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Summon animation?[]

Most cards, in particular legendaries, have opening summoning animations. Could we include that in the details? Or should we create a super page for it? Onlymyself (talk) 09:39, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't personally think it really needs to be noted in most cases, but if it's listed I think it should probably be in a Trivia section on the cards' individual pages. --DeludedTroll (talk) 10:23, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Wiki style changes[]

I was contacted recently by Curse personnel working on a revamp of the main page. They're planning on making the front page a lot more impressive and that's something I welcome. However, they also plan on making some significant style changes that will apply throughout the wiki.

Critically, the main article background texture will be removed, and replaced by a pale plain colour; the current header bar will be removed in lieu of a plain extension of the new article background colour; and all fonts for the wiki will be changed. While I'm in favour of many of the changes planned to the front page, I am not in favour of all of the changes for the rest of the wiki.

You can see an impression of the new look here, as opposed to the current look. (The cards are obviously missing.)

As for my thoughts, I'll quote what I said in my email to the manager involved:

The most important point is the background. We've lost the warm parchment skin and gained a paler plain colour instead. The new colour doesn't go very well with the red, is a lot colder, and doesn't match the Hearthstone colour scheme; the previous tones were chosen to match the game itself, which seems like a good idea for branding.
The top bar is also gone. The previous one reprised the colour themes from the sidebar, strengthening the feel and matching the wood-panel style of both the side bar and again Hearthstone itself. The new non-bar feels very plain and an abrupt start to each page. We've also lost the shading on the edge of the article space, which was nice, and again feels abrupt.
I'm not sure how I feel about either font change, but the header font at least looks characterful; the main text font feels a bit plain.

Unfortunately the developers involved don't agree, and the changes will be implemented on the wiki this Friday.

I won't go into too much depth, but I do feel that we, the editors who have made this wiki what it is - and on whom its ongoing success solely depends - should have some input as to how the wiki looks and feels. I don't believe this is something that should be decided for us, and left for us to live with. Especially as we are the ones who will be spending so much time reading, editing and looking at the new style on every page from here on out. I also believe that as long-time players of Hearthstone and users of the wiki, we are in an excellent position to provide perspective on what feels right for a Hearthstone wiki, and what it's like to work on and regularly read the wiki; something the developers do not have an abundance of.

Many of the other changes (see an early draft of the new front page) are in my opinion good, and based on useful user data that Curse has access to. I am all for such improvements to the site. I am also aware that we all have our own sense of aesthetics, and changes are often uncomfortable at the time. Those reading this may well disagree with my opinions and welcome the style changes: and if so, I am willing to accept this. Either way, I believe the preferences of the editors should have some weight, and that the best solution is one that works for those who will be working, building the site on a daily basis, as well as for those whose job it is to host and support the network.

I would therefore like to invite the community to comment on the upcoming changes. Given the looming deadline the window for comment is brief; please add your thoughts now if you wish to have a say. -- Taohinton (talk) 03:35, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

The main thing is the background. I strongly agree with your objections there. The top bar, I do like the red too but not so much that I'm confident it's anything but status quo bias :) I'm neutral on font and front page. Again, the background is a big deal. I'm not sure what advantage taking away the warm texture could possibly have. - jerodast (talk) 04:43, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
Just dropping a note they modified the mockup they provided me for the main page. There are some changes coming to the class and hero section and to the area left of that. May end up getting left work-in-progress depending on how much I'm able to finish tonight. :( oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 04:53, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
I'm fine with any change shown so far. As long as it doesn't break the website.Shammiesgun (talk) 06:05, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
I would say I agree with all of your concerns, Taohinton. The current style looks a lot more like what I'd expect a Hearthstone-centered wiki to look like than the new style does. The main page overhaul looks alright, but the overall style change looks a bit too cold and artificial, which feels at odds with the aesthetic of Hearthstone itself of being a cozy inn with warm color tones and wooden panels, if that makes any sense. But maybe that's just me having an instinctively negative reaction to big changes. --DeludedTroll (talk) 10:23, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
Yeah, main page updates are still a work in progress until the night. In particular, the images for the classes are not yet updated. Apologies. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 10:45, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
I think the reason why Curse decided to go with a darker color scheme is that:
  1. It fits the style of the "Curse" brand (darker tones, darker red)
  2. It changes the background color SO much, that people who revisit the wiki will probably notice Curse as the "one" who made the change.
I'm neutral in the color scheme, even though it is decidedly darker. I'm sure the makeover will benefit Curse branding, and "rejuvenate" the site with a fresh look. The pointers I mentioned is what they're after. The main important thing to see is that the articles are kept intact. Aegonostic (talk) 15:39, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Hello everyone. I wanted to go ahead and jump into the discussion. For those who don't know me, I'm the Community & Marketing Manager for Gamepedia and this redesign/layout change has been a project I'm heading up. First off, I want to say that we absolutely do value your contributions on the wiki and feedback on these design changes, especially the excitement/appreciation of the layout and content changes. I also really appreciate the self-awareness that some reactions may be from the gut just because things are different than they have been for a long time. I want to apologize to Taohinton as well because it seems as though I communicated that we were going to simply forge ahead without addressing any critiques he raised. You were our first-ever Editor of the Month and part of the inspiration for that program and so I'm sorry that you felt like your concerns were not being heard appropriately.

That said, it seems like the background texture is really the main sticking point in this discussion. I went back to chat with our designers and found that our original mockups actually do call for a parchment texture, which I'm going to work to have implemented ASAP. Although it is lighter than the one used now and removes the edge shading, I hope that maybe it will help to make the design less "sterile" and more welcoming and in-line with the historic look and feel of the wiki. Setting aside the thematic connection with the game itself for a moment, the design justification for the lightening/removal of the background is for readability. Here's a side-by-side comparison: Link -- I, personally, agree that while the current background has a certain warmth to it, the lighter background does make the reading experience a little better. I'd like to see if retaining the parchment texture like this might be more acceptable to everyone. If not, we can test some other options. I do feel fairly strongly about removing the edge shading though, for me it really makes the start of text lines difficult to read and is distracting.

Finally, I just want to say that our aim here is not to charge in and make waves because we can, or because we want to exert control over the wiki and mold it to fit our brand. As Tao mentioned, we spent a lot of time running tests, analyzing traffic data, and working through designs with our expert team here. All of that is because we want to make the wiki a better experience for the thousands and thousands of people who come here to use (and hopefully appreciate!) the content that you help create. This is something we're aiming to do with other top wikis on the platform as well, and the process has been a learning experience for us for sure. CrsBenjamin 16:37, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi Benjamin, and thanks for joining us! I hope you don't mind me opening up the discussion to the rest of the community; as I say these are changes that will affect all of us so it only felt right to get everybody's thoughts, especially from our top editors.
Thanks also for providing some alternative ideas regarding the background, which I agree is the main concern, if not the only one. I'll be interested to hear from the other editors whether the colour or the texture is the bigger issue. The addition of the texture does mitigate the new base colour, but I'm not sure if does much to help it fit with the rest of the wiki colours, or to make it feel much less cold. I agree readability has to be a concern, but I'd ideally like to find a solution without sacrificing too many other strengths. The current background is desirable because it matches both the wiki palette and that of the game; the warmth is not only pleasant as a reader, but as DeludedTroll mentions captures the feeling of the game itself, something which I think is worth keeping if possible. Since I know the texture has been mentioned previously as an obstacle to readability, perhaps a warmer plain colour would be an alternative to a colder parchment texture?
I'm also unclear about the font changes. The new image you've provided shows significantly different font sizes than currently used for both the article header and base text (as seen in the contrast between left and right - or live). Are these intended changes? I also notice the font colours have changed from a deep wine-ish colour to black and orangish; presumably these are the latest iterations?
With talk of a texture and/or changed background tone, it's hard to otherwise respond regarding the edge shading or top bar; it would be good to see the latest batch of changes live on the Spyro wiki (or at least some full screen mockups), so we can get a better sense of what it would look like. A compromise if the current edge shading is problematic due to overlapping the text might be to reduce it to the actual edge of the space rather than a fat chunk, which might still help the cut-off feel less abrupt without troubling the eyes. Since you mention finding bits difficult to read, I should say I do find the font colour for the new top bar quite hard to read, due to the small contrast between the font and background.
Anyway, I'll leave it there for now, and look forward to hearing people's thoughts. Thanks again for discussing possible solutions. -- Taohinton (talk) 17:58, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
All I have currently in my queue is the remaining main page adjustments, so the current version on Spyro is the place to go for font sizing. This is in part because the wiki skins use relative sizing, and that generally isn't a concept that even exists in most software used to make these mockups, so mileage is going to vary on that anyway. The only further adjustments currently in my queue are main page only, though naturally more may be coming. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 03:28, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
Most changes to the main page now live on Spyro. Seems I never received all the assets for the new links on the left hand side, though, so that will have to wait until tomorrow. The new parchment is up too. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 10:31, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
Now updated with all the images for the links. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 10:58, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
Something is off with the positioning of tiles for Arena, Ranked, and Tavern Brawl on Spyro wiki. They're overlapping the expansions/adventures, at least in Chrome. - jerodast (talk) 17:45, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
Oops. It should be fixed now. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 07:02, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
ill this wiki be offline for some time when implementing changes? If so, it would be good to check in on the timetable (especially with the reveal of the new expansion Journey_to_Un'Goro). Aegonostic (talk) 21:25, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
This won't require any downtime to push live. As for schedule, apologies, but I haven't received any updates to pass along. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 07:02, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
So to clarify, oOeyes: the font size and colour on the current Spyro wiki are (as far as you know) the intended final versions for the new style?
Also, I can't see the parchment, or any difference between the wiki before and after (unless you changed it earlier than I understood). Is that definitely up? -- Taohinton (talk) 14:14, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
As far as I know, the Spyro font sizes are final. The parchment is there between the boxes, but I too am surprised at how subtle it is. I actually had to take a screenshot and zoom in to confirm it's not just the solid color. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 16:02, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Sorry for the long silence, I was out of town last week for a conference. I believe everything is fairly up to date now. The background is less visible on the main page, but more visible on content pages. I've copied over http://spyro.gamepedia.com/Card_draw_effect as an example to check out. CrsBenjamin (talk) 18:39, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Seeing the spyro article on mobile, the whitespace margin should be increased (right now there's no whitespace margin, on the sides of the article, 5px should be sufficient). Also, I'd like to see an article example of a Hearthstone card. Other than that, I think it looks good. When are the wiki changes to be implemented? Aegonostic (talk) 23:57, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Since there hasn't been much additional discussion since my last message, what I would like to do is implement the new mainpage on Friday, and then over a period of 2 weeks track some key metrics like how the page is being used, traffic, bounce rate, etc. and then re-convene the discussion. This would give everyone a chance to see it in action, maybe get used to it a little bit, but I do want give another opportunity for discussion to see if there are still strong feelings about some of the changes. Unless there is sharp opposition to this plan, I will get things in motion Friday afternoon. CrsBenjamin (talk) 20:39, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

