Yogg-Saron, Hope's End

Yogg-Saron, Hope's End is a legendary neutral minion card, from the Whispers of the Old Gods set.

Strategy
Yogg-Saron is a strong if risky addition to any spell-oriented deck. It is generally best-suited to Mage decks due to the large number of cheap spells the class has access to, as well as other spell synergy such as Flamewaker and Archmage Antonidas. Rogues and Druids can also play it to great effect, due to their cheap spells and abundant card draw. The more spells cast that game, the more spells Yogg-Saron will cast when played. Since the aim of playing Yogg-Saron is to benefit from its spells, the more spells featured in the deck the better.

Playing Yogg-Saron is an inherently risky move. The results of playing Yogg vary strongly depending on the spells chosen, and to a lesser degree the state of the board. However, due to the balance of spells of different sorts, including which spells use manually selected targets and which automatically choose targets of an appropriate type, the consensus is that the effect is on average fairly strongly in the summoning player's favour. For example, if Yogg-Saron casts a Lightning Storm, a Kill Command, an Arcane Intellect, a Mark of the Wild, a Muster for Battle and a Flash Heal, leaving aside variables such as Deathrattles and Secrets, the Kill Command, Mark of the Wild and Flash Heal may be to either player's advantage, but the Lightning Storm, Arcane Intellect and Muster for Battle will always be to the summoning player's advantage. As a rule, Yogg-Saron seems to offer more advantage if the opponent has a board full of minions, partly due to the range of AoE damage spells.

Yogg-Saron is usually played as a back-up rather than primary strategy, in part because it is not always drawn during the course of a match. It can act as a win condition, but this usually depends on the state of the board and the game leading up to that point.

Because Yogg-Saron's effects are amplified by the number of spells cast that game, it is usually far more effective if played late in the game than early. That said, playing Yogg-Saron after a very large number of spells have been cast can result in such a chaotic sequence of events that the likely outcome is less desirable. For example while there are only a few AoE spells capable of damaging or destroying the player's own minions, with enough random spells, there is a good chance one will be cast. If the player is relying on their minions to win the match, this can make a late Yogg-Saron a riskier play than an early one. Overdrawing is another risk of heavy spell-casting by Yogg-Saron, due to the number of spells with card draw and card generation effects.

Like all Battlecry minions, Yogg-Saron's effect can be doubled by Brann Bronzebeard, causing it to cast 2 spells for each cast by the player.

Lore



 *  is a named, one of the mysterious and dread elder beings that were defeated and sequestered by the during 's primordial ages. Upon their fall at the hands of the  countless millennia ago, Yogg-Saron was imprisoned inside a Titan complex within the depths of what would become the continent of . Yogg-Saron made its first appearance in World of Warcraft as the final boss in the raid dungeon , which was implemented in .

In Hearthstone

 * ''Yogg-Saron (yog-suh-RAWN or /jagsʊ'ɹɒn/) is an Old God of many names, each one of them a mouthful. It’s amassed titles such as The Beast with a Thousand Maws, That Which Must Not Be Named, The Fiend of a Thousand Faces, and its personal favorite: The God of Death. For a cosmic horror with an identity crisis (and a taste for forbidding and lengthy nicknames), it’s got a real silver tongue. Lots of silver tongues, probably, since its face is mostly gaping, toothy maws. Anyway, finding eternal imprisonment beneath the continent of to be a bitter pill to swallow, Yogg-Saron used nothing more than its insidious whispers to corrupt its own jailers. It succeeded in turning them against each other before taking control of them, and the prison complex itself.


 * ''While Yogg-Saron was staging the slowest prison break in history, its oozing vileness was seeping up all over Northrend, sowing strife wherever it was found. Druids, led by Fandral Staghelm, thought they could halt its spread with a little creative landscaping, but the roots of the they planted grew deep enough to touch Yogg-Saron’s prison. This monumental misstep gave Yogg-Saron the opportunity to pry open the door into the Emerald Dream. The tree was destroyed, but not before the seeds of the Emerald Nightmare were planted by the Old Gods.


 * Yogg-Saron is hideously good at proving that when you’re up against this mouthy monster, you’ve bitten off more than you can chew.

Design
Designers Mike Donais and Peter Whalen explain that the card went through numerous iterations before reaching the version seen in-game. The overall design concept for Yogg-Saron was a "top-down" approach, trying to envision "what Yogg-Saron would actually do".

