be to extend slush time to whenever the player is first allowed to take game actions.

[@turntsnaco824]

I've said this before and I understand if you feel like it would be too big or broad of an undertaking, but I would find it very fascinating to see an examination of how Hearthstone's solo content and player feelings toward it have evolved through the years (i.e. from free Adventures to Dungeon Run, to...whatever we have now) - or maybe even the reward systems. Or both. Omg I would love a series just talking about like each expansion and the significant changes it brought to the game and meta, if you feel like there's enough to talk about. Just some ideas, definitely do what you want mate! I'll eat it up either way!

[@joeyghostx]

The funniest thing about Noz is that you could just pre-play cards at the end of the timer to make the opponent's turn nullified. This can also be done using drawing effects, so certain decks can potentially just completely lock an opponent.

[@xord1946]

Imagine being so incompetent as a game developer team that it never occured to them that the simple solution was to make the timer start only when your turn actually start... Or also just pause timer during animations...

[@s2ndragon2]

LETS GOOOO 1M VIEWS CONGRATS RARRAN

[@NerdishGeekish]

I know I am saying this with the benefit of hindsight, but why the hell did the designers ever think that having a card directly alter the duration of players turns was going to be a good idea?!

[@byeguyssry]

As you said, you have the benefit of hindsight. I'm guessing they thought that it was a counter to combo decks that take long times to perform, and also means that if you're faster at thinking than your opponent, you'd benefit from the shorter turns.

[@TheVictor126]

early heartstone was more focused on fun cards nozdurmu, millhouse, gelbin mekk, ETC if anything, reducing the turn timer is a better mechanic than the other scrapped fun cards, such as gaining stats for lose streaks or taking damage when hovering over a card

[@mr.nazareth4501]

Because it shakes shit up (variety is fun) god damn it!! Hearthstone was practically BUILT on cool / wacky ideas and the interesting interactions that arise from that!!

[@Cassapphic]

Nozdormu is a weird case where it was never super dominant, but was a very janky card that was broken more in a mechanical way than in terms of raw power.

[@Ghost19_]

I am more amazed that they didn't "disable" the card until they could focus on seriously fixing it.

[@kobisjeruk]

In due time? The card was in HS from the start and years later it still wasnt fixed. They shouldve scrap the ability altogether and come up with something else. They vehemently defend the ability to showcase what digital card game can do but instead making it worse. Noz isnt even the real culprit, the whole animation timer thingy is borked (Re: BG's apm pirate).

[@Last_Resort991]

The peoblem never was the card but HS stupid approach to animations. Shudderwock broke the game later bc of the same problems with abimations

[@valerie0153]

I was expecting a video about a completely overpowered card that enabled a busted combo but I was NOT expecting skipping whole turns with animations, holy shit. Very well made video

[@michaeld8705]

Another great video! Can't say I'm surprised it was old Noz but really enjoyed going back thru the history of cards that had the "evil synergy" with it

[@Gitum]

Damn! This is wild. I had no idea about this and I even played during this time. Guess I got lucky that nobody was trying to exploit me lol. I hope that you're doing well, Rarran! It's nice to see how far your channel has come! :)

[@Craizey1]

Can we talk about the fact that solo adventures that have Bob in them are still broken for around 1 month now? I think it's fair to say that Blizzard outright gave up

[@jomat4491]

When i clicked on this 100% thought it would be another video on Shudderwock, nice to see a change of pace.

[@icemage27]

I mean, that card was broken for very similar reasons...

[@deefman123]

If there were awards for hearthstone content creation you would definitely win some! Your contribution to the game and community is huge. I joined the game a month before ashes of outland, so this is particularly interesting to see the game before, how it got to where it is. Thank you for your work Rarran.

[@567secret]

I know it seems like a simple solution is to "just wait for animations to complete" but the issue is actually confirming that from the client, and if you give the client that power you create many other possible (cheat-related) issues.