I definitely would like to see the color of the parchment paper (background-image) to remain the same. Less stress on the eyes on desktop and mobile (because of its lower brightness) and it is a warm "Hearthstone-oriented" color. Aegonostic (talk) 00:50, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
As I've said, the main page looks good and I would be fine with putting that into place. However, regarding the other changes I posed several points in my reply to your post on Feb 23. Have you had the chance to read it?
As an update to my response re: the background colour, the texture has been implemented in the latest Spyro version. It has unfortunately proven not to do much to moderate the "sterile" feel of the new background colour, or to match the game's feel.
In addition, and in response to the point of the fonts, the new font colour makes the argument of the changes being on the basis of readability a little confusing. The new font colour is less clear than the current one, and serves to counter much of the benefit gained from lightening the background. If readability is the goal, at the least the font should be black, and not a wine-ish colour that blends with the tone of the background. To be clear, the font in your readability comparison actually used black, which is not the colour actually planned to go live. Given that the rationale for replacing the warm background with a cold, pale one is readability, changing the font from a clear, strong black to a washy wine colour is a bit hard to understand.
On the upside I agree the new main text font itself is much clearer than the current one. Since the majority of our top editors are in agreement that we would like to keep the background, perhaps for now it would be worth trying simply updating the font? This should boost readability nicely without sacrificing the style's other strengths. -- Taohinton (talk) 04:50, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
Sorry, I'd forgotten about the text changes. I believe they are intentional, but if we move back to the warmer background, which I think we're going to, we'll likely change the font color back as well. I'm not totally sure about the font there though. The image I'd linked is the mockup, so that font would be what was intended, but on the live/beta version it doesn't seem to be changed as dramatically, so I can check on that. I'm going to work with oOeyes to make a few tweaks and then hopefully we can come to something we can take live by next Wednesday or so. 69.85.223.171 17:26, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
Apologies for the delay. I was sidetracked with another wiki redesign. Spyro has received some updates:
  • Now using the parchment background from the current design. Trying this with the side box shadows left off for the moment.
  • Text colors have been reverted to those from the current design. (Maybe an accidental change with heading colors or such, but should be mostly back the way it was.)
  • Not sure if this makes much difference, but it turns out there are two different versions of the Lato font. Spyro has been adjusted to use the first version of Lato rather than the second, though since they are both Lato, the change won't affect what you see if you have the font installed (since it will use your version).
oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 08:41, 21 March 2017 (UTC)
For convenience, the differences between the two website designs are:
I'd say that the revert to the original parchment color is great. I like the revamped main page, except that it doesn't include the Twitter box and the Curse video highlight. I'm probably neutral to everything else color-wise font-wise. Aegonostic (talk) 14:41, 21 March 2017 (UTC)
Thanks oOeyes for making these adjustments and laying out the comparisons. I know there are a few minor tweaks we'll need to make as we bring this over to the live wiki (adding padding to the left margin, e.g.), but I think it seems like we're at a point where we can do this, start collecting some info about how the new main page is used by users on the wiki, but not be disrupting the existing style in any major way that's firmly unacceptable to the community here. Thanks everyone for your continued participation, opinions, and willingness to work with us on this project. CrsBenjamin (talk) 20:54, 21 March 2017 (UTC)
Updated the feature block for Journey to Un'Goro as well along with some other minor adjustments. CrsBenjamin is looking into something for the featured streamer box, so I won't be bringing the design over until I hear back on that. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 04:11, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Skin/Main Page Feedback[]

Hey everyone. The new skin is now in place! As discussed, we'll give it a little time for everyone to check out and get used to and then we can reconvene discussion if there are issues. We'll also be keeping an eye on some key stats and metrics from our side and I'll share anything interesting we see. If you find any bugs/issues with the CSS/JS changes that were implemented, let us know! CrsBenjamin (talk) 00:01, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm still unsure about the transparent formatting of tables. Aegonostic (talk) 07:07, 25 March 2017 (UTC)
Hooray parchment! Other feedback:
  • One big problem is that dividers underneath section headers are essentially invisible with their current color, making the sections harder to identify and creating odd looking gaps in the page.
  • I noticed that the "Hearthpedia" section of the left menu has only links to professional/tournament Hearthstone information. This a) doesn't seem quite like the right heading for those links and b) hasn't been updated in quite a long time. I propose removing all of it (links and pages, or at least the dated information on the pages). (No idea if this is related to anything new or has always been an issue.)
  • In other news, I have been noticing that more and more, leaving pages open has a chance of chewing up memory and causing constant CPU and network activity. Naturally, this is due to ads. This is a serious detriment to user experience. Wowhead has been suffering in the grips of awful, exploitative ads for the past couple years, which has reduced the popularity of the site and led many formerly die hard fans like myself to install AdBlock for the first time ever because the site is simply unusable otherwise. I hope we can maintain some standards for our ads to prevent that from happening.
- jerodast (talk) 08:11, 28 March 2017 (UTC).
Yeah, I should have adjusted that with the return of the parchment too. The mockups didn't have that, so I compromised by putting a faint border in to blend the standard wiki style with the mock, but the parchment made it too faint. So let's try this to go back to my original intent.
Went ahead and took off the Hearthpedia links for now, since it looks like the steam died on that pretty quickly. As for ads, that's above my pay grade, so I'll have to kick that up. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 12:33, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
New dividers look pretty good. Thanks! - jerodast (talk) 05:48, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

New card set rotation time[]

I started playing the game back when Ol'Gods still had the free pack quests, and never saw card sets rotating into Wild, and I'm not sure when it will be active. At the start of the month, or when the expansion gets released? Because April is considered as the first month in Year of the Mammoth, while March is the last month in Year of the Kraken. TheGamer765 (talk) 00:19, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Card sets rotate into Wild with the release date of the new expansion of a Hearthstone year, so the Year of the Mammoth will begin on April 6th (or whenever Journey to Un'Goro releases). The intervals of "months" are not really an actual guideline. Aegonostic (talk) 07:06, 25 March 2017 (UTC)
Thanks, good to know that! TheGamer765 (talk) 08:33, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

How to take a screenshot of a card?[]

In A_Mammoth_of_a_New_Year#Special_cards there are a bunch of cards that have art put just by print screen and then dump into a file. All the other cards show the proper art.

What's the best way to do it?

Jeldred (talk) 01:15, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Until Hearthpwn puts the pictures up, screenshots are the best method we have for card images. There should be other ways to get the images though, such as through a data-mining program, but I'm not familiar with those. HearthSim might have documentation on such a program: https://hearthsim.info/. Aegonostic (talk) 06:30, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Stepping back[]

Some of you have probably noticed that I've been a lot less active on the wiki than usual, lately, especially with all the new stuff being added. Unfortunately, after many years of editing and admin-ing, due to 'real life' issues I will no longer be able to continue in my responsibilities for the wiki. I've been fighting against and delaying this for a long time now, but it's time to make it official.

As I've stepped back from my former duties, some of you in particular have stepped up to take on the extra work, and I am very glad to see this happen. I've spent the last 3 1/2 years developing and working on the site, including designing and arranging most of the infrastructure (hefty technical work aside - thanks oOEyes), developing the site's style, liaising with oOEyes on things such as imports, and generally doing a ton of heavy lifting and day to day editing. When I started the game was still in beta, and the site was somewhat embryonic; a few years later and it's a thriving, diverse and detailed site, with a variety of content - from notes and card lists, to histories and strategy, to art, lore and advanced mechanics - and a thick sediment of trivia and memories, regularly visited by millions of readers from around the world. So I'm very glad to see the community working to maintain this awesome resource we've created together, and I hope you'll continue to do so.

For the last few years I've made it my job to keep the site up to the minute, add almost every blog, interview and developer tweet out there, and generally make everything the best I could make it. I've had a great time and learnt a lot, but it's time to lay down my self-imposed duties and step back to a less intensive role. I'm sure I'll still be editing here and there, but from now on I won't be making it my responsibility to keep every bit of the site up to date, document each new feature and change, or generally tidy and fix problems.

As the admin for the site for the last 3 1/2 years, as I step back I will be granting admin status to some other editors. However, I would first like to say a few words about the difference between an admin and a community leader; the two are commonly confused, but are in fact quite separate. A community leader is an editor who takes on the responsibility of editing, updating, expanding, maintaining and improving the site, tackling challenges and decisions. An admin is simply a respected editor with a few special privileges, to allow them to carry out certain administrative duties, such as deleting pages, blocking vandals, and protecting pages. Admins can of course also be community leaders if they are active and productive on the wiki, but conferring admin status does not equal appointing a 'boss' or leader, only someone who is willing to tend to administrative duties, and generally keep an eye on the wiki. The role of community leader does not come with a special wiki status, and is not something anyone else can appoint.

While I hope that many of you will step up to the role of community leader, I have therefore decided to grant admin privileges to User:DeludedTroll and User:Jerodast. From now on they'll be able to help with admin tasks like deleting unwanted pages.

One other role that I've held on the wiki is the main holder of knowledge about the systems and workings, as well as conventions, for much of the wiki. I'm in the process of writing up a fairly extensive guide to most of the systems and procedures, to help newer editors to learn the ropes, or troubleshoot when things go wrong, and to provide guides and checklists for when performing tasks such as handling imports or adding a new expansion. I'll be posting links on the talk pages of related pages, with the aim of providing a kind of documentation system for common tasks.

It's not easy to step away, but I am looking forward to the freedom and the free time, and getting back to looking at Hearthstone simply as a game, rather than as the (very enjoyable) job I've made it into. What a long, strange trip it's been.

Have fun, be excellent to each other, and thanks for all the fish. -- Taohinton (talk) 05:19, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Tears have fallen by the sides of my eyes :O Thanks for everything Taohinton, you've been the most wonderful contributor on this wiki, I wish you best of the best in your real life and I hope you will still visit this site frequently/moderately! The best of the best to you! This post seems so minuscule compared to yours, but I just want to let you know that I personally love all the editing and updating and developing that you've done to this wiki to make it grow so much. I really hope you will continue to visit and keep an eye on things from time to time, and me personally, as probably most of the editors here are too, am very thankful that you've stayed onto this wiki for so long. This site is super fantastic, and super fun to use. We will try to maintain it the best we can, at a level that will almost match yours. I hope these are not final words to you, it's super sad to see you step away from this wiki, but what must be done, must be done, I can only imagine. Aegonostic (talk) 05:53, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
Thank you for all the effort you've put into this over the years. This wiki has been easily one of the most successful wikis I've managed, if not the single most, and that's been in large part thanks to you. I'm sorry to see you have to pull back, but I know how life gets in the way of wikis sometimes. Good luck in your future endeavors. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 06:05, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
Not sure what I can say here that hasn't already been said by Aegonostic and OOeyes, but I wish you the best of luck and hope to still see you around sometimes. We'll do our best to carry on the amazing work you've done over the years. --DeludedTroll (talk) 07:22, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
Just wanted to say thanks again for all of the hard work you've done. You've been an amazing part of the Gamepedia community as admin here on Hearthstone, and you've had an impact on millions of HS players worldwide! We of course hope you'll continue to make appearances and maybe someday re-join us here or for other projects. "Well Played!" CrsBenjamin (talk) 21:52, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Editor's Handbook[]

A little later than I had planned, but I have finally posted my guide to the wiki's systems and conventions. As mentioned above, this should be useful for giving newer editors a grounding in the basics (and a place to direct those with questions), and as reference for the more complex and rarely used details. It also includes quite a few guides and action lists for key tasks such as adding new cards and handling data imports. Hopefully it will be helpful for those who are interested, or when trying to figure out why something isn't working as intended.

