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What We Know About Hearthstone's Next Expansion
BlizzCon is only a week away, and there's a very good chance we'll be seeing an announcement about the next Hearthstone card expansion during it. We have compiled information on everything we know about the expansion through interviews, the client, and promotions so that you have an idea of what is coming next for Hearthstone.
There Will be Over 100 New Cards
There have been several variations on the number of cards we'd see, but most recently, Eric Dodds, Hearthstone's Lead Designer, announced that "it's going to be over 100 cards". This comes after Senior Game Designer, Mike Donais, stated that it would be "not exactly 100 cards, but it's a lot". Start saving up your gold for those card packs.
Quote from Eric DoddsIt was recently revealed that the next set of cards will come out as part of a new booster pack. How many cards are we looking at? What sort of breakout can we expect in terms of new class cards vs. neutral cards? Anything you’re willing to spoil at this point?
Still working on the details of that. I mean, it’s going to be over 100 cards and it’s certainly going to be very different from Naxxramas, which was designed to put a smaller number of cards into play, because we don’t want to create this large number of cards, not overwhelm players, but at the same time, with this new expansion, we want to provide a large number of cards with additional options for the hardcore. So, exactly what those cards are and exactly what those ratios are, partially we’re still working on ‘em, and partially we’ll be talking about that in the future.
New Cards Will Come From a New Booster Pack
If you've been saving up your current Hearthstone packs from your arena runs in hopes that they would give you a shot at new cards, open them now. A brand new pack will be added to the shop that you can purchase, alongside the Expert Pack, which will give you the new cards. We know that the new packs will be purchasable for gold and real money, the only question yet to be answered is how much of each currency they will cost.
Quote from Mike DonaisThe cards in the next expansion will come out of a new booster pack. You will still need to purchase Expert booster packs to get Expert cards. You'll have two choices in the store.
The Expansion Will Be Themed, Probably Mechanical
Much like the Curse of Naxxramas, the new expansion will have a common theme among the cards.
Quote from Jason ChayesWe are going to have a central theme for how that will all fit together.
Most recently, there have been some interesting developments from Blizzard which is pointing to a Mechanical / Engineering themed expansion.
The Goblin Card Back
On October 22, a patch was pushed to the download servers with a new card back which was titled "Goblin". Goblins, along with the Gnomes, have been at the forefront of engineering and all things mechanical for quite some time in the World of Warcraft, and their card back certainly shows it off. The Goblin card back is the ranked season reward for November, the same month that features BlizzCon. It's certainly quite fitting that an expansion announcement would come with a themed card back, kind of like how we had the Naxxramas themed card back as a ranked reward for July, Naxxramas launch month.
Engineering Blueprints
Further validity to engineering and mechanicals was added when several community members received blueprint promotional cards on October 30th. The blueprints featured artwork from many of the mechanical devices already present in Hearthstone, along with a card which read "Making plans for BlizzCon - I hope you like my invention!", a quote from Novice Engineer.
New Cards Might be Craftable With Arcane Dust
Ben Brode was asked on twitter a couple of weeks ago about expansion specific dust. He responded saying that "Lots of currencies can make things more complicated", which makes implies the new cards will be craftable with the crafting currency that we've already been using. We'd be silly to disagree, it really would make everything a lot easier.
Quote from Ben BrodeCan you think of any downside to keeping gold as a universal currency but changing dust to be expansion specific?
Lots of currencies can make things more complicated.
I barely have any of the current cards to begin with, but I'm excited to hear more about these! :D
Hopefully this will start a new era, where not every deck contains Undertaker and deathrattle minions.
We need more variation! :-)
Only cards, no bosses?
Naxx was great, BECAUSE of the bosses.. Most of the cards are just meeeeh..
I sense downvotes in your future.
Naxx was great because of the cards too though, and with over 100 new cards incoming I think that is much better than a few cards and a few bosses. Hearthstone is a card game, and the card pool right now is a tad small; not only that, but pretty much every possible viable deck has been done it seems. We need new cards to shake up the metagame and provide a more interesting experience for the hardcore and casual alike.
The only thing I worry about though is that new players may feel overwhelmed by the amount of content they will have to unlock. The expert packs, Naxx and eventually the 100 card expansion packs. I've been playing for months and I still haven't unlocked all the expert cards, and I know many others haven't either. I wonder if Blizzard will be more generous with the starting gold for new players when the expansion hits... ? Maybe 200 gold for some of the noob quests.
All decks contain 30 cards, no matter how many cards exist. As a beginner or a player with a small collection, normally you check sites like HearthPwn, look for good and cheap working decks and you start saving for them (gold/dust). It is not like you need all existing cards, but only 30 that work together.
The start for new players will always be the same: they learn the basics in the tutorial with the mage, then they try playing each hero with their basic decks, learn the game bringing all heroes to level 10 to unlock all basic cards etc.
What comes after will be the big wide world of Hearthstone cards and decks and I think then it does not matter if there are 500 or 5000 cards. :)
They would more likely drop the price of Expert packs to 75 or 80 gold. While the new packs would remain at the usual 100 gold. This would help to alleviate new players feeling overwhelmed.
Naxx made this game so much better/more fun to play BECAUSE of all of the cards that were released...
Dropping prices makes only sense with a new dust- currency / expansion. Otherwise you could farm dust with purchasing cheap packs and create the cards whichyou want.
While a warrior mill deck would be awesome, it probably won't happen this expansion. There's just not enough mill cards for a focused mill deck, and Blizzard seems intent to not add any more. On top of that, warriors don't get Shadowstep + Coldlight Oracle or Naturalize which are the only good mill combos so far (besides healing while opponent has northshire cleric out). Even worse, Iron Juggernaut would be great in control. It's a decent(ish) 6-drop and control could easily stall until they draw the mine.
But the real question is... can we get the booster packs from Arena runs?
There is no official word, but I would suspect that you'll win Booster Chits in arena. A single chit can then be exchanged for a single booster pack (expert, mech, etc.) in the store.
This would be a great solution and I really hope this is the way it's done, as opposed to getting a "random" pack from the arena.
WHOA DUDE! Watch you language!
Yes, I am immature and yes, I did have to say that :P
But seriously, whats a chit?
Somebody should ask if you can win the new booster packs by playing arena?
TIme to start saving gold!
*Sobs at bank account*
moar caaaaards!
Your avatar, it's the light side. I only wanted them to see the dark side. :(
*runs up panting*
-wheeze- Did someone say Dark side? -cough-