[@walvens3080]

I really like him as a card, but only in isolation. The pure fun of having to rush and knowing that combo turns/good play will actually require skill is really fun, but then stuff like this happens and instead of fixing the obvious issue, they get rid of the fun part of it

[@RiverM8rix]

When you started talking about turn timers, I knew there was only one card this could be about. The reason I kept watching was this is the most condensed explanation of this cards history I’ve ever seen. I know toast got in trouble for interactions like this, and I knew the card was problematic, but since I started with Old Gods, most of the early exploits of interactions were already gone.

[@LeoZhao01]

There was also a turn skip in the form of frost lich Jaina, Baron + Nozdormu + Lifesteal 2 at a time = About 5 seconds from every thing damaged

[@Magnet977]

I have to admit, the shenanigans with the clouds clogging up the screen was really funny.

[@Muhahahahaz]

0:37 Arrrrrrrr 🏴‍☠️

[@kaseywahl]

The first time that I ever saw an interaction between new cards and old cards that really blew my mind in a card game was when Extended Dredge became a thing in MTG. There was nothing cooler than seeing the most harmless card ever--Bridge From Below--suddenly interact with the new (at the time) Landfall mechanic on Hedron Crab + sacrificing creatures on board to Dread Return in the graveyard to create a bunch of zombies and bring Flamekin Zealot or Iona, Shield of Emeria back from the graveyard and either mow down the opponent with a bunch of Hasty zombies or completely lock out a one or two color deck with Iona, because the opponent simply couldn't cast any spells of the color that you select off of Iona. Seeing old, "bad" cards in new, broken contexts was one of the creatively cool things that really got me into card games in the first place. I understand they are problematic a lot of times, but damn, if they don't create some fun "aha" moments when they happen too.

[@glasatv1463]

Wait there are people who still play hearthstone in 2024?

[@hristoalovski8048]

Nah rarran is AI generated. The last expansion was mean streets

[@MIDO44444]

It's really fun to see how different card games work , in LoR your turn ends after playing a card unless it was a "burst" or "focus" spell or when you attack

[@DenisEinzbern]

1:30 why not.. just.. you know.. stop the clock during animations..

[@juicyjuice817]

Ukr

[@aminimoose3971]

One of the main reasons I stopped playing back in the day. It didn't even take Nozdormu, there was an increase of animations in general and my mobile couldn't take it after a certain point. Hell, it still is a problem today years later when I try to play off and on again.

[@dsalucas]

I kinda liked whenever Nozdormu showed up at random, it forces you to make snap decisions about what to do with one very good solution being that you need to get rid of him. Not because they're a threat necessarily, but because you need time to think and 15 seconds is not enough. You don't get cards that have psychological effects like that nearly enough. Only thing that comes close to that is the Maestra of the Masquerade, which disguises you as not a rogue to potentially surprise your foe.

[@Meeces55]

When the game first came out Noz was a must have in every one of my decks because I hate waiting for people to take their turns

[@pietrynglib177]

before i watch this i need to say "oh man, another video about shudderwock" lets see if im right XD

[@pietrynglib177]

well, i was wrong

[@lovelyfma]

honestly same

[@dbfr2017]

Nicely researched, good editing, has chapters, has captions. Great hearthstone vid!

[@AndreyUrman]

As soon as they Introduced "Zephrys The Great", I've realized what i've been suspecting these last years playing this game, they have a hidden algorithm similar to this card throughout the game. I think it's most noticable in Arena and it's only been implemented in recent years. I've accumulated over 8500 arena wins, 20k gold and 300 unopened decks over the years mainly through getting tons of 10+ winstreaks in arena, and it's been a consistent growth untill something changed. I've started noticing that in most of my runs, about 40% positive and 60% negative, i'd start experiencing some insane RNG moments, wether it's me getting the perfect "Salvage" card (Through card draw or discovery) at a losing position that completely changed the game or the same for my opponent. And it's been happening way too often and at very specific and similar moments. They're basically giving you enough victories for that dopamine rush, and yet make sure you have enough loses to not stock up on sustainable gold so that you resort to buying arena entries with cash. I used to get to 7+ wins at about a 80% rate, which resulted in my sustainable gold income, now I can barely scrape 6 wins, with the occasional rare 7+ run. With 8 years of experience in arenas i'm down to 500 gold, and will probably quit once i'm down to zero. The game lost it's magic which drew me into the game back in 2014 while watching Kripp's beta version streams, there are too many unbalanced cards, too much RNG, and as I stated here in my opinion - controlled RNG.