I've added links on the talk pages of the main related pages, with the aim of creating a kind of documentation system for common tasks. In theory, the guide can be updated and expanded to match the wiki's ongoing development, and to serve as a central documentation for the running of the wiki.

The handbook can be found here. -- Taohinton (talk) 20:47, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Hero cards instead of Hero Portraits?[]

I've noticed that the new bosses are depicted on a blank Hero card template rather than a Hero Portait. I did a hero portrait for CoreLord Marrowgar, because I think it's better than the Hero card version of it. What do you think about this, and I should make the Portrait versions retroactively (for Lich King and Tirion)? TheGamer765 (talk) 14:27, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

I personally like how Lord Marrowgar now looks. (And I noticed that Detahbringer Saurfang looks similar). This looks way better then the "blank card" background of The Lich King and Lady Deathwisper, and don't even get me started on the Paladin-colored card background used for Tirion Fordring.
If you can make portrait versions for Lich King, Tirion, and Deathwisper as well, I would greatly appreciate it. -- BigHugger (talk) 19:13, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
I made the portraits for the bosses, and I think they are look better now. TheGamer765 (talk) 19:42, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

Just testing[]

Sorry if this message causes any trouble. Blue Banana whotookthisname (talk) 22:06, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

Formatting[]

Which of the following are capitalized? (my opinion in parenthesis)

  • Deck names (yes, proper nouns)
  • Card names (yes, proper nouns)
  • Tribes/races (?)
  • Classes (?)
  • Heroes (yes, proper nouns)
  • Archetypes, eg. control, aggro, ... (no)
  • Deck type (and how do we distinguish the line between a deck type and an individual deck? Murloc Mage definitely refers to a specific deck, but Control Warrior and Fatigue Warrior are both sub types of control warriors, ie. warrior decks that represent control play style...)
  • Game modes (???)

Blue Banana whotookthisname (talk) 22:11, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

I present the following suggestions to be officially used in the Wiki and to be used by authorities of other communities as well, as no opposition has appeared, and I think guide lines are needed:
  • Deck, card and hero names are capitalized.
  • Tribes/races are not capitalized. (Eg. "I generally speaking like murlocs")
  • Tribes/races are capitalized when a part of a deck name. (Murloc Mage)
  • Classes are not capitalized.
  • Classes are capitalized when part of a deck name. (Murloc Mage)
  • Deck types are not capitalized, except when used as a deck's name. (Control Warrior refers to the conventional, agreed-upon warrior deck, control warrior refers to any warrior deck that is also a control deck.)
  • Game modes are capitalized.
Blue Banana whotookthisname (talk) 08:52, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

I started fixing incorrect capitalizations a while ago, using Help:Style guide as a source, as I found it rather common that for example tribes and stats were commonly (and inconsistently) capitalized. According to the style guide, this shouldn't be done. However, capitalizing keywords seems to be a rule rather than an exception, and many tribes are capitalized in their articles, although that is often not done in other articles.

We need consistent policies on what grammar and style we should use. Do we start following the style guide or update it? What are the reasons for changing it? Blue Banana whotookthisname (talk) 23:25, 17 February 2018 (UTC)/moved Blue Banana whotookthisname (talk) 07:48, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, but bump. This is a big issue. Blue Banana whotookthisname (talk) 18:31, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
I think your formatting rules are good. They probably should be added to the style guide. (referring to your second set of bullet points) Also, I believe that keywords should be properly capitalized (e.g. Divine Shield, Deathrattle, Taunt, etc.), since to new players or unsuspecting readers, the capitalization imparts to them the sense that the definitions of those words are unique to Hearthstone, and not from an English dictionary. Aegonostic (talk) 23:51, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
Very late reply, but capitalizations should always adhere to the ones used in in-game card text. In other words, card attributes (Attack, Health, Cost), minion types (Demon, Mech, Totem), and keywords (Divine Shield, Deathrattle, Taunt) should all be capitalized. Note that in regards to the minion types, they should be capitalized when they're talking about the in-game minion type, but not when they're talking about the subject in a lore context. E.g., use "Murlocs" when talking about the card type ("Knights of the Frozen ThroneIce Fishing is best used in a deck that has a lot of Murlocs") and "murlocs" when talking about the amphibious creatures that inhabit the world of Azeroth ("the jinyu are a race of humanoids descended from murlocs"). --DeludedTroll (talk) 11:42, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Sprucing up the List cards template[]

Hey all, while the List cards template is currently incredibly helpful, there are still some things it can't do, and I'd like to try to nail down how to accomplish them for maximum utility.

First and foremost, I found when editing a long query that I got spat back the error "The following query condition could not be considered due to this wiki's restrictions on query size or depth", which can ruin specific queries. If possible I'd like to try to get this eliminated.

Next, I'd recommend creating an element for whether a card has text (for argument's sake, let's say calling it hastext=true/false). This would let you sort out basic cards like Mean Streets of GadgetzanAlleycat and LegacyDire Wolf Alpha versus those with no or basic text like Whispers of the Old GodsDuskboar and Journey to Un'GoroGiant Wasp (basically Deathstalker Rexxar rules).

Then I'd recommend one for whether a card has an ability (again, let's say hasability=true/false). This would allow you to filter cards based on whether they are coded with an ability tag (so anything with Taunt, Deathrattle, etc. would be filtered out, or if true, only those with that ability are filtered in).

These two filters would help towards filtering out specific cards; any other filters in mind I'd say go ahead and post here. Hikarigami (talk) 18:51, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Sometime in the near future, I will likely be trying to convert this wiki from using Semantic MediaWiki to Cargo, which will require most of those templates to be rewritten. That's something we can consider then, especially as Cargo's querying is more flexible. Some of what you're suggesting, I believe, is beyond what SMW's #ask can do (i.e. querying for empty fields or *not* having a given tag). oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 20:42, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Gradual conversion from Semantic MediaWiki to Cargo[]

Due to server performance issues that have been triggered by faults in Semantic MediaWiki, I'm working to convert the automatic lists here to use Cargo instead. This isn't a rush job. So far, Hearthstone Wiki hasn't experienced any of the issues we've run into on other wikis, but I'm hoping to at least start the process in case those problems do crop up here. Ideally, we'll be fully switched before anything like that happens, but we'll at least have a head start if any of those issues do occur here before it's all done.

My tentative plan is:

  1. Update {{Card data}} and {{Card infobox}} to use both Semantic MediaWiki and Cargo for data storage. (Done.)
  2. Try to set up a "master list" that can be use to test using Cargo for automatic lists.
  3. Create versions of templates like {{Custom card table}} that use Cargo instead.
  4. If Cargo is working well on the master list, try swapping some other large lists to use Cargo.
  5. Update the card infobox to use Cargo, not Semantic MediaWiki, to connect to data pages.
  6. And eventually swap out the templates using Semantic MediaWiki entirely.

(Also, looks like Semantic MediaWiki is being used for artists too, so I'll work that into the plan too.) And please let me know if it looks like I accidentally exploded anything finishing up step 1. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 05:10, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

This seems to have broke: General minion card list, but it's no big deal. Aegonostic (talk) 18:53, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
Cargo has a higher default limit for how many rows it will return. Trying to display all the general minions bumped up against the limits for the size of included templates, though. I've managed to further optimize the table row template to better squeeze it in the allowed space. Between that and moving uncollectible general minions to their own page, it works for now, but the practical limit is looking like it's going to be somewhere around 900-1000 cards a page. (More for spell and weapon cards since they're simpler.) oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 00:42, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
If there's a good workaround for the 1000-item limit, I'm all ears. See: Talk:Elemental_art This problem will only increase as more cards are added to Hearthstone. Aegonostic (talk) 21:35, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
Not really. Cargo technically allows up to 5000, but its limits aren't the problem. The max include size being hit is core MediaWiki, and even if we increase that, that's in place to try to avoid timeouts on page saves. This isn't a new problem, and I've already done a lot of space optimization to hem it in. There's just little more, if anything at all, I can do to pack it in, so dividing lists like that up between multiple pages just ultimately isn't going to be avoidable. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 01:05, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
I was starting to think it was strange that the elemental art page would be that big. This is a different issue: SMW and Cargo have different query syntax. I hit the templates, but apparently there are articles using the query parameter directly. If you see uses of {{List cards}}, {{Custom card table}}, {{Cards}}, etc. that are using query but don't also have a where, please post them on my talk page because I need to translate query into what Cargo understands. (It hit template include size because each of those was trying to return all cards.) oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 20:28, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
Ok, I will try to make a note of that. Aegonostic (talk) 23:56, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Removing the Semantic MediaWiki data[]

As far as I know, everything is now using the data from the Cargo tables, so I'm going to risk removing the SMW assignments from {{Card infobox}} and let that data set empty. Please be on the lookout for any tables or card lists that may "mysteriously" go missing in the chance I've missed something. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 00:17, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

As long as we don't see anymore of this syntax:
{{Cards|where=({{#lstmap:Card_data,Standard_format_cards|,|@@@@|_pageData._categories__full RLIKE "<esc>(^|\\\|)@@@@(\\\||$)</esc>"|\_AND\_}}) AND (({{#lstmap:Triggered effect - whenever you use your Hero Power,Triggered effect - after an opposing Hero Power is used|,|@@@@|Cards.hiddentags__full RLIKE "<esc>(^|,)@@@@(,|$)</esc>"|\_OR\_}}) OR Cards.abilities HOLDS "Inspire")}}
*prays* Aegonostic (talk) 05:16, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
I'm probably going to try to hide those ugly workarounds in templates in the near future. But unfortunately, those workarounds remain necessary until certain Cargo bugs and limitations are addressed. I've tried to delay this to let Cargo mature more, but we're down to single digits in wikis that need to be moved off Semantic MediaWiki, and the pressure is on to finish up this final stretch. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 12:26, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

Cleaning up Card Art Pages[]

Hey guys, new Wiki editor here, but I’d like to make a good amount of changes to the Card_art group of pages, with a focus on organizing and cleaning up Uncatogorized_art. This would include moving several cards to proper categories and creating new categories for card art such as “totem art”, etc. Just wanted to document me starting the process and the changes I’d like to make. I would love to discuss with you guys about the changes I’m proposing.

Changes:

• Action: Creation of the Quillboar_art page. Inclusion: the three hogriders from MsoG. Reason: I believe that 3 cards (collectible or noncollectible) of a race is enough to create a page. This is evidenced by Harpy_art and Arrakoa_art.

• Action: Creation of the Totem_art page. Inclusion: The 4 basic, flametongue, mana tide, primalfin, totem golem, any spells with totem art on it. Reason: Totems are their own “race” in Hearthstone and should be deserving of their own art page. Currently many of the totems are classified within the race that created the totem “Healing Totem->Tauren_art.” I would not take that away, just add a second category of Totem_art as well.

