While Overwatch players were treated to official news regarding the game’s next hero and Diablo 4 fans saw that game’s first official expansion reveal, it was Hearthstone who quietly had one of the best presentations for any game at this year’s BlizzCon opening ceremony today.
Next year, Hearthstone will celebrate its 10th year, and although Blizzard’s card game has taken a seat on the back burner in recent years, the developers are dedicated to making it more accessible and friendly to returning players.
At BlizzCon, Hearthstone’s lead designer Cora Georgiou promised catch-up mechanics for returning players, including card packs that contain 50 individual cards, as opposed to the usual five. Furthermore, these packs will exclusively contain cards from the last two years, meaning they’re immediately eligible to be used in constructed play.
Last year, Blizzard employed a similar measure, giving players who quit the game at some point in the last few years a welcome-back gift of up to 150 free packs.
Beyond catch-up mechanics, though, Hearthstone will also look to bring players back into the game with a new expansion, Showdown in the Badlands. The expansion will give iconic Hearthstone characters Reno Jackson and Elise Starseeker an “origin story,” according to Georgiou.
Furthermore, the Hearthstone Battlegrounds community received a massive chunk of good news with a new “duos” mode being introduced for Battlegrounds, allowing players to work alongside each other cooperatively in the mode. With these new features and catch-up mechanisms, it’s reasonable to suggest that the Hearthstone team is doing everything in its power to bring players back into the fold as the game makes an attempt to move forward into a new decade.
Hearthstone’s next expansion, Showdown in the Badlands, will launch on Nov. 14, with catch-up mechanics and new game modes rolling out in the near future.