[@Brakiros]

Blizzard's greed and incompetence has ruined the company

[@GrinningFeline13]

I mean, I stopped playing because of Shudderwock. It just wasn't worth it to sit there for three minutes knowing you lost, but you couldn't do anything but watch yourself lose in great agony. It felt like that deck was everywhere too. After four or five hours of playing, you might have spent twenty minutes of that watching yourself die slowly. I didn't hate hearthstone, but they've never managed to hook me back. The game always looked silly, and that was part of its charm, but modern day it just seems a little.. much.

[@shadou1234567]

That toast clip was probably one of the last moments i cared for hs the cardgame, after he was banned from the game, noticed the devs basically hated him and never played again(until recently) my enjoyment of the game that was allready low(as f2p you basically had to work to get new packs) went abismo.

[@riatorex8722]

Wait, he actually returned to HS?

[@shadou1234567]

@@riatorex8722 he returned briefly, did not stream most of it, got to masters and i believe stoped again. He mostly memed it when he stream, putting it on the side while playing valorant

[@music79075]

lmfao that Nozdormu bs was nuts. Really a good fix would to just change his ability to something like "Deathrattle: card goes dormant for 4 minutes. If you take your turn really fast then the remainder of the time you had would decrease this Dormancy by an equivalent amount. The amount of time your opponent takes to make a move reduces this Dormancy time by an equivalent amount. (The fast your turn and the longer your opponents turn takes, the quicker Nozdormu comes back) Nozdormua is now an 8 drop and a 7/7

[@daffodillz9182]

Nozdormus card text was complete bullshit. It doesn't set your turn to 15 seconds. It resets your turn timer and sets all turns to x%. Which was normally about 10 seconds and stacked up to less than 5.

[@arunixia]

Yknow. I was playing battlegrounds today randomly, when I encountered some gigachad running a beasts comp that took 7 years to finish the animations any time a single minion attacked and this video randomly popped into my mind. I don’t watch or engage in hearthstone content, I just occasionally play battlegrounds. And I found this video again. I’m convinced Google has invested in mind reading technology

[@turntsnaco824]

This video is amazing and exactly the kind of content I never even knew I wanted. Thank you so much for making these. ❤ I played HearthStone for over 5 years and definitely knew about all the Nozdormu issues, but I didn't know that it started all the way back in the BRM Adventure. It's so cool to like....relive the details of those years through these videos.

[@PeterDivine]

I love those GOTTAGOFAST fuses so much lol "YOURTURNPLAYNOW and now your opponent's turn"

[@christopherIF]

They didn't write for the time to start when all the animations ended + end turn was pushed. Sometimes i think that they're no better than game freak

[@sanderhansen7036]

They kinda did. This is because animations are mostly only run client-side, but server side is making decisions. This is a super standard practice, but only causes issues with cards like nostradamus. Pretty much every game does it like this.

[@sanderhansen7036]

@Mystic That doesn't change what I said any bit, does it though?