• Action: Creaton of the Spellstone_art page. Inclusion: All 9 spellstones introduced in KNC and their uncollectable upgrades. Reason: Since the inclusion of all 27 of these cards, the Uncatogorized_art has been pretty messy. These 27 cards share a unifying theme and as such should be put in a single category. Plus Greater Sapphire Spellstone isn’t even with the other 26 under Uncatogrized_art.

• Action: Creation of the Yeti_art page. Inclusion: Chillwind Yeti, Icehowl, The Caverns Below, Crystal Core. Reason: With four cards, this fits the 3 card requirement. Unless one wants to argue that the creatures of the rogue quest could possibly be wendigo. This could require more research (ie. Ask Whelen on Twitter).

• Action: Creation of the Watcher_art page. Inclusion: Amara, Keeper of Uldaman, Ancient Watcher. Reason: Fits the 3 card requirement.

• Action: Move the uncollectible Moonfire (Choose One) to Beast_art. Reason: The art clearly features a wildkin which is identified as a beast by Hearthstone standards as shown by Jungle Moonkin. Therefore for consistency it should be in the same art category of Jungle Moonkin which is Beast_art.

• Action: Move Gilded Gargoyle to Undead_art. Reason: Gargoyles are classified as undead (ex. Stoneskin Gargoyle).

• Action: Move the 3 spirits created by the pearl spellstone to Undead_art. Reason: Spirits of living creatures according to this wiki are considered Undead (ex. Spirit Wolves).

• Action: Include The Beast as an elemental. Reason: Like Core Rager and Core Hound, it is a core hound which is considered a beast but also an elemental.

• Action: Creation of the Golem_art page. Inclusion: Totem golem, War golem, Iron Golem, Mithril Golem, Gemstudded Golem, Arcane golem, Arcane giant, Curator, Harvest golem, Eerie Statue, Avian Watcher, Crystal Lion, Jade behemoth, all Infernals and Abyssals, Skeletal Flayer (from Skelemancer). Reason: This is a more controversial change, and I would love discussion on it. I argue that golems are a significant part of Warcraft and fantasy lore, and due to the prevalence of golems in Hearthstone, they are deserving of their own art page. Arcane golem currently is classified as an elemental, but would better fit in this page (just like plants are technically elementals but better fit into plants category). Arcane giant while a giant, does not follow any of the normal giant races created by the titans and is actually a living construct. The curator and the Harvest golem are similar in being living mechanical constructs. Eerie Statue is a troll-created golem. Avian watcher, Crystal Lion, and Jade behemoth are golems shaped in the form of beasts and should be in both categories. Infernals and Abyssals are demon golems and should be in both categories. Skeletal Flayer is an undead golem.

The following are topics I personally am not sure about and require more research. However for these I am of the opinion of leaving them uncategorized.

• Cards: Fungal Enchanter, Shrieking Shroom, Dark Pact. Question: KNC introduced living mushroom cards in these 3. Are they plants? Are they some kind of new race?

• Cards: Animated Armor, Animated Berserker, Mountainfire Armor. Question: These three are animated suits of armor. Does that mean they are animated through magic or through spiritual possession? The latter implies they should be Undead. --Couzin ed (talk) 23:22, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

Capitalisation of classes[]

At the moment, there is no consistency with the capitalisation of class names on articles. On cards they're lower-case ("King Krush is a legendary hunter minion") but hunter says "The Hunter". Then again, every single mention of hunter after the lead of hunter has it in lower-case. What's the consensus? Quater (discuss) 13:03, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

For the Hunter article specifically, it is being used as a proper noun, so it is capitalized. On the card pages where it is being used as an adjective, it should be lowercase. This is a good question about formatting, and the formatting rules listed here seem good to follow: Hearthstone_Wiki_talk:Community_portal#Formatting. Aegonostic (talk) 23:59, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. Quater (discuss) 13:16, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

Card data categories on card articles[]

Why do we add Category:Upcoming card data to pages like Emeris? Shouldn't this category be on Data:Cards/Emeriss(89370)? This is added automatically through Template:Card infobox, and I believe it is this part specifically:

{{#if:{{{category|}}} |{{#lstmap:{{{category}}}|,|@@@@|[[Category:@@@@ cards]][[Category:@@@@ card data]]|}} |[[Category:Cards]][[Category:Card data]] }}

Really, we should have a parameter in Template:Card data that is if |set is "The Witchwood" (or whatever the upcoming set at the time happens to be), it should add the data category to the data page and add Category:Upcoming cards to the article. Quater (discuss) 07:39, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

The "Card data" categories are for the specific pages that either set the actual data for each card to properties or Cargo tables that are invisibly behind templates like {{Custom card table}}. That did used to be the pages in the Data namespace, but as things evolved on the wiki, it became necessary to merge information supplied from the data imports (on the pages using {{Card data}}) with information supplied by editors to {{Card infobox}}. Having the actual property set split between two pages was incredibly awkward, but we still needed the separate data pages to avoid data imports just rolling over and overwriting the work of editors.
My solution was to use the data pages as invisible templates and have all the work done in Card infobox, so yes, the pages using that template are the data source for the combined information, and so they belong in Category:Card data and others for templates like {{Cards}} and such to find them. The purpose of having both categories like Category:Cards and categories like Category:Card data is because they have different purposes: the former are meant to serve as regular categories for wiki editors to use and organize in the way that makes most sense on a human level, and the latter are there to make sure the templates that rely on the data aren't accidentally broken by changes in the former.
tl;dr: don't touch the "card data" categories unless you want to break things. But you can safely change "cards" categories to whatever makes sense to editors, and that's why they're separate. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 18:32, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

Card infobox breaks easily[]

I was in the process of making Template:Confused and noticed that when placed on LegacyTracking, the infobox broke. I took to the Gamepedia Slack server and User:Majr informed me that the issues were the result of the categories being at the top rather than at the bottom. I didn't want to think I had made a broken template with no ways to fix it, so I tried Template:For, a longstanding template used all over the wiki. Low and behold, it broke the infobox too. I have very limited template knowledge, but I think it'd be in the best interests to update Template:Card infobox so that it doesn't break when a disambiguation-related template is placed above it. Cheers, Quater (discuss) 12:16, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Hmmm, that's an interesting "feature" of category links. Anyway, swapped it around, and it seems to work fine now. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 21:29, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

"Template:List Cards/Upcoming" seems broken?[]

Right now, the query resulting from "Template:List cards/Section", which provides the table for "Template:List cards/Upcoming", is wrong. Kobolds & Catacombs cards such as Kobolds & CatacombsGrumble, Worldshaker, Kobolds & CatacombsLynessa Sunsorrow, and Kobolds & CatacombsRhok'delar are listed in the template article: Template:List_cards/Upcoming. But it's very weird that just a select few of these Kobolds & Catacombs cards are showing up in the table and not more. I don't know what's going on, I would appreciate some help.

See also this discussion page: Template_talk:List_cards/Upcoming#Shouldn.27t_the_K.26C_cards_have_been_deleted.3F. This was reported as early as January. Aegonostic (talk) 06:00, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

If anyone can fix and find out how to remove these seven Kobolds & Catacombs cards in this template Template:List cards/Upcoming, please, feel free, and cure my OCD. The cards just seem to be stuck in their state of being "Upcoming", and other bad things. I'll post the generated wikitable here for your visual entertainment. Aegonostic (talk) 03:50, 25 May 2018 (UTC)


Usually a null edit of the offending card pages is enough. For some reason, it took a delete/restore of those pages to fix them this time, and I'm not sure why. Hopefully, once that's switched to Cargo, this won't be that bad in the future. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 07:32, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
God bless. (I also tried null editing as well) Aegonostic (talk) 17:18, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

There seems to be a stability bug with this, since The WitchwoodWarpath is now showing up as being "Upcoming" in the template, even though it appears that there is no mention of categorizing Warpath as "Upcoming" in its article page nor in its datapage.

Last month I tried categorizing The WitchwoodWarpath as "Upcoming" as a test, but I quickly reverted it. But somehow the server still remembers the old status of Warpath, for some reason. I hope this issue gets resolved somehow. Aegonostic (talk) 21:24, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

I deleted and restored it to resolve this for now. Cargo is still a fairly new extension, so hopefully these kinds of issues will be ironed out over time. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 21:58, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Multiple entries into a single parameter[]

Hey all, need a little wiki help here. I'm trying to adjust Data:Cards/Nightmare_Amalgam(89353) so that the parameter "all" is pulled when any query searches for Beasts, Dragons, etc. Is this something that should be edited into the "All" value, or directly into Nightmare Amalgam's value? It'd probably be best to add it to the All value, but I don't know how I'd do that. It'd be possible to adjust all queries searching for any subtype to also include "All", but that puts too much burden on each individual query when it should be baked into the "All" value. Any idea how we can adjust this? Hikarigami (talk) 17:09, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Actually, I just looked into things: the "ability" parameter does accept multiple values. For example, LegacyAbomination's ability is written as "Deathrattle, Taunt", and both are rendered separately in his data. However, for subtype if you try to do "All, Dragon" then rather than producing two subtypes, it instead thinks that's one subtype named "All, Dragon". Can we code the subtype parameter to accept multiple entries like we do with ability? Hikarigami (talk) 17:16, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

How many cards do we expect to need this? Because, at first glance, it looks like a one-off situation to me, and I'm reluctant to make a change this significant to the data structure for just a single card, or even a very small number. In Semantic MediaWiki, this isn't a very big change, but we'll be switching to Cargo soon and the tables for that transition are already in place. (I may be completing the transition this week. I've just been waiting for a gap large enough in the schedule to do it.) This change would require completely regenerating the Cards table just to make subtype a List of String rather than just a String, so if this is a rare case, I don't think it's worth it.
I think multiple values is coming at it from the wrong side anyway. It's already possible to just specify subtype=All{{!}}{{!}}Dragon on templates like {{Custom card table}} as the templates are currently written. I could just add All to be added as a default extra whenever subtype gets a value, which seems easier if All is the one special case. (But if we do have a lot of cards with multiple subtypes, then I'd reconsider.) oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 09:00, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
I feel like putting the burden on each individual table to request "All" in addition to the main subtype is the wrong way to go about this. Also, I'm not 100% knowledgeable on how this works, but if you can allow multiple values for the Ability parameter, I can't imagine it being too difficult to adjust the Subtype parameter to allow for multiple valuables as well. This also just feels like generally good future-proofing; we might not get another "All" in the future, but we might end up getting a Dragon-Murloc, or a Pirate-Beast. Hikarigami (talk) 17:28, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
What I'm suggesting requires adding three letters and one or two symbols to about five to seven templates.
I'm resistant in part because to do what you suggest requires:
  1. Updating {{Card infobox}} to re-declare subtype as a list.
  2. Regenerating the Cargo table from scratch, which empties it.
  3. Running a bot resave over all of the card pages to repopulate the table because it takes forever on its own.
  4. Updating those five to seven templates to query subtype as a list rather than a string.
  5. Deciding how to handle multiple subtypes for a card in the tables so that a list of subtypes doesn't muck up the layout.
  6. Updating all the table row templates that show subtypes accordingly.
  7. And the importer itself might need an update for this. That's out of my hands.
And it's also an extra table join in the database queries that select by subtype that's completely pointless for 3,477 of 3,478 cards. Even though the setup here isn't exactly simple, Hearthstone Wiki avoided the serious performance issues that other Semantic MediaWIki-using wikis on our network have experienced. At least, so far. Since feature bloat has a habit of catching up with wikis eventually and without much if any warning, I'm not keen on enhancements that are mostly just speculative. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 22:35, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
Then for now we could try just adding All cards to queries that call for other subtypes, but you still might run into the issue of subtypes overlapping each other down the line.Hikarigami (talk) 22:37, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