The oldest recorded design was as a 10 mana 10/10 minion, with the text, ''Your spells cost (1). While this is in your deck, you have 15 seconds per turn.'' The designers comment:


 * "We wanted the old gods to blow your mind when you saw them. We tried some crazy versions that had effects if they started the game in your deck. This one is a mixed blessing, your turns are really short, which can be exciting if you opt into it. As a bonus, once it’s in play, all your spells are 1 mana which can cause some crazy turns."

However, this design was quickly found to be overpowered, leading to some "absolutely ridiculous" combinations, such as Mages filling their hands with 1 mana damage spells such as Pyroblast.

Another design was as a 4 mana 8/8, with the text, ''When the game starts, gain 3 Mana Crystals. You can't gain more.'' This gave the player a strong initial advantage, but with an even stronger disadvantage once the game got going. Whalen explains:


 * "If your opponent got to 6 crystals and could stabilize, they won, and otherwise you could just kill them with 5/4s. It really felt like playing an A.I. where it feels good when you win but really bad when you lose. And it felt kind of boring for the guy who had just 4 mana crystals. Just, 'I'm going to do this thing.'"

The Yogg-Saron player's deck would predictably consist of mostly 4 mana minions, allowing for the maximum output each turn, leaving little room for ingenuity, while the opponent had little choice but to use removal to attempt to survive the first few rounds, with losses feeling decidedly unfair. Although the designers tried varying the exact number of Mana Crystals, ultimately Yogg-Saron games just "didn’t feel particularly good", and the design was scrapped.

Another design featured Yogg-Saron as a 5 mana 10/10, with the text, ''When the game starts, Yogg-Saron eats your mind. You only have 15 seconds each turn.'' This design was intended to provide a calculated risk, with the minion itself massively undercosted, allowing for strong early game advantage, in exchange for an equally large reduction in the time available to the player to make their actions each turn. This iteration was ultimately rejected due to technical limitations with synchronisation and lag, potentially causing trouble with such short turns, although the developers were also uncertain about the design.

After myriad iterations, the designers eventually settled on a basic theme: summoning Yogg-Saron would cause it to cast a large number of spells, based on the player's spell-casting that game. However, the developers tried various implementations before hitting on just the right design.

The original version was a 10 mana 8/8, which rather than casting random spells, cast a copy of each spell the player had cast that game. While the targets were still chosen randomly, the control over which spells were cast allowed players to set up devastating one turn kills, potentially making play very uninteractive. Certain cards caused additional problems:


 * "Infinite Yogg Saron. It turns out if you play him and you cast Vanish that game, really, nobody gets to play Hearthstone anymore. You don't always win those games but they're not that fun."

When the spells cast by Yogg-Saron were changed to be random - matching its current design - not only were the results less predictable, but the increased randomness turned playing the card from a guaranteed win to a gamble with frequently hilarious results, exchanging boring but overpowered for risky but fun. After arriving at Yogg-Saron's final card text, the last change was to reduce its stats to a 7/5, making sure its strength lay more in its spells than in the minion itself.

Changes
Initially predicted by many players to be of little value, once released Yogg-Saron quickly became a popular card in ladder matches. While it still had the risk of defeating the player who used it, its average outcome was found to be favourable, being especially strong for Tempo Mage and Token Druid, where it was commonly used as a finisher or comeback tool. The card also saw a large reaction from players and spectators due to its potential for fun and unexpected plays.

In the months following its release the card saw play in a number of major tournaments, where its large impact on the outcome of matches resulted in the playerbase becoming divided over how positive it was for the game, with some calling for it to be banned from tournaments. While its overall effectiveness was not, according to Blizzard, very high, its strong RNG factor led to frustration for many players and encouraged the view of Hearthstone as being determined mostly by luck, rather than skill. Others defended the card, citing its largely enjoyable effect on the game, and pointing out that the start of the new Standard year would see many of the most problematic spells removed from Standard format.

