For the 2015 Hearthstone World Championship, Blizzard developed the Conquest format, which was widely adopted by other tournaments. But as many turn back to Last Hero Standing, Blizzard is sticking to its guns for the coming year.
Tournaments in 2014 were mostly contested under the Last Hero Standing format. In that format, each player brings three decks, and if a player loses with a deck it gets locked out. Once a player loses with all three decks, they lose the match. Conquest flipped that on its head, locking out the winning deck, so that a winning player had to win with all of his or her decks.
Tournament organizers like DreamHack and Take-tv have re-adopted Last Hero Standing, while a growing number of pro players have called for the Conquest format to be scrapped. They believe it creates a stale meta where most players will bring the same lineup for fear of being punished for bringing something off-meta.
In an interview at Blizzcon, however, Hearthstone production director Jason Chayes told the Daily Dot that it would be sticking to its guns on conquest.
“Conquest came out of last hero standing, and I think a lot of the issues we had with that format this is now addressing,” Chayes told the Daily Dot. “We like Conquest a lot better.
“The idea of maybe having some bans or something like that in addition which are things we’ve definitely thought about. But looking ahead to next year, we like conquest…conquest will still play a role.”
Senior game designer Mike Donais also told the Daily Dot that he thought conquest had been “very successful.”
Whether Conquest is used for official Blizzard-run tournaments, Last Hero Standing events will still be a big part of the road the 2016 World Championship. DreamHack Winter will be the first event to award qualification points, using the last hero standing format.
Image via Hearthstone/YouTube