"How to get" templates missing?[]

The "How to get" templates seem to be missing for GVG and others. See Talk:Dragonfire Potion. Seems to be a site-wide issue where the template for the card set doesn't exist. Though the template {{How to get/Naxxramas}} exists, GVG and other sets don't seem to appear to exist. Were they inadvertently deleted? Aegonostic (talk) 22:17, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

All that appears in the deletion log for Template:How to get is here. Beyond that, I don't know. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 23:23, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the speedy reply, seems I fixed it, the problem laid therein: Template:How to get/Expert. Basically, there needed to be two switch cases, so that Standard and Wild cards could be transcluded in an appropriate manner to card pages. Though using something different could be more robust, instead of having to input the card set names twice in two switch case locations. Aegonostic (talk) 00:03, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Friendly notice of card interactions needing testing[]

Friendly reminder to everyone that there are "statements and card interactions that need citations" in card pages, so if you happen to come across such interactions/situations in the game, or if you have the cards to test them, feel free to chip in and update those articles, thanks! Aegonostic (talk) 04:40, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

Rastakhan's Rumble![]

It's official, the tenth expansion is the troll-themed Rastakhan's Rumble. New keyword is "Overkill" (takes effect if you deal extra damage while killing a minion), legendary Loa minions, new shaman hero, more! I added a section to Expansion but it has redlinks we need to fill in... Asolovay (talk) 19:48, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Tooltips will temporary stop showing after the MediaWiki upgrade[]

A change in MediaWiki 1.31 breaks the version of TippingOver presently installed on Gamepedia. A new version should be rolled out soon after the upgrade (currently expected to happen tomorrow) which is expected to fix the problem. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 04:48, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Fandom-Gamepedia (wikia.com - gamepedia.com) merge[]

I hope the Fandom-Gamepedia merge will not affect this site very much. I'm not super fond of Fandom's general wiki layout, but they have very active user bases for many games. Aegonostic (talk) 03:26, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

The Wowpedia community has started discussing the repercussions of this, as well as the possibility of forking off to a different site to get away from Fandom; see Forum:Gamepedia and Fandom. It could be worth a read for anyone interested since there's been some off-hand talk about involving the Hearthstone wiki and the other Blizzard wikis in such a move, but of course it would all depend on what each individual wiki community would prefer. --DeludedTroll (talk) 12:00, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
I feel like I should wait before commenting anything on this, thanks for the info! It was really interesting to read what other people thought about Fandom buying out Curse, and the stigma behind it. I just hope nothing drastically bad happens to this wiki, the layout of this wiki is already good as is. I will wait to see what happens. Aegonostic (talk) 22:31, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

As of the time of this writing, I like how every gaming related wiki is moving onto gamepedia.com, that's what I loved to envision happen. It's definitely better this way, fandom is just too much bloat, and the domain name "gamepedia" is just a super brand. Aegonostic (talk) 06:24, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

HearthPwn and HearthStation[]

Recently some of you may have noticed that HearthPwn is being unusually slow in updating their database for Rise of Shadows, which naturally creates an issue for this wiki since we rely on HearthPwn for card IDs and images and link to them in all of our card infoboxes. The reason for this seems to be that the people who run HearthPwn are apparently planning to move away from Curse in favor of a new site called HearthStation; in all of the new card discussion threads on the HearthPwn forums, they link to the HearthStation versions of the cards instead of ones on their own database (see this thread, for example).

Also, these two threads:

I'm not sure what the best way to handle this on our end is. I'm not sure if there's any policy or something of the sort preventing us from changing all of our HearthPwn card links to HearthStation ones; Gamepedia and HearthPwn are both owned by Curse, but Wowpedia (for example) has plenty of links to Wowhead, a site that has nothing to do with Curse as far as I know. However, I'm not sure if we would even want to update our links; changing all the links on card data pages would be a massive undertaking that would likely have to be done by a bot, but it seems like it wouldn't be too easy to do that either since HearthStation's database seems to use completely different card IDs from HearthPwn's. For example, Goblins vs GnomesTree of Life has an ID of 12270 on HearthPwn, but 2520 on HearthStation.

I'm thinking the best way to solve this would be to simply let all existing HearthPwn links on the site remain as they are, but just use HearthStation links for new cards going forward (we could also go back and add HearthStation links to old cards in addition to the old HearthPwn links), but I'm not sure whether that would cause its own issues or not. In any case, we'd have to update the card infobox template to reflect this. --DeludedTroll (talk) 09:12, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

How to tag out of date pages?[]

Is there a preferred way to tag pages that are out of date? For example, the Midrange Paladin deck page hasn't been updated for Year of the Dragon -- many of the "core cards" listed are now in Wild format. What's the best way to call out pages like that? Asolovay (talk) 23:47, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

I'd say just create a new template, or just a category, it would be much easier to update. Cactusisawesome (talk) 23:59, 16 April 2019 (UTC)
Okay, thanks! Wasn't sure what the protocol was. I'll create a new template for "needs update to the current Standard Year" and apply it to a few pages; if I do it wrong, at least it'll be easy to find the pages that need to be fixed. 😉 Asolovay (talk) 17:15, 17 April 2019 (UTC)
Okay -- I created a {{page out of date standard year}} template, and a corresponding Category:Pages outdated for current standard year category. (I used the verbose template name to keep open the option of a more-general "page out of date" template for outdated pages in general, as opposed to ones that specifically need to be updated for the standard year.) Not 100% sure I did it right, but it's a start? Anyway, I applied the template to Midrange Paladin as a test. Asolovay (talk) 22:35, 17 April 2019 (UTC)
I think making a {{page out of date}} template is a good idea too. The only "out of date" template that exists right now is {{Image out of date}}. Also see: Category:Wiki_maintenance. Aegonostic (talk) 23:09, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

HearthPwn shutting down[]

Well, I was wrong on a few points about what I posted above, but it's official now: HearthPwn will close down on June 28, and while the existing content on the site will remain available, no new content will be added. Some of the people running HearthPwn will move over to Out of Cards (formerly HearthStation) instead.

This again raises the question of how we should handle this on our end since we've relied on HearthPwn for almost all card data. Like I wrote above, it seems to me the easiest way would be to just keep any existing HearthPwn links as they are (since the content on that site won't change, at least for the time being), but link to Out of Cards or some other site for new cards going forward, but I'm not sure if there would be any complications with that. Either way, I don't feel like I personally have the technical expertise necessary to update the card data and infobox templates to reflect this if it's what we end up doing. --DeludedTroll (talk) 18:58, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

The biggest problem in my mind is the numbering system in card data as that is purely from Hearthpwn, if they retain the numbering system then we could just figure out a new template for the coming cards. If not, then we'd have to number them directly on the wiki. Cactusisawesome (talk) 23:00, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
Feels really bad for Hearthpwn, but at least this site (subdomain actually) will still be running. Regarding the numbering issue, the new site https://outof.cards seems to maintain Hearthpwn's original numbering scheme, so we can probably link to their website for external card links ( the |link= code ) with a slight modification to the {{Card infobox}} template. Their site, however, may not be as visually helpful as Hearthpwn was in helping the wiki out, or their site may eventually fall into disuse, but hopefully not.
We might consider being more standalone with our card data / numbering system in the future by just using the Hearthstone database IDs (dbfids) from HearthstoneJSON.com which are pulled directly from the game. (These ids would probably just apply to new cards from here on out). But I still think sticking with outof.cards may be the right decision.
From this source, [1], if Curse/Fandom really is focusing more effort on improving their wikis, maybe they will help us create an "ongoing database of cards with the original Hearthpwn numbering system" just for this wiki, without relying on an external site like outof.cards. This would work only if one of the old Hearthpwn admins helps, but again, I think it's just best to stick with outof.cards for now.
Hopefully outof.cards maintains a database of boss cards and mission cards, and all non-collectible cards. This is probably the issue that I see as being the worst, that we no longer have easy access to card images for new cards introduced in new Tavern Brawls and Missions and in the Arena, etc. (with the same Hearthpwn numbering system). Hopefully they keep up to date with all the cards that are not collectible cards in Hearthstone. Aegonostic (talk) 23:43, 30 May 2019 (UTC)
Update: HearthPwn got bought by another company, but the original site staff will still be leaving for Out of Cards as originally announced.
But in other news, Blizzard finally launched an official card database of their own on the Hearthstone site.
Overall, I'm not sure what to make of all this. The official card gallery is definitely nice, but it probably won't be too helpful for us since it only includes collectible cards. I'm thinking that as far as external links go, we could always start linking to multiple different sites in the card infoboxes, like the official gallery (for collectible cards), HearthPwn, Out of Cards, etc. instead of picking only one. However, that obviously doesn't solve the main problem of where we should import card data from, particularly for non-collectible and Mission/Brawl ones. DeludedTroll (talk) 19:18, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
If HearthPwn runs as is with the new admins, then we can always keep importing from HearthPwn, otherwise we'd have to rely on outof.cards. There aren't many options here, we might even import from both, but that's probably not necessary. My own opinion is that we keep importing from HearthPwn as long as they keep doing the same thing as the old admins. Cactusisawesome (talk) 22:48, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

Editing guidelines?[]

Recently I was trying to find an editing guide for Hearthstone Wiki. I looked around and found only Hearthstone Wiki:Editor's Handbook and Help:Style guide. I found the content to be rather separated in places a new editor in need of these pages would not be able to easily find. My suggestion is that we merge the two pages (and any more that I'm unaware of) and put it on the main page or the community portal.

In addition, I also believe that currently, the style guide either needs to be strictly followed, or changed to conform to what the editors are actually doing. I propose some changes to the style guide. This also a very late addition to what was talked about at the beginning of the page.

  • Classes are capitalized when referred to as the 10 classes in Hearthstone, but are not capitalized when refered to as classes in lore, or in the case of Rogue, an adjective. For example, "Mage, Warlock, and Priest are the three classes which make up the Kabal." but "Dalaran is home to some of Azeroth's best mages."
    • This is because classes are referred to with capitalization in game, as can be seen from The Grand TournamentGrand Crusader, and in the case of Rogue, can be very confusing.
  • Tribes are capitalized when referred to as the in-game tribes, but are not capitalized lore-wise. For example, "One of the best ways to defeat the Lich King is to use Murlocs." but "Sir Finley is a murloc part of the League of Explorers."
  • All deck names are capitalized, no matter what. For example, "Odd Warrior is a subtype to Control Warrior."
    • This is because deck names are usually linked, and that they are all named as proper nouns.

