Our coverage of BlizzConline continues with the Hearthstone Developer Q&A panel which we're covering live down below.

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Q&A Live Recap

Below you will find a recap of the important answers from the Q&A. We will not be providing a full transcript.

Game Economy and New Players Experience

  • The next Reward Tracks will request less time and less investment between each level and reward.
  • They guarantee that Reward Tracks should give more gold and new rewards that will be revealed in the future.
  • Free to play experience is a pretty hot topic - they think they've made some big progress towards the affordability of the game in the last couple of years (no duplicate rule, competitive decks for returning players, Core set)
  • There are no concrete plans to change the dust system, but the Reward System will increase the players' resources - we'll be able to notice the difference at the end of this expansion cycle.
  • They made new quests for new players so that they'll be able to step into the game more easily.

Core Set

  • The Core set gives people a better stepping stone for people joining the game
  • The Core Set represents how the devs want classes to be: for example, Druid's removals (Wrath and Swipe) will rotate out but Feral Rage and Pounce will come back, and that's how the class will have to deal with enemy units.
  • The unlock requirements for the Core set are really small - a returning player should be able to get all the cards right off the bat.
  • We won't get 29 new cards every year - the upcoming one is a very big change, so they had to introduce a lot of new stuff.
  • It's definitely possible for Death Knights to return in the future, maybe when they don't plