Hearthpwn

An unusual leak source divulged some minor details about an upcoming expansion for Hearthstone.

The Leak Source

The source of all this is a Voice Actor resume, from the actor Mike Brodie, who's done work in many video games, including the Division 2, Fallout 76, Diablo Immortal, and many more. The resume, pictured below, was leaked and picked up on by various people around the internet, from the Spotlight website, which apparently is the UK's largest casting resource.

As you can see from this small take out of the full resume, pictured below, it shows an abbreviation "HSTNE: SMR", a release date for the content: 2024, and some role names, including Hamm The Hungry and Falling Illidari.

The thing that jumps out at first is the name of the project: HSTNE: SMR. The first part obviously means Hearthstone, but what does the SMR part mean? First, it helps to know that internally and in the game files, expansions for Hearthstone are abbreviated to a short 2 or 3-letter code. That abbreviation typically gets used in the card code as well, for instance, Festival of Legends has the abbreviation "ETC" which hints at the main Legendary of the set E.T.C., Band Manager, and which has the card code "ETC_080". This is a smart way to be very clear about what the expansion is while making people who accidentally come across the abbreviation (like we are here!) unable to directly tell what it might all entail. We won't try to guess in this article what the abbreviation "SMR" might mean or be about, but you can bet we will look back on this when the expansion reveals and go "Ohhhhhh, of COURSE".

Which Expansion Is It Going To Be?

But which expansion is this going to be all about then? For that let's look at the Blizzard officially released teaser image for the expansions in 2024.

The middle and most right parts of the image show the upcoming 2 expansions. So either of those 2 is going to be labeled "SMR" on card codes. etc. You can try to fit names but be aware that the code/abbreviation is usually made very early in development when the exact name of the expansion might not be set in stone. For instance, March of the Lich King is labeled "RLK", which seems to hint that the expansion might have had a different name at some point, with the R perhaps standing for "Return" and not "March". So if you are going to guess at the name, make sure to leave room for creativity!

The Roles or Card Names

The most telling part of this is the role names, which seem to clearly point at Card names. There's no "Illidari" anywhere else in the world than in Blizzard games, and with the other hints at this being a Hearthstone-related thing, that makes this all very telling.

The leak is also not just on one reputable website however, it also made its way to IMDB.com, as you can see from a screenshot below in case the link in question gets cleaned up.

The content on IMDB mentions the same roles, or as we know them, card names. So let's look at the roles or card names in some detail and see if we can find out more.

• Service Ace
• Muensterosity
• Falling Ilidari
• Hamm the Hungry
• Summoner Darkmarrow

At first glance "Service Ace", "Muensterosity" and "Falling Illidari" seem normal cards, and "Hamm the Hungry" and "Summoner Darkmarrow" seem to be named cards, which almost always indicate Legendary cards. We have thrown the 2 likely legendary names into the search of the Warcraft Wiki, but sadly nothing related to them shows up.
"Falling Illidari" is clearly about Illidari, the minions of Illidan Stormrage, the DH hero, but the name of the card is not very clear about what it might be about. "Service Ace" is also very generic and might be explained in more than 1 way, but "Muensterosity" has a very particular link to it. In the real world "Muenster" is the name of a famous cheese from France named for a town and region in Germany. It is used with that spelling and that same link in World of Warcraft, for the item "Stromgarde Muenster" which is a cheese consumable food that restores health. So it is not too wild to guess at Muensterosity to be some kind of cheese-related card, not that this is particularly helpful in guessing what the theme or name is of the expansion the card is from, even with Stromgarde starting with an S.

The Full Resume

Conclusion

It is always fun to speculate and guess at what leaks might mean or might hint at. We have tried not to lead the discussion in one particular way or another, so the floor is yours to post about YOUR guess as to what this might all mean. Leave your guess in the comments, and speculate away!