Some additions I'd like to make:

  • Capitalize constructed game formats, for example, "The game formats, Standard and Wild, were added with Whispers of the Old Gods." but "A standard game of Hearthstone usually involves a variety of decision making and player interaction."
    • This is because the words "standard" and "wild" have their own unique meanings outside of the game formats, and making this change can improve readability in articles in which both meanings of the words are used.
  • Avoid using second person pronouns in strategy sections. For example, "Assassinate is most effective when used on a minion with high stats." instead of "You should prioritize using Assassinate on a minion with high stats."
    • Many strategy sections write from a third person perspective, but some refer directly to the reader, which is generally not desirable in a wiki setting.
  • Refer to cards without using "the", unless it's in the name, such as Knights of the Frozen ThroneThe Lich King. For example, "Tar Creeper is a powerful minion with Taunt." instead of "The Tar Creeper is a powerful minion with Taunt."
    • Using "the" to refer to cards is redundant and unpopular within Hearthstone Wiki.
    • Use "the", however, when referring to a specific minion, such as "The Ragnaros summoned from Jan'alai"
  • Always refer to the in-game classes and deck types as singular nouns. For example, "Eater of Secrets is an effective card against Secret Mage." instead of "Eater of Secrets is an effective card against Secret Mages."
    • Refer to the deck, and not the players behind the decks.
  • Use more universal terms, instead of using a term that needs explanation, then linking it to the page explaining the term. For example, "King Krush is usually the most effective when it attacks the enemy hero" instead of "King Krush is usually the most effective when it goes face."
    • To a reader who is less familiar with common Hearthstone terms, explaining things in a way that reduces the need to hop between pages improves readability.

Cactusisawesome (talk) 14:26, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

I've recently had questions about style myself, such as when to capitalize "health" and "murloc" and such, and I need a refresher. The last discussion I remember seeing about formatting rules is here (2 years ago): Hearthstone_Wiki_talk:Community_portal#Formatting. I'm no aficionado on styling, but your rules seem good to follow. However, for the note you make on strategy sections, I would argue that it is appropriate for that section to use second-person pronouns (e.g. "you"), since most of the time it is directing the reader to do things, and I see it all the time in strategy sections and I think it is appropriate to use. Aegonostic (talk) 18:21, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
Totally agree with Aegonostic on this part, but I think that if 2nd person pronouns are commonly used, they should always be used. Regarding the problem with terms such as "Health", "Attack", and "Armor", I think that they should not be capitalized, as they are not proper nouns in any way and are usually not capitalized in the wiki. These terms are capitalized in game though. These terms are also easier to distinguish from their other meanings. Cactusisawesome (talk) 11:21, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Card infobox for Battlegrounds[]

moved here from Hearthstone Wiki:Admin noticeboard

I'm not sure what to do with the Battlegrounds cards. What I've found so far is that, in this mode, old cards like LegacyVoidwalker are still used and add a new feature, which is Tier. Triple version of these cards are separated though.

Do you have any idea or plan for Template:Card infobox featuring Battlegrounds? This is my idea; however I think it's up to you to decide the outcome. Use25 (talk) 16:18, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

I think it might be best to get opinions on Project talk:Community portal before I do anything with the template. This is also going to be much easier if we don't need to display this information in the automated tables or lists. If we do, I'll need to plan on doing it when the wiki is less busy as those will likely be disrupted for hours after I make the changes. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 23:47, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
So whatever we end up doing, I feel like there should be two things: (1) hovercards for Battlegrounds card wikilinks should display the Battlegrounds card image and not the normal image (maybe, not sure), and (2) a template like {{Card}} should display the Battlegrounds card image when specified. The official site lists these cards as being from the set "Battlegrounds".
Some other notes are that the hidden mana cost of Battlegrounds cards is still relevant for things like The Grand TournamentEffigy, and also cards like the token Tier 1 The Boomsday ProjectRobosaur from The Boomsday ProjectMechano-Egg still costs 8 mana, so these are things to keep in mind, alongside the fact that there are also the golden versions of Battlegrounds cards. I feel like a separate card infobox for these Battlegrounds cards, golden cards, and token cards is a good idea, separating them from their collectible normal version article page, so I would feel like the appropriate thing is to make separate pages for these Battleground cards.
Of course, as well, these Battlegrounds cards should not appear in any Standard format / Wild format card list or table.
These are just my opinions though, I would like more people to chime in on whether these cards deserve separate pages. Aegonostic (talk) 00:43, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
We can create pages like Voidwalker (Battlegrounds) and Annihilan Battlemaster (Battlegrounds) for every Battlegrounds card, and refer to the normal card image (if there is one) in a section like "Normal version" or "Collectible version". Since Battlegrounds cards are so different, they should have their own article. Aegonostic (talk) 23:44, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
Let's do the card infobox idea, to get the ball rolling. We can create a "Battlegrounds" section within the article as well just for Battlegrounds-related things. Aegonostic (talk) 02:46, 25 November 2019 (UTC)
I'm confused. You were suggesting alternatives that don't seem to require any Card Infobox changes. Is this an about face? Because there's absolutely no way I can have Battlegrounds card appear on hover if they use the same page. Unless you don't want to display normal card images anymore, that is. It's all one, all the other, or nothing on that point. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 02:22, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
Just to clarify, I don't want to do this if we aren't sure, not just because Card Infobox is so heavily used, but if I have to add a column for Battlegrounds card images to the Cards table so you could use that in {{Cards}} somehow, the bot runs to get everything in order after such an update can take about a day now. So unless we're pretty sure, I'd like to default to the less/no change option because it could double the disruption if we change our mind after doing this. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 02:33, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
My first preference was to make separate pages, because it made sure that hovercards were correct and it was a simpler option. But since no one was discussing, I assumed my preference was bad because it does separate two similar things (Battlegrounds minions and tokens and triple versions and added tier label, vs the normal versions of minions and tokens), so I opened up a little to the suggested option of the new card infobox with <tabber> functionality, which doesn't seem bad since it keeps everything in one page, but it would lose the hovercard ability, and you would still need to document Battlegrounds things in a Battlegrounds section, and it does require substantial change to the card infobox. There might be a third option of just adding in a "Battlegrounds" section without making any changes to the card infobox and listing all the Battlegrounds cards and things there, within the normal version card article, but then again you lose the hovercard ability.
I personally feel like making new articles for the Battlegrounds minions, it feels the simplest to me, just adding in a "Tier" parameter and you get to keep the correct hovercard, and you get to categorize the card in a set called "Battlegrounds" for easy tables and card lists and such. Aegonostic (talk) 11:31, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
I had advised moving the discussion here since this is not an admin issue (other than an admin having to make changes to the Cards table) and was hoping to get more opinions before doing anything; I doubt the admin noticeboard is watched as heavily by the community and using it could discourage discussion anyway. Two participants proposing different approaches is kind of the opposite of consensus, and since it is very much best to try to make any such changes in one go, I'm very reluctant to proceed on a proposal that hasn't gotten any (true) support yet.
I do prefer the separate page approach. It's not just because it's less work for me or less disruption to the wiki overall, but separate pages preserve flexibility you wouldn't have if Battlegrounds and normal cards are sharing the same rows in the Cards table that {{Custom card table}} and {{Cards}} draw from. It retains the ability to use different tags and categories and future-proofs in case Blizzard ever ends up giving a Battlegrounds different stats or abilities over the other card (I've had too much experience to ever say never on this kind of thing), so it's less likely to need yet another disruptive change in the future. I also need to know if we need to support tier in the Cards table, either because we want to display it in tables or because we want to look up cards by tier.
The one thing from the proposal I do like is to add Tabber support in for cards that have gold images. I could likely make that change over the weekend if there's agreement. But as to the rest of Use25's proposal, I think it very likely we'd end up with a need to reverse it in the future when it'd be much more of a chore for the community to do so. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 22:12, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
When you say tabber support for gold images, do you mean the first tab displays all the normal non-golden cards and tokens, and the second tab displays all the golden cards and golden tokens (for a Battlegrounds separate page), or are you referring to what Use25 proposed here, with the normal non-golden and golden in the first tab, and the battlegrounds non-golden and golden in the second tab?
Regarding the support for "Tier" in the cards table, if it's not too much of a performance drain, I feel like it should be included because it is an important feature of a Battlegrounds card, albeit limited to the Battlegrounds mode, which is currently small, very new, and just up-and-coming. I feel like it could be used in tables in the future, but for sure it should be included in the card infobox. For example, a use in a table or a list could be all Demons and Demon-related cards in Tier 3. But these are somewhat small use-cases, and we don't know how the Hearthstone team is going to expand the card library for Battlegrounds. As an aside note, we might think about making a Menagerie and Menagerie-related page. Aegonostic (talk) 02:34, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
I just mean a normal and gold tab instead of having the two images both displayed at once. Being their own page, Battleground card images would have their own infobox. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 16:51, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
Ok sounds good. Aegonostic (talk) 23:50, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
Sorry that I had abandoned my topic for many days.
I agree with you. I'm afraid that they might add more game modes in the future like Battlegrounds, so separated pages are a better solution. We might even need to create another infobox specifically for Battlegrounds. I also agree that tabbers could be used with regular and gold images instead, but IMO, it's not really necessary though. What it displays currently is fine to me.
When you mention separated pages, I just thought of something like tabviews (like Dota 2 Gamepedia), each tab can be presented as a mode page. It can help preventing laggy performance too.
Use25 (talk) 03:35, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
I don't think we'll need another infobox for them. Right now, tier seems to be the only difference, and even if others crop up, there's a pretty good chance Card infobox can be updated to support them unless they become wholly different or something. Battlegrounds cards will need to use |category=Battlegrounds or |categoryname=Battlegrounds cards or something similar to keep them out of the ordinary card lists, though. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 16:51, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
I'm sure Tier and Gold are the only new currencies we have in Battlegrounds. I think you can do something to replace Mana with either of them. I have already prepared the icons for these, if you want to use. Also, each minion also have their separated triple version, so... do those triple minions really need a separated page too? I've seen Podstail12 trying to merge both regular and triple versions into a page and infobox. Use25 (talk) 18:43, 30 November 2019 (UTC)
I also have a related question. Is there a possible way to create a hovercard pop-up function specifically for golden cards, such as golden Battlegrounds minions, when the golden card is being displayed on the same page as the non-golden card page? This would be helpful, because Battlegrounds is different from regular Hearthstone in that the golden cards (triple cards) actually have different functionality from their non-golden versions.
So, in short, is there a possible way to modify (1) wikilink hovers and (2) {{Card}} functionality to be able to show the corresponding golden card (triple card) images, even if they are being used and displayed on the same page as the non-golden card page? For example, I want to complete this table (just for showing purposes):
Minions
Non-golden (non-triple) Golden (triple)
Voidwalker (<insert golden version card art pop-up link/wikilink/template here if possible?>)
Mama Bear (<insert golden version card art pop-up link/wikilink/template here if possible?>)
Primalfin Lookout (<insert golden version card art pop-up link/wikilink/template here if possible?>)
Is it impossible unless golden Battlegrounds cards have their own separate page? Aegonostic (talk) 05:39, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
At a glance, the only thing that comes to mind is adding a per-card field into the Cards table that would identify which version should be preferred to display. In the case of tooltips, you could only display the version that flag identifies. There wouldn't be a way to display the other card in some cases. For the cards template, it would be possible to add some parameters to override that flag, but the options then would be only gold or only normal (with the exception of falling back to normal for cards that have no gold version at all).
So, right now, it looks like I'll be adding three fields: one for tier, one for gold cost, and one for which card to show. If this is right, I'd like to try to do this tonight or tomorrow before we start upgrading MediaWiki to 1.33 (currently planned for Tuesday). oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 10:45, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── I created a sample table of what I want to see (maybe):

Minions
Savannah Highmane (triple)
Mama Bear (<wikilink pop-up here for triple version>)
etc.

