With Demon Hunter's arrival last year with the release of Ashes of Outland, it paved the way for new classes to enter Hearthstone which has been one of the most exciting bits of new content the game has seen since release. With at least two other classes in World of Warcraft to pick from, Death Knights and Monks, there is a lot of established flavor that Hearthstone has access to when the time comes to design a new class.
In tonight's community Q&A on Twitter, Dean Ayala was asked a question about new classes and if we were going to be seeing a new one anytime soon. He was quick to confirm that it would not be the case.
- They are not currently developing a new class for Hearthstone.
- The team works about a year ahead of schedule for content releases.
- Infrastructure has been added to make adding a new class easier than the first time.
With at least a year delay between concept and release, that tells us that we won't be seeing a class releasing this upcoming Hearthstone year and the year after that. It would be a bit much to add classes back-to-back anyway so it's nice to see that we won't have to deal with several instant nerf patches due to overtuning a new class. A large rework is going to be taking place this year for the Basic and Classic sets though, so that might be the huge shakeup we need at the start of the year to make things very interesting.
With Monks off the table, I wouldn't expect to see a Pandaria-themed expansion anytime soon so for all of us that have been craving a visit to the Pandaren homeland, you get hang up your bamboo hat for the time being. Death Knights are also an interesting case for a new classes due to their inclusion as a mechanic during Knights of the Frozen Throne. Although nothing would forbid Blizzard from making a true Death Knight a thing, we do wonder what would happen with Arfus and The Lich King based on their effect wording today.
Do you want to see more classes in Hearthstone? What class do you want to see added next? Let us know in the comments below!
Quote From Dean Ayala After seeing how implementation of a new class (demon hunter) went throw, any plans on putting another new one in the game, in the nearest future? :)
Purely from a player-metrics perspective, it seems like DH was successful. I say *seems* because there are a lot of variables. Hard to understand if success was because players love having a new class, because there was a higher marketing spend during that time window, etc. (Source)
But overall, our team is positive on it and will probably do it again. It's just not something you want to be doing every year. We've talked about Death Knight, Monk, or even the idea of inventing something new. (Source)
There is no new-class in development today and we work about a year ahead of schedule, so I wouldn't look out for it anytime soon. We set up a lot of the infrastructure for adding a new class the first time around, though, so the turnaround would be a little easier. (Source)
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Comments
MONK? AS A CLASS? SERIOUSLY? JUST SAY NO! NO THANK YOU.
If they did make one would he just pick up every minion and play the battlecry again and again?
Drink with me friend.
It wouldn't have to share the bouncing mechanic with rogue, though I agree it makes too much sense for the class to not do it.
I'm not sure how comparable the two classes are in WoW, but certainly in D&D they are a good case of 'convergent evolution', where their abilities are often fundamentally different but in practice they achieve a very similar thing (allowing for variation in role-playing of course).
Yeah, now I think about it, maybe Hearthstone would benefit more from adding a completely new class that doesn't have so much in common with existing classes. The Bard is the obvious choice, because they can do what they like to turn music and charisma into in-game effects.
I do admittedly like Demon Hunter, but I do wish they would expand their design quite a bit. It feels like 70% of their cards are just gaining Attack, drawing cards, or gaining Attack AND drawing cards. This also makes it hard to design good custom cards for it.
Demon Hunter is "successful" (i.e., played a lot) because it has been extremely OP for most of the last year. That's not the same as everyone loving it. A lot of players play to win and don't care how they do it.
I personally don't find DH interesting at all and consider it a failure in terms of design, certainly not worth all the effort they must have put into it. There is not one part of the DH class that couldn't have been implemented in one or more other classes instead.
And, as I implied earlier, it hasn't been successfully balanced until very recently -- mainly by boosting the power level of the rest of the classes. This will lead to big problems again after rotation if DH retains its overpowered core while everyone else loses some of the strongest parts of their kits.
So, in summary, I hope they never add another new class to Hearthstone. Demon Hunter was a big enough mistake; let's not repeat it.
I mean, Monk and Death Knight sound alright, but they should consider adding something brand new. I was thinking that a new class called Certified Public Accountant would be super interesting and unique. Think of all the possibilities!
Having another class added this soon I think would be a bit much. As much as having a Monk would be super fun, the game needs to still settle from the inclusion of Demon Hunter. If they continue to add a lot of stuff all at once, then they are going to be caught up play catch up for a long time to recognize how they all will mesh together, if there is cross over, too much or too little of a mechanic, etc... For now, I am looking forward to seeing DH develop more and the rest of the classes as well.
Now including more races in the hero selection... that seems like a super easy thing to do.
I always thought it would be crazy to add new classes in back to back years. I thought maybe it would be possible that we'd see monk or dk in 2022. I vote for having all the WoW classes represented before they make new ones.
When they do make a dk class, should they make the existing dk cards collectible?
Always wanted Death Knight to be the first added class (Arthas w/o his helm as the basic hero), and after that, Monk (my boy Chen Stormstout!) along with a Pandaria-themed expansion..
I'm not a huge fan of Demon Hunter tbh, but it was cool to see they finally added a brand new class. I'll def be in the waiting room for the next one.
Good. I'd rather have them work out all the problems DH has, than them throwing in even more half baked classes.
I am fine with this news. Demon Hunter is not interesting to me. He does not feel really distinct like HuntardHuntard said. I wish much more that they put their efforts into adding real creative cards, community support and beautiful art and cosmetics. (And fix the stupid crafting system)
The intro to Demon hunter was great, the outcast mech is great. I just don't enjoy playing the character. It doesn't feel different enough.
A passive hero power would be cool.
I always thought a Death Knight class that had a passive hero power that granted Lifesteal to your hero would be amazing.
The more classes they add, the less neutral cards they have. Sure they can add more neutral cards but it seems like they will consistently stick to 135 cards per expansion.
Well, they just started releasing mini-sets every expansion, effectively taking the amount of cards to 170.
I personally would like there to not be anymore classes, but I am not a developer so I don’t know what would be best for the game.
edit: Since I forgot to include it, my issue with more classes is that eventually I believe they will not feel distinct anymore. For example, (I) feel like demon hunter does everything rogue does in standard but better. It also worth noting that if death knights and monks got added they would both be classes with attacking heros, making that 9/12 classes that do attack.
If you look at all of DH's tools (and not just what it uses in the meta) you find there are 3 distinct sides to it. The issue is there isn't much overlap between them, and individually they are just tweaks on what other classes could do:
What DH needs to do to become interesting is to be encouraged to mix these more. Token-aggro wouldn't be very novel, but mixing big demons in with the other two would be. Thinking back, that is how DH started with Imprisoned Antaen and Priestess of Fury.
I wish they would take demon hunter out lol.
Geez, you got me there lol