[@sanderhansen7036]

@Mystic Except Yugioh isn't the standard it's a single game and I'm willing to bet that while Yugioh does wait properly they still implemented it without using animations server side. The thing is animations takes a lot of power, making them run server side where no one sees them is expensive. Most games go about it the same way: Either use a timer to estimate animations (The way hearthstone does it) or make the client send back when he is doing playing said animations. The disadvantage to the first solution is that it's much easier to make mis-calculations (Like heathstone does), the disadvantage to the second is it's easier to making hacking and weird scenarios possible, because it's not server authoritative (Meaning the server makes all decisions that are important). I obviously don't know which system Yugioh uses, but I'm very certain that they don't run animations on the server. So Hearthstone's implementation is standard, it's just a poor implementation of it. That doesn't mean this implementation necessitates bugs like the timing issues Hearthstone keeps having, but it does make mistakes easier to make.

[@sanderhansen7036]

@Mystic that is a very fair critique of hearthstone and I can only assume it's because it was originally meant to be a very small project. This doesn't excuse not fixing it though. This still doesn't mean their solution isn't a very standard one.

[@JumanjiJake]

Grim patron with Nozdormu was also hilarious, can't believe it didn't get mentioned!

[@Schakat]

5:55 Skipperino the Kripperino

[@Driendel]

9:20 The timing of the quote is pure gold.

[@michaelbowman6684]

Have there been any issues with Nozdormu after he was rotated to the Legacy Set? Wild might not be the most popular gamemode, but people still play it. I'd be surprised if there wasn't some other game-breaking interaction since he was rotated.

[@1996MartinsMatheus]

as a wild play i would say, nozdormu is slow even if it can be cheated out. Like warlock has rod, it just used with a true combo (like mecha thun or owl) rather than a skiping animation potential

[@achimsinn6189]

A lot of these could easily be solved by just adding a "neutral time" for the time used up for animations cause by cards being played late in one opponents turn and for automatic start of turn animations like curse of raffaam.

[@RAMiNQULUZADE]

You don't 'draw' a card in Joust, you 'reveal' random one from deck by game mechanics. Drawing in HS means moving top card to your hand.

[@michealanelson]

Love the fact that the ad for this video was hearthstone

[@alewis514]

There was also Shudderwock, a card that repeated every battlecry you played earlier and could be combined with 'battlecries trigger twice' as the effect was also a battlecry. Then it could be copied and bounced back to the hand and now you had like 5 shudderwocks each repeating an insane chain of battlecries. That was one of the most busted cards in hearthstone history - it was promptly hotfixed as the chain could reach 25 minutes or more (during which you couldn't even concede the game!)

[@Pac0110]

Nozdormu it’s not the problem itself, it’s how the timer it’s handled. If you both really have 15 seconds, there’s no problem, if you manage to start the player time counter when the animations end and not just when the end turn button is pressed. So, the game was broken before nozdormu, nozdormu just exposed the broken timer. A broken card (for me) is when the card does what’s supposed to do and it does more than intended or less than intended. If there’s a card that says “deal 10 damage to the enemy hero” and you play it and deals 100 damage, them it’s broken. But if instead it said “deal 100 damage to the enemy hero” then it’s not broken, it’s just badly designed. Hopefully it makes sense.

[@smugron1101]

I love Nozdormu but yeah, he is so damn buggy.

[@shotnothing3419]

Honestly this seems more like an issue with the timing system not built around how long the play had time to think, but how long time actually passed. If they change it, sure, players that ended up with more animations would have a longer time to think, but you won't have these types of issues, including the messy slush time system.

[@modnarer]

I just went and checked, and yup, you look fantastic. Go subscribe, it will make you look a lot smarter.

[@wigotheroxxor]

I had only 15 sec to watch your video, but with the animation, I sat there the whole time

[@MattTorres]

How do you not just remove the card that clearly doesn't work as intended if you're not going to fix it. What a joke

[@TheCasualCommenter]

12:44 oh my god I’m dying laughing so hard just a 12/12 dragon going “fuck you its my turn stupid”

[@JamesMcCormickIV]

Watching this video, eagerly waiting for Ysera :)

[@brandonchristen2472]

A card that's broken in a similar manner is Xyrella, the Devout. I had a match today where my opponent had so many deathrattles previously triggered, that when they played Xyrella the animations (Mi'da, Pure Light was the main culprit) kept going and when it was over it skipped my turn.

