Good news, North and South America! You’re going to start getting new Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft content first.
Publisher Blizzard announced today that it is going to begin rolling out Tavern Brawls first in the Americas to limit the rush on its servers. This means that at 9 a.m. Pacific time every Wednesday, a fresh Tavern Brawl will launch for players of the card battler who live west of Europe. Then, 4 hours later, the new mode will debut for the Chinese, Korea/Taiwan, and European regions at 1 p.m. Pacific time. Previously, as these Brawls went live each week, many players from around the globe would log onto Hearthstone simultaneously. That caused lag and other connection issues. Blizzard thinks that getting the first wave of Americans, both of the North and South persuasion, out of the way should address this concern. And that’s important considering Tavern Brawls are an important tool Blizzard uses to keep its players engaged and spending money on the top game in the $1.2 billion card-gaming sector.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1852715,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"games,","session":"A"}']Here is the full statement from Blizzard:
“We’re always on the lookout for ways to improve your experience playing Hearthstone, and will be making a change to the Tavern Brawl release schedule to help achieve that goal. In order to provide better monitoring capabilities, increase our response time for any issues that sneak by, and minimize service impact to all our players across the world, the Tavern Brawl release schedule has been adjusted to the following:
Americas: 9 a.m. Wednesday Pacific time
China: 1 p.m. Wednesday Pacific (5 a.m. China Standard Time Thursday )
Korea/Taiwan: 1 p.m. Pacific (6 a.m.Korean Standard Time Thursday )
Europe: 1 p.m. Wednesday Pacific (10 p.m. Central European Time Wednesday)
Having Tavern Brawls cause this kind of headache is a good problem to have for Blizzard. The publisher releases these weekly, strange variations on the core Hearthstone game each week to keep players coming back and engaged. If enough are returning that the company needs to rework things so fewer people are coming at once, then Tavern Brawls are clearly doing their job.