The rabbit bit isn’t actually new information and was covered in the final Iwata Asks interview. I’d highly recommend reading through it for those who haven’t already.

It uses FFXI as its inspiration, definitely. There are quite a few nods to it in Eureka, and even a Mithra minion.

Not really. Each set in the current block is going to be focused on a different region in addition to the ongoing Alolan themes to highlight the Ultra Wormhole aspect of USUM. The next set, Forbidden Light, is already confirmed to have Kalos as its primary theme.

This article is in poor taste. As a reputable news site, Kotaku really shouldn’t be advertising tracking tools.

They actually just have one cinematic team that works on all their IP at once.

Well, I mean, it’s a TCG so what do you expect? Three month gaps between expansions is the genre norm and the price to stay competitive isn’t all that far off from physical games—and it’s even cheaper in some cases.

It depends how much you value Hearthstone packs and how often you play.

Back when Cipher was first starting Intelligent Systems commented that Japan was basically a “test run” for the game and other territories would be considered.

The issue, however, is Nintendo probably doesn’t want to bother handling distribution and localization for such huge territories, like North America. They…

Fire Emblem Cipher? Yeah, it desperately needs an English release. I’m into a lot of different TCGs, so luckily I have some friends at my LGS that do play it. But it’s few and far between.

It’s really nice to see someone else explain it before I get compelled to do so for the millionth time!

Pokémon is in this weird spot where it’s a Nintendo IP, but they barely have any say in what’s done with it at all. They publish the console games and own the trademarks. That’s about it.

That’s not quite how that went down. Capcom can use any Marvel character that Marvel lets them use and Marvel clearly isn’t letting them use the X-Men (and F4) for marketing reasons.

Marvel’s character politics are pretty well documented at this point.

On that note, I’d really love to see Blizzard’s player retention numbers. Because, yes, it does seem like Hearthstone tends to hold more of its veterans than a lot of other games do.

Part of it is probably the classic “Sunken Cost Fallacy.” Players who’ve invested a lot of time and money in the game are far less likely…

Definitely. It’s not at all impossible to do well as a F2P player, so long as you know what you’re doing.

The only point I was trying to make is that it’s not unrealistic to expect a digital card game to be filled with whales when they’re essentially the foundation of the entire genre and its business model.

Yes, most players *are* spending hundreds on the game (or they’ve just been playing F2P religiously since launch). It’s a card game, after all. When you walk into a large tournament for MTG, Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokémon, Vanguard, etc. you’re literally looking at a sea of whales—because in a physical TCG there is no alternative.…

MTG is a bit of a different beast because of its history and the number of available formats—competitive or otherwise. But you’re not going to be able to pick up a deck from the start of a post-rotation Standard format and actually expect it to do that well at the end of that format. It’s just not realistic for any…

It wasn’t confirmed to be a collection. For all we know it’s piecemeal digital releases.

That is why it was nerfed. It was holding back Warrior weapon design.

Welcome to TCGs? Every game in the genre is like that—digital or physical—you can never get by with a collection that’s been cut off from new releases at some point. You almost always have to have recent cards to remain competitive.

This. The weight is basically a non-issue in the case of Cosmoem. I really don’t understand why people are so obsessed with trying to find inconsistencies in Pokémon..

Ah yes, NCSOFT, the industry equivalent of throwing things at a wall to see what sticks.

Apparently the floor is lava.