[@wheatleyede7628]

You saying September 3th is a line that hit me like a truck, hits such a funny line at the perfect moment

[@notkyle6969]

the kripparian joust video has to be one of my fav hearthstone videos

[@tracywaid755]

As someone who has lost multiple games due to the Nellie bug, I can say with confidence that Blizzard keeps having to learn the same lesson over and over. It was finally fixed last patch but it was causing people to lose games for weeks.

[@ExFragMaster]

I played back in the days and all i could think of was... Everyone get in here. It didn't break the game, but it was completly impossible for my decks to respond to it.

[@BrandtSunter]

Played Hearthstone consistently from Grand tournament to the Outlands expansion (about 5 years) never once had an issue with Nozdormu. Maybe I got lucky, but you can snap off cards really fast if you know what you're doing ahead of time/ plan to only have a few seconds upon seeing it summoned. Shudderwock, on the other hand, actually broke the game. Losing for not being quick enough in a strategy game is one thing, one card taking 10-15 minutes to resolve being played multiple times is soulcrushing.

[@GodzillaFreak]

As a yugioh player I can’t imagine a card being made which screws with the turn timer of all things

[@PeterZaitcev]

They actually added some fixes with that rotation. I.e., Nozdormu no longer works in the single player, it counts all animation times, etc.

[@StarkMaximum]

"...but this does not include animation time." Oh, this video is about Shudderwock. I'll edit if I'm wrong. Edit: FUCK IT'S NOZDORMU, I ABSOLUTELY SHOULD HAVE KNOWN, what a fool I was, that makes even MORE sense.

[@HikingFeral]

I'm trying to get back into it and have 128 card packs to open and have to sit through every unscippable animation plus.i am bombarded with numerous messages about different expansions within hearthstone and it's just a complicated mess with worse feature creep than shadowlands

[@mikaelaincase2157]

How do you only have 94k subs?!

[@the_doug_digital]

Nozdormu must either be a nightmare to code or the balance team is completely oblivious. The obvious solution would be to let the animations resolve before the other player’s timer started ticking down

[@marcovenerbautista6142]

5:50 “How is he still playing?” “I will never tell”

[@ichteilenicht2088]

very easy to digest and you've got a really good voice for these types of videos. keep making these at least every once in a while! Hearthstone Gameplay is cool but I just go through phases of not playing the game and therefore don't watch gameplay videos but this video popped up and actually inspired me to play again - until I get bored again.

[@alejandropena2941]

This can be fixed very easy adding a 'Resolve fase' between both players turns. This way the game would use this 'Resolve fase' to resolve all cards effects and play all needed animations before starting the next player's turn.

[@Legendendear]

Why cant blizzard just add the time it takes for all the animations to complete and then only after that much time has passed the opponents _actual_ turn starts?

[@theolin5486]

There was another bug with the 2 mana priest spell "discover a copy of a spell in your deck" were you just discovered the other copy and the animations skipped thier turn

[@_Rndom]

I play yugioh, every year or so there are interactions with cards that just break the game as we know it, sometimes it's older cards getting op overnight because of 1 interaction Having watched through the history of yugioh, the only way to get rid of this thread is to get rid of the card, right now there's one card that has gotten multiple cards banned and konami refused to ban the card that's enabling those other cards to be broken Fix the problem itself, if there's a problem with a card enabling degenerate play, it should be addressed Idk how hearthstone works exactly, but I had ygo flashbacks when they addressed the issues around nozdormu, it's interactions, but not the card itself

[@vsGoliath96]

Oh god, just got some Vietnam flashbacks from this video. A good friend of mine found this exploit independently way back near release and challenged me to a game. I thought it was weird when he played Noz... and then even weirder when my turn timer vanished.

[@7upbrup658]

Amazing work i didn´t realize nozdormu was a problem.

[@ScoutrunnerTopic]

Thanks rarran. Great video!