Hearthstone is a venerable game that has managed to hold onto its fan base through thick and thin. It made waves on release, and it has never really fallen out of favour. Blizzard, for all of their flaws, has kept an iron grip on Hearthstone’s development, and this has led to a near-decade worth of play.
Not everything can last in its base form, however, and Hearthstone eventually fell victim to its own success early in its lifespan. This led to the introduction of Formats, which essentially split Hearthstone into two distinct games existing simultaneously. Of course, we are talking about Standard and Wild.
What Is A Format?
Formats are a method used by collectable/trading card companies to balance their game easier. Card games exist to sell cards, and if you are constantly having to comb over thousands of cards in a desperate attempt to maintain balance, you aren’t going to have a nice time updating your game.
Formats allow creators to limit the available card pool to only the most recent cards. This helps breed creativity as old cards simply don’t matter as much when designing new ones. Most card games use formats, with Magic: The Gathering being the most famous of the lot.
What Is Wild Format?
Wild Format is madness personified. Where Standard restricts players to only the most recent cards released, Wild allows players to craft decks from every single card ever put on paper - or in this case, screen. It doesn’t matter if you have cards from Naxramas or Voyage To The Sunken City, they are all usable. Heck, Wild even has its own Ranked mode.
Why Play Wild Format?
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Wild Format is for players who want to be supremely creative in their deck designs. No limits, no restrictions. Wild allows players to mix every card imaginable into hyper-refined decks that Standard Format simply can’t. Mixing of mechanics, ideas, and design philosophies - it doesn’t matter, it’s all legal in Wild.
Wild is also great for players who want to get the most value out of their cards. Returning players simply can’t use their purchased cards in any other format, making your purchases go much further than sticking to Standard.
Downsides To Playing Wild
Wild is exactly what it sounds like. Wild is hard to play simply because there is so much to consider, and players who have been active for a long time, are very good at Wild now. Making a good Wild deck is very difficult, and your opponents are not going to go easy on you just because you’ve dropped out of Standard for a few games.
It’s also inherently more difficult to get into Wild if you are new to the game. Wild uses cards from across Hearthstone’s history, and due to how the Shop works, you can’t buy cards from older sets anymore. If you don’t already have a collection of cards, you are going to have to craft them, or pull a random assortment from Wild Packs.
Crafting in Hearthstone is very costly, as breaking your cards into Dust gives you a tiny fraction of their actual worth. We are talking about possibly spending 4x more than Standard to make a competitive deck because you need to grind all those expensive new cards into Dust to make old ones.