In September 2016 the developers acted, describing the card as "the most controversial card we've ever made", and explaining that "seeing Yogg in tournaments was not where we originally hoped it would end up" stating that "Yogg should be for players who want to have a lot of fun, but maybe not the card you see frequently in high-level tournaments." The card was subsequently nerfed by means of a rule change: where the card would previously continue to cast spells regardless of what happened to the Yogg-Saron minion itself, it would now cease to cast spells as soon as the minion was destroyed, Silenced, transformed or returned to the hand. In addition, a subsequent change with Patch 6.2.0.15181 caused the spells cast by Yogg-Saron to apply any Overload to the controlling player, something which the developers had previously been uncertain whether to introduce. The combined changes acted to nerf the reliability and overall power of the card, with the intention of removing it from top-tier play, while still "maintaining the dream for people who love the card."

The card largely fell out of use after this, as it became too risky to spend 10 mana on a card that may do nothing. Additionally, the rising power level of cards in Wild format meant Yogg wasn't likely to decide the outcome of games even if he survived. In Patch 16.6.0.43246, a little less than two years after Yogg-Saron entered Wild, Yogg-Saron's effect was reverted to its original design.

Trivia

 * Yogg-Saron features a large amount of RNG. When it was revealed, it was described by PC Gamer as "the game's craziest RNG card yet."
 * Yogg-Saron took the longest to program of any card in the Whispers of the Old Gods set. This was due to it needing to interact correctly with every spell in the game, as well as special considerations for how mechanics like Secrets and Choose One work. The card also took "a very large amount of playtesting" to get the balance right for the card, ensuring it was viable and worthwhile for certain decks, without becoming excessively popular or game-determining.
 * Yogg-Saron's very first implementation was made by Peter Whalen, and had no visual or audio spell effects: "You play him, 20 spells instantly happen. ... Just like – oh, all the creatures are dead, I have four extra cards in my hand and my opponent’s deck is gone." Whalen explains that the spells cast were also missing from the history: "No history at all! So you would have this, like, 5/8 taunt sheep in place of Yogg-Saron and you’d be like 'I have no idea what just happened.'"
 * Yogg-Saron is also depicted in the card art for DOOM! and Wisps of the Old Gods.
 * When the card was revealed, designer Max McCall jokingly commented,
 * ''"so how many times have people Pyroblasted themselves in the face in testing with Yogg-Saron?"


 * "five. there is a scoreboard on the wall"


 * In Saviors of Uldum, Yogg-Saron's effect returned in the form of a spell: Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron.
 * Yogg-Saron returns as well in Madness at the Darkmoon Faire as Yogg-Saron, Master of Fate.

Patch changes

 * Yogg-Saron no longer stops casting if it is destroyed, Silenced, transformed or returned to the hand.
 * If Yogg-Saron casts a spell with Overload, the controlling player will now be Overloaded for the stated amount.
 * Yogg-Saron, Hope's End will no longer cast spells after being Silenced. [This was included as part of the previous patch, but may not have been fully implemented until this patch]
 * Yogg-Saron will now stop casting spells if it is destroyed, Silenced, transformed or returned to the hand.
 * ''Commentary: This is the most controversial card we've ever made. Some people LOVE Yogg, and others hate it. We felt like seeing Yogg in tournaments was not where we originally hoped it would end up.  Yogg should be for players who want to have a lot of fun, but maybe not the card you see frequently in high-level tournaments. Yogg is relatively weak in power level for nearly every class at every level, but is slightly above average in 2 decks – Tempo Mage and Token Druid.  We didn't want to nerf it so much that it couldn't still be a fun card for players who currently love Yogg. Yogg-Saron will now stop casting spells if, during Yogg-Saron’s battlecry, it is destroyed, silenced, transformed, or returned to its owner’s hand.  We tried a bunch of things and we think this is a significant enough nerf that it could reduce the amount it gets seen (especially in tournaments), while still maintaining the dream for people who love the card.
 * ''Commentary: This is the most controversial card we've ever made. Some people LOVE Yogg, and others hate it. We felt like seeing Yogg in tournaments was not where we originally hoped it would end up.  Yogg should be for players who want to have a lot of fun, but maybe not the card you see frequently in high-level tournaments. Yogg is relatively weak in power level for nearly every class at every level, but is slightly above average in 2 decks – Tempo Mage and Token Druid.  We didn't want to nerf it so much that it couldn't still be a fun card for players who currently love Yogg. Yogg-Saron will now stop casting spells if, during Yogg-Saron’s battlecry, it is destroyed, silenced, transformed, or returned to its owner’s hand.  We tried a bunch of things and we think this is a significant enough nerf that it could reduce the amount it gets seen (especially in tournaments), while still maintaining the dream for people who love the card.


 * Added.