Hearthpwn

Everything Hearthstone Players Need to Know from BlizzCon 2017

BlizzCon is over, con-plague has begun spreading and lots of people have started heading home. It's time for us to go over everything that took place on this overwhelming weekend of everything Blizzard. Towards the end of this article you'll also be able to find news that came out of other Blizzard titles including links to coverage on some of our sister sites.

Now, shall we begin?

A special thank you goes out to everyone on the team who helped with this year's BlizzCon coverage.

New Expansion Announced - Kobolds and Catacombs

The Hearthstone team as usual announced an expansion at this year's BlizzCon. The expansion name is Kobolds and Catacombs, here's what it's going to contain.

• The expansion releases in December. No specific date yet.
• Card reveals start up again on November 20th.
• 135 new cards are being added.
• All classes are receiving a Legendary Weapon and a Legendary Minion.
• Recruit is a new keyword which summons minions from your deck based on criteria.
• Dungeon Runs are a new type of PvE content, replacing an adventure for this expansion.
  • Learn more them it in our guide and our hands on with dungeon runs post.

Expansion Freebies

Free stuff is the best! There are a few free things available, pay careful attention.

• Starting this week, every player will receive a copy of Marin the Fox once the game patches.
• BlizzCon virtual ticket and live attendees will receive a Golden version of Marin the Fox as well.
• Dungeon Runs are entirely free. They also don't require you to have any cards in your collection.
• Logging in when the expansion hits in December will give you a free Legendary weapon.
• A card back is available to players who successfully complete dungeon runs with each class.

New Cards

So far, 14 new cards have been revealed from the set. Check them out in our dedicated visual guide to the set or below.

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Dungeon Runs

We got to play the Dungeon Run feature at BlizzCon and harvested information from it. Check out our Hands on with the Kobolds and Catacombs New Dungeon Run Feature post.

• A new type of PvE content which has the most replayability of any single player content they've added.
• There are 48 encounters in total, which a huge assortment of cards created just for the game mode.
• Each time you defeat a boss, you get to add new cards to your deck and sometimes special powerful cards or passives.

Panel Recap: Hearthstone Live Q&A

Members of the Hearthstone Team were on hand to answer questions from the audience and to showcase new arena cards that are going to be added to the game in an upcoming patch.

• We're getting 9 new arena-only cards added to the game. They won't be in forever, just a limited time.
• Picking a random card back each time you play is something they need to hook up the code for - the art is done!
• More player stats is something they want to do and recently they've been building infrastructure for it.
• They may rotate more cards to the Hall of Fame during the next Standard year. No announcements yet.

HearthPwn Exclusive: Developer Interview with Mike Donais and Jomaro Kindred

We had a chance to sit down with Mike Donais and Jomaro Kindred of the Hearthstone team to talk about the new expansion.

• If Dungeon Runs go over well they could see themselves doing something similar again or building upon it.
• The cool part about the Recruit mechanic is that it can create new rules for deckbuilding.
• Doing two class legendaries each expansion isn't set in stone. It's just worked out that way.
• Giving classes multiple legendaries is nicer because a lot of neutral legendaries waters down class identities.
• Mike Donais could see them doing Hero cards (like DKs) again in the future. They went over well with the community.

Community Interview: Ben Brode

We were invited to a community interview with other sites to speak with Ben Brode about the new expansion and Hearthstone in general.

• None of the encounters in Dungeon Runs are from any previously released content.
• Ben doesn't think Standard alone is enough for Arena and they're trying lots of things internally.
• There will be no balance changes with the launch of Kobolds and Catacombs.
• They are currently working on some things for Wild that may help increase the number of players playing it.
• More things will be added for Fireside Gatherings to make them more exciting to go to.

Panel Recap: Blizzard Social - What's Next?

We've got a recap of a non-Hearthstone panel from this year's BlizzCon which talked about social features on Battle.net.

• Battle.net: 1000+ servers, 4 data centers. 4.3 Petabytes of Data per day. 35 million messages per day.
• The team is looking at global regions, but are facing difficulties in doing so.
• Adding a streamer mode for in-game is something being looked into.
• They are considering allowing players to earn new avatars by achievements in-game. No plans for user-uploaded avatars.

More From Blizzard at BlizzCon

Our friends at MMO-Champion have an excellent recap of everything that took place at this year's con. Here's some highlights!

• A new World of Warcraft expansion was announced - Battle for Azeroth.
• World of Warcraft will be getting Classic servers at some point in the future.
• Overwatch is getting a new support hero, Moira, and a new map, Blizzard World.
• A new cinematic was revealed for Overwatch featuring Reinhardt.
• More skins are being added to the base loot boxes in Overwatch.
• Heroes of the Storm is seeing the addition of Alexstrasza and Hanzo.