So each wikilink when you hover over them displays the correct card image. A table of exclusively triple cards can be created if this is possible. (I'm not able to see the wikilink hover pop-ups yet but maybe a purge might help) I'm not sure if what you're saying is going to work out for creating such a table, it feels like what you're saying is the flag is embedded as part of the cards table and is unable to be changed on a per-wikilink basis, so it is going to always either be the normal version or the triple version, and never be up to user choice when creating the wikilink.

Regarding the addition of the field "Tier" in the entire cards table, I think it is important for specifically Battlegrounds but not for anything outside of Battlegrounds, but I think it should be added. Regarding the addition of the field "Gold cost", each Battlegrounds minion costs an equal amount (3 gold), so I'm not sure if that field is a good idea, unless there's something I'm missing. Aegonostic (talk) 21:34, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Tooltips aren't enabled in the talk namespaces, you'd have to put that on a sandbox page or something. But, yes, if you have separate pages for normal and gold Battlegrounds cards, it's going to work fine. If you want normal and gold on the same page but want to be able to choose which image to show, you'd have to get more creative. One possibility is to link through redirects for the gold versions, as TippingOver does make it possible to distinguish links to redirects from links to normal pages now; we'd need a naming convention I could test for. The other is to create a Gold section (or some other consistent name) on the pages and link to the anchor when you want to show the gold version, as in [[Example card#Gold]]. There are no other possibilities for signalling TippingOver to treat one link to a specific page differently than other links to that page. I'll try to remember to investigate adding some kind of feature that would allow another way, but those are the options at present. And I'm not sure if using either is a good idea if the card functionality changes between gold and normal, because is it then a good idea for them to share a row in Cards table? Do they have different descriptions or stats presently? Might they in the future? If so, then from the point of view of the current Cards table design, they are better considered different cards than versions of the same card. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 23:56, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
They have different descriptions and stats, so I guess really the best bet is to make separate pages for the golden cards. The only problem that I saw with this is that there is a "has_gold" parameter in a datapage, and if that is set to False, it doesn't change anything to the parameter "gold_image", which gets set automatically for example as "Savannah Highmane (Battlegrounds) Gold Gold", see here: Data:Cards/Savannah Highmane (Battlegrounds) Gold. So if for example Savannah Highmane (Battlegrounds) Gold exists as a page (it does currently but let's say it didn't exist yet), then in its card table, there is a reference to a gold version of the gold card which doesn't exist. Or maybe this is a small problem, because that parameter doesn't really get used in any way. Aegonostic (talk) 02:48, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
Actually we can consider that triple gold version as "regular version". For example, in case of Voidwalker, I will create a data page called Data:Cards/Voidwalker(340) Battlegrounds, with the following parameters:
|image = Voidwalker(340) Battlegrounds <!-- Image with regular version -->
|has_gold = false
Then, I will create a data page for triple golden version of Voidwalker, Hearthpwn's code is 127524, so the name will be Data:Cards/Voidwalker(127524) Battlegrounds. The parameters have the similar value of that data page above:
|image = Voidwalker(137524) Battlegrounds <!-- Image with golden version -->
|has_gold = false
In fact, their triple versions in Battlegrounds are completely separated and unique. Moreover, there is no way we can get golden version of Voidwalker(340) and regular version of Voidwalker(137524) in actual gameplay, so we don't really need to use has_gold parameter. Putting both versions in the infobox may cause confusion, IMO. Use25 (talk) 15:48, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
I tried blanking out the parameter "has_gold", but that didn't stop the system from automatically including its own "gold_image" parameter. Aside from that small problem, I like what you're suggesting about creating all the datapages you're suggesting. I think it should be done. However, I think it's safe to keep the golden image below the non-golden image because when a reader goes and looks at the non-golden Battlegrounds minion page (for example Voidwalker (Battlegrounds), they probably expect to see both the non-golden and the golden versions of the minion in the card infobox. But I can leave it to your preference if you would like to keep the golden image in the card infobox or not. I believe you wanted the golden minion to be shown in a section within the article, which is nearly the same thing. Aegonostic (talk) 18:18, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
The small problem is no problem at all. If has_gold is false, Card infobox is going to ignore gold_image, no matter what Card data sends in or anything else sends in. So, since it sounds like we're keeping the regular and gold versions completely separate (at least for the time being), I'm just going to add tier for now. Displaying both card images in the infobox for the battlegrounds is going to be a bit different, and I'll tackle that after I'm done with any upgrade madness I'll need to attend to this week.
Herp derp. So, I got confused. The upgrade starts next week Tuesday, so instead, I'll aim for getting the whole package up all at once by Thursday morning so that I can get the bot running getting the Cards table updated. If there are no objections, the current plan would be something like this:
tier numeric parameter added to Card infobox and Card data with a new tier field in the Cards table.
Maybe a bg_tyoe text parameter added to Card infobox and Card data with a new bg_type field in the Cards table. Left blank for non-Battlegrounds cards and regular and gold for the rest. (This will be to make it possible to add a feature to Cards, Custom card data, and so on to target only a specific type of Battlegrounds card. (This could be done with tags or hiddentags too, but I'm leaning toward including this as its own field for easier standardization.)
bg_reg_ver and bg_gold_ver added to Card infobox, taking the name of the card page of the other version as appropriate, in order to include a link to the other and look up the image name of the other version of the card. (At the moment, I'm not sure this is worth adding to the Cards table.) oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 06:46, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
I think that sounds good and aligns with what we wrote. So I think the summary is: (1) a non-golden card like Voidwalker(340) Battlegrounds will have a card infobox with the non-golden image (and possibly the golden image right below it) and (2) a golden triple card like Voidwalker(137524) Battlegrounds will have a card infobox with the golden image only. A tier parameter seems good, a bg_type seems good. Aegonostic (talk) 07:17, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
That's seems good, but there is one minor disadvantage. As the stats and effects of golden and non-golden cards are different, it would be more difficult make card lists. I suggest that on top of what Aegonistic said, we should also have an independent infor page for the golden cards. I can't think of an example of a card list where normal and golden cards would be distinguished, but future prooofing is probably better. The golden cards are also separate cards on Hearthpwn. The developers also said that they'd limit the number of battlegrounds cards, so the pages won't take up a lot of space. Something like Voidwalker (Battlegrounds) as the main page, and have Voidwalker (Battlegrounds golden)Cactusisawesome (talk) 15:01, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
I completely agree. They are separated cards, we can do so normally like how we did with Treant and other tokens with same name. Thanks oOeyes and everyone, I'm really looking forward to the change. Use25 (talk) 15:51, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
I agree, so separate pages for all the cards because they are all unique and different. As for the title, I do like Voidwalker (Battlegrounds golden), I was thinking of Voidwalker (Battlegrounds, golden) a few days ago, but whichever feels nicer. Aegonostic (talk) 16:34, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Initial changes to Card data and Card infobox are complete. Card data now supports bg_type and tier. Card infobox supports those as well as bg_reg_ver and bg_gold_ver for adding a link to the other version. The bot is chewing on getting the replacement for the Cards table populated, which is why I'm not bothering to update templates like Cards or Custom card table just yet; they wouldn't work at this time anyway. I was planning on having the infoboxes for battlegrounds cards show the image for the other version if you supplied the correct page name in bg_reg_ver or bg_gold_ver, but apparently there isn't a non-hacky way to automatically select the second tab in Tabber. I regularly use a script that does something very similar, so I'll adapt that soon and then add the code for looking up the other image. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 02:13, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Ok, so I went ahead and did some edits and created the pages for one particular minion, namely Voidwalker. So the pages for Voidwalker (collectible and Battlegrounds) are currently:
I would like to point out that I did not use the Hearthpwn numbering system, because I would prefer it if this wiki was not beholden to the Hearthpwn numbering system, or at least try to make the effort for Battlegrounds. Hearthpwn is a very valuable resource for all our card images and pictures, but I haven't been the biggest fan of using their card numbering system because what if Hearthpwn shuts down sometime in the future (it almost happened already) and we have to rely on another site for card images? I would like to hear what you guys think though.
Back to the Battlegrounds card pages, I think the card infobox looks pretty good, but I would like the addition of interlinking the three card pages that I mentioned above (somehow) in the card infobox. For example, being on Voidwalker (Battlegrounds), I should be able to somehow view the card image for the (3) golden Battlegrounds version, and possibly also the (1) normal collectible non-golden version (this one I'm not too sure about). Aegonostic (talk) 22:08, 7 December 2019 (UTC)
That's what the bg_reg_ver and bg_gold_ver are for. The gold/regular image lookup isn't set up yet due to the Tabber issue (and the fact that I had a wiki project due Friday, so this is the first chance I've had to come back to this). I've made the appropriate adjustments so that the existing links work as intended, though if we're going to add links to the non-Battlegrounds versions, I'll probably move those links closer to the bottom. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 22:42, 7 December 2019 (UTC)
Ok I can see the changes you made, they look great! I would like for those wikilinks to be kept at the top, I think the card infobox looks great for now. I feel like a "See the collectible version" or "See the non-Battlegrounds version" or something similar would look a bit cumbersome, I'm really not sure, but I think it would be beneficial for players who just downloaded Hearthstone to play Battlegrounds to see what this minion that they're playing with is in the normal Hearthstone card game. Aegonostic (talk) 23:02, 7 December 2019 (UTC)
I played around with some other ideas, and I think this has resulted in a nice way to be able to show all the images for a particular card in a compact way. I also tweaked the way the links to other versions of the cards were shown. reg_ver has been added to add the images and link to the non-Battlegrounds version of cards. The templates Cards, Custom card table, and Custom card count are updated to use the new fields. Custom card table will now automatically add new columns when you specify a bg_type that can show Battlegrounds cards. I think there are still other templates I have to hit, but those will have to wait for another day. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 12:55, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
I think the new card infobox looks good. It feels chunky at first glance/use, but I think it's great and should sit for a while to let everyone get used to it. I made a slight tweak to the layout code so that it hides "See other versions:" whenever "bg_reg_ver" or "bg_gold_ver" are not specified (so aka for all non-Battlegrounds cards, hopefully). Also, did you make it so that the tooltips for the wikilinks following "See other versions:" would specifically not show the card image upon hover? (for example, see Voidwalker (Battlegrounds)) Also, I don't think the mobile swiping or side-scrolling functionality is working, I tried it on my phone, but you don't have to fix this part because it's really not that important. Aegonostic (talk) 20:35, 8 December 2019 (UTC)
I feel like the card infobox code for Battlegrounds-only-specific cards needs fixing (see Mama Bear), it is missing the "BG Gold" tab. Aegonostic (talk) 04:27, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
Actually might be a caching problem, fyi, similar to what is happening in Alleycat (Battlegrounds) and Mean Streets of GadgetzanAlleycat. Aegonostic (talk) 07:34, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, that's going to be common. It's a difficulty with pages relying on each other in the Cards table. The data the first page you make is looking for won't be there until you create the second page, and Cargo isn't so hot at figuring out it needs to update when that happens. Not on its own at least. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 13:37, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Just wanted to point out that Goblins vs GnomesMicro Machine and Goblins vs GnomesFoe Reaper 4000 are messed up. The battlegrounds card for Micro Machine is showing up in the Goblins vs Gnomes page 24.194.39.185 23:20, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

