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Closed Beta Patch – Featured Updates

As Blizzard announced last week, there is going to be an account wipe and a major patch incoming soon. Here's the promised announcement regarding the changes to look forward to in the next patch. Lots of stuff to get excited about! What are you most looking forward to?

Originally posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

In our previous blog, we covered some of the nitty-gritty facts about the wipe and what exactly it entails. It’s an exciting time for the Hearthstone team, since this wipe will coincide with our first major closed beta patch for both the Americas and Europe regions. Our update covers a wealth of bug fixes and quality of life improvement within Hearthstone, and today we’ll be sharing some of the highlights of this upcoming patch. Many of these changes are based on feedback that you, our valued community, provided to us on the forums.

Daily Quests

We’ve gotten a lot of comments on quests. The community has discovered some fun hidden quests, but some of our daily quests have frustrated those of you who have quests that don’t correspond to your favored class. After the patch, daily quests that require you to win with a specific class will now give you a choice between two classes, allowing you some additional flexibility.

Balance

Class balance has been a hot topic, with many of you commenting on the strength and versatility of the Rogue class compared to other classes, such as the Warrior and Priest. Rogues will have some key spells and minions adjusted to bring them more in line with the other classes. Warriors and Priests will find themselves with new tools and improved cards to round out their arsenal, and we’ve made some adjustments to the other classes here and there as well. We’ll be publishing our full patch notes so you can review these and other changes to the heroes of Hearthstone in full detail.

Golden Cards

Golden cards are fun to collect in Hearthstone, and a cool way to show off your accomplishments. Many golden cards have been updated with new animations, and there are still more to come. If you’ve helped test our in-game store and acquired your new forever-friend Gelbin Mekkatorque, check out his shiny new animation! In addition to the new animations to Golden cards, we have also added the ability to unlock Golden Basic minions at higher experience levels. Now you can shoot for creating a 100% golden card deck to really dazzle your opponent!

Crafting

We’ve received a lot of feedback regarding the crafting system, and how the crafting interface didn’t feel quite as intuitive as it should have been. Crafting is intended to be easy to access and a fun way to craft new cards for your collection, and we want that to be noticeable right away to the new player. We’ve updated the UI for our crafting system, so making cards for your collection should be even easier than before! Click the “Crafting Mode” button to access the updated crafting UI.

Social Improvements

We’ve improved our chat functionality to make it more streamlined and easier to interact with your friends.  We’ve also introduced Toasts: they’re a cool addition to our social features that let your friends know when you’ve done something awesome in-game, like open a Legendary card or complete an Arena run. Combine these two improvements together and you’ll never miss an exciting moment with your card-slinging friends in Hearthstone!

Play Mode and Arena

Finally, we’re aware that a lot of discussion on the forums is revolving around Play and Arena mode, and how to make them more compelling for players to participate in. We’ve changed experience and leveling so you can max out your Hero at level 60 and earn experience in any game mode up to max level. This includes Play mode (ranked or unranked), Practice, matches against friends, and the Arena.

The rate that you acquire gold has been one of the other most-commented on topics on our forums. This patch will improve the gold output of Play mode, changing the gold generation rate from 5 gold per five wins to 10 gold per three wins. We will be monitoring this update as we progress further into closed beta and will continue to make changes as needed.

We’ve made significant changes to the Arena as well: In general, rewards gained will include less dust and more cards, as well as guaranteeing more gold for both five and six Arena wins. To further entice you to become an Arena Grand Master, an extra pack OR a golden card is now guaranteed at nine wins.

Full patch notes will be available alongside the patch, which will include the collection wipe. For more information on the wipe and what that entails, please read our blog here! Thank you for your continued feedback as we continue the closed beta testing phase of Hearthstone.

To opt-in to our closed beta test, please go here!