Flipping a coin. Rolling the number you need. Winning a poker hand. Winning the lottery. Even winning a simple game of rock-paper-scissors. All of these have an element of chance in them in varying degrees. But competitive games such as “Hearthstone” cannot have random number generation to decide games when there are million-dollar prize pools on the line, or even just for the 30 million people that play the game, as well as popular streamers who consistently get 10,000 people watching them live at any given time.

Overall, this is my biggest complaint with Whispers of the Old Gods, the newest “Hearthstone” expansion to date. Certain cards make the game way more luck based than they used to be. Although this has been a trend in every expansion, Blizzard seems to be making it worse and worse.

Hearthstone is an online and mobile card game released March 11, 2014 and features playable cards recognizable by their roles in the popular online MMORPG, “World of Warcraft.” The game itself has gained popularity in the United States and China. Somewhat like other popular card games such as “Yu-Gi-Oh!” and “Magic the Gathering,” “Hearthstone” is a turn based card game where the player attempts to defeat their opponent by running down their life total.

Because of the way card games are played, there is always some amount of luck, just because a card drawing mechanic makes luck always somewhat of a factor. However some cards are completely random and take no skill to play or use whatsoever.

For example, a new card, called Yogg’Saron casts a random spell for every spell the player has casted. Each spell can then randomly choose who it targets, and there can be up to 16 targets in play. Therefore, there is an approximately .03 percent chance the spell you want will get played and then hit the target you want it to hit.

Multiply that by however many spells the player casts and that’s the amount of luck needed to basically win the game outright.

Despite this, Blizzard has managed to fix some overpowering cards and help new players out by allowing them to be competitive while not spending all of their money for a game.

“Whispers of the Old Gods is my favorite expansion to this date. The addition of the new legendaries such as C’thun has reawoken my love for Hearthstone. Also, the introduction of Standard and Wild has made the game way more balanced and fun. Overall, the Whispers of the Old Gods, is the best update to Hearthstone,” Andrei Buado said.

Luckily, Blizzard has also offered up to 13 free packs, or 1300 gold, which is basically equivalent of playing the game for two hours for 13 days straight.

They have also given the free legendary C’thun, a strong, late game minion that requires the deck to revolve completely around its usage, to all players so the difference between older and newer players will be quite noticeable. Despite making these changes so the skill discrepancy will be smaller, they got rid of the skill based parts of the game.

The expansion itself is quite similar to the other two expansions to date, boasting a whole slew of new cards and mechanics, as well as a different way to play the game than it was viewed before.

“It was a huge release, and the stat values on some of the cards are ridiculous. I felt an immediate shift to slow, control oriented gameplay for the most part. The only real shock factors are some of the legendary cards, but I’m hoping after a few card tweaks and deck creations we’ll have more options for fast gameplay than a lucky C’thun,” Noah Lewis said.

Although hoping to balance and develop strategy for “Hearthstone,” the new expansion has slowed games down and made many cards more luck based, but can make the game great by simply changing a few cards.

by BENJAMIN KIM