There are going to be some pages that need their datapages inserted into their article. Anyone can help by inserting the correct datapage number from Hearthpwn. I've fixed the two pages that had their datapage missing. Aegonostic (talk) 01:27, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Potential problems down the line with naming of Battlegrounds heroes and minions[]

There's a problem I think I see, with naming of pages. So for example, if Edwin VanCleef (Battlegrounds) is created as a hero page, and then an Edwin Vancleef minion is introduced into Battlegrounds, then we would have to name this new card something like Edwin VanCleef (Battlegrounds, minion). I think it might be better to start out with Edwin VanCleef (Battlegrounds, hero) for the hero card, and then if the minion is ever created for the game mode, then we can create Edwin VanCleef (Battlegrounds) safely for the minion page, and then Edwin VanCleef (Battlegrounds, golden) for the golden minion page. Aegonostic (talk) 00:34, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Hearthpwn numbering system or no?[]

I pulled this from one of my posts above, to make this its own section:

When creating the datapages for Battlegrounds, I wanted to point out that I did not use the Hearthpwn numbering system. I would prefer it if this wiki was not beholden to the Hearthpwn numbering system, or at least try to make the effort for Battlegrounds. Hearthpwn is a very valuable resource for all our card images and pictures, but I haven't been the biggest fan of using their card numbering system because what if Hearthpwn shuts down sometime in the future (it almost happened already) and we have to rely on another site for card images? I would like to hear what you guys think though.

So, in short, should we continue using the Hearthpwn numbering system for Battlegrounds, for example Data:Cards/Voidwalker(340), like we always have? Or should we consider datapages like these Data:Cards/Voidwalker (Battlegrounds) and Data:Cards/Voidwalker (Battlegrounds, golden) to avoid using the Hearthpwn numbering system for Battlegrounds? Aegonostic (talk) 01:55, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

When I was creating my first BG pages I chose BG system for datapages because it made much faster and simplier renaming about one hundred text files than to check heartpwn numbers and take a little longer time to rename the files (I preffered to make all txt files in notepad firstly, then rapidly create sources on this site).
Although mostly I chose the BG system not because of simplicity but because some triple and unpurchasable cards are missing on heartpwn as BG versions, and putting a random number in datapage isn't a good idea. All the missing heartpwn cards I make myself in paint/photoshop, taking the tier/gold border from other cards (some results were slightly clumsy with a little missing or excess pixels). Links on this site under the images of these cards are added formally for uniformity and lead either to non-triple versions of cards or to versions with mana insted of tier. (examples: Dragonspawn Lieutenant (golden), Cave Hydra (Battlegrounds))
In short, I don't know what of these two systems other viewers and editors prefer. I can only say the heartpwn numbering system isn't suitable always due to missing cards there and BG system doesn't affect a working capacity of the pages these datapages are related to.Podstail12 (talk) 12:51, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
For Battlegrounds, I think it's safe to say that we should continue to use the current system we have without the Hearthpwn numbering system, and the current system is working really well, thanks to all the edits everyone has done. I've also experienced missing cards from Hearthpwn, and cards with mana cost instead of tier. For Hearthpwn links, I think they can be an optional thing we can do, just to continue to say that Hearthpwn is where most of our card images come from, but we internally acknowledge that the link might not necessarily link to the correct card (golden, non-golden, etc.). Right now the current system without Hearthpwn numbers for datapages is working well and should work well going forward for Battlegrounds. Aegonostic (talk) 19:18, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Class pages are a mess[]

I happened to be over at the class page for rogue, and it's a mess. there's a mix of outdated information, cards falsely claimed to be class cards, and unhelpful "tips". After seeing this, I checked the other class pages, and they range from decent to awful, with very little consistency in format or detail. I'm a cruddy editor, so could I ask you folks who are better at this than me to take a look at the class pages and perhaps fix them a little? 73.234.93.156 03:43, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

The class pages are quite outdated, but I couldn't find any card falsely cliamed to be class cards. Could you please specify? Cactusisawesome (talk) 07:50, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Battlegrounds herores' page reminder[]

There are pages of Battlegrounds heroes that aren't created yet. Could anyone create these pages? 123.16.63.182 10:08, 5 January 2020 (UTC).

All the heroes should be up. You can check Template:Battlegrounds nav to find the correct links to all the heroes. Cactusisawesome (talk) 01:58, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Keeping Wild Event cards out of queries[]

I was looking up Totem-related cards in Standard, and to my surprise I found Thing from Below. After further investigation, I discovered that every Wild Event card is still showing up in any crawl that searches for Standard cards (Astral Communion shows up as a Standard spell for Druid, etc.).

While I know my way around semantics editing to some degree, I've searched high and low and can't figure out how to update the site logic to have Wild Event cards be classified as non-Standard. They shouldn't be showing up in any crawls whatsoever; if we just mark them as Wild, then both versions of each card (the original and the Event version) will show up in crawls.

Whoever tends to update the code whenever Standard rotations happen, or whoever created the code for Wild Event cards to begin with, can you update the logic so that both Standard and Wild card queries fail to populate any card with Category:Removed cards? Hikarigami (talk) 17:49, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

It feels like the insidious purging problem again. Probably have to get Ooeyes to delete and recreate those Wild Event minion pages. The purging problem has definitely been one of the most frustrating problems on this wiki. Hopefully some developers out there will fix it one day. Aegonostic (talk) 01:07, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
I don't know what happened, but it looks like Thing from Below (Event) is successfully no longer showing up in Totem crawls. However, I still see Astral Communion on Druid's page for Standard Spells. What changed in the interim, and can this change be applied to all Wild Event cards? Hikarigami (talk) 18:33, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Excluding from wiki markup[]

I'm trying to figure out how to exclude certain results from a query. For example, on Rise of ShadowsVereesa Windrunner I want to show all spells that deal damage, EXCEPT Secrets as they won't work with her weapon's effect. How do I exclude something (in this case, the "secret" ability) from a query? Hikarigami (talk) 19:22, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Unfortunately, exclusions require (semi-)manually writing out the where clause rather than letting {{List cards}} do it for you (though the {{Holds}} helper template hides the uglier parts of the syntax). I updated the page with a query that adds a secret exclusion. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 19:00, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Editing tables with class information[]

Currently in tables of cards, all classes are color-coded to match their class except Demon Hunter. Where does one go to edit that information? I'm willing to do the gruntwork of updating Demon Hunter's information to be properly color-coded, I just need to be pointed in the right direction.Hikarigami (talk) 16:56, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

It requires a few edits to the wiki CSS for desktop and mobile, and thus only admins can do it. If you have a specific color in mind, let me know, and I'll make the appropriate additions. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 20:56, 24 April 2020 (UTC)
Never mind. I remembered I could look up an official color. The one listed on WoWpedia is now in use. oOeyes User-OOeyes-Sig 17:02, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
I'm not a huge fan of the purple. Hearthstone is heavily leaning on green for DH's colour, and I'd prefer something closer to the lime they have on the symbols around their minions. Also, Demon Hunters are still missing a class icon next to their name. TheMurlocAggroB (talk) 18:48, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Page Translation.[]

I would love to translate some pages to my native language (Greek). Is that possible? Nerdstasis (talk) 06:08, 19 May 2020 (UTC) 5/19/2020

Yes, the help wiki has some helpful information about that. See https://help.gamepedia.com/Translation_guidelines. Cactusisawesome (talk) 06:40, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, that really helps Nerdstasis (talk) 07:12, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

New icons for Battlegrounds infoboxes[]

I finally have time to extract these icons. Not sure if you guys want to use it though, since Battlegrounds infoboxes' unique stats like Tier and Gold are missing an icon. I have uploaded all 6 Tiers icons, a Star icon and a Coin icon.

What do you think?

https://imgur.com/a/L4RTr6D

Use25 (talk) 02:45, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

I think this can be done with the right modifications to Template:Card infobox/layout (using if statements) and creating the appropriate templates {{Tier1}}, {{Tier2}}, etc, which would be similar to {{Mana}}, {{Armor}}, etc. Aegonostic (talk) 06:50, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

New admins?[]

I'd like to open a discussion about promoting one or two of this wiki's more dedicated editors to admin status. The current admins from the community are either completely or mostly inactive. That's, well, less than ideal for a wiki of this activity level, so it's past time to solicit opinions on who in this community would make the best choices and find out who would be interested. So please feel free to leave your thoughts below. I'd like to pick one or two people by next weekend, but that's not a hard timetable. SBEyes User-OOeyes-Sig 10:07, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

It might help if I clarify a bit. While there is a user administration element to being an admin, I don't see that come up often on the wiki. But currently, the wiki lacks active editors in the community who can update the main page or other protected pages, or handle other routine tasks like page deletions, which is unusual for a wiki this active. If you're regularly editing and interested in having these expanded rights and feel you could handle the rare user issue, please let me know. SBEyes User-OOeyes-Sig 10:56, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
I would definitely like to see someone take care of the main page, in particular any of the top editors. Aegonostic (talk) 17:26, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
I would like to nominate User:TheMurlocAggroB and User:Aegonostic, as they are commonly reviewed indiviual pages. There is also User:Podstail12 who regularly takes cares of Battlegrounds pages, full arts' descriptions, adventure pages and many others. I honestly wanted to nominate myself too, but these days I'm busy and only come here whenever there is a game announcement to initialize the pages so others can follow. If somehow I get the rights, I will try to see if I can manage my routine as much as possible. I also have a moderate experience of MediaWiki and coding, maybe I can help the templates a little bit. Use25 (talk) 04:10, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
I think any of the top editors can be admin. We all edit and contribute in various ways, it's really awesome to see. If I had to pick one person though, it would be User:TheMurlocAggroB since he's been here for a long time and knows the ins and outs of parts of the wiki that I don't even know, and he's been here since the time when User:DeludedTroll and User:Taohinton were very active admins as well. Aegonostic (talk) 06:16, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
Ugh, sorry guys. I must have overlooked these notifications, or maybe this came in when they were being screwy. I see my assumption of this discussion's death was exaggerated. But on the theory of better late than never, though, I'll make offers on the nominee's talk pages, at least to those who haven't already declined an offer. SBEyes (talk) 23:31, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
I want to nominate myself. I have greate experience with wiki edition, I was admin on the Heroes of the Storm Wiki, also I am a really old user, editing for more than 7 years. I really love this wiki and really want to contribute more with it. Senescalzin (talk) 23:37, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
Thanks everyone. Aside from one outstanding offer, I won't be promoting anyone else until further notice because this seems like plenty. Congratulations to your new admins: Senescalzin, TheMurlocAggroB, and Podstail12. SBEyes (talk) 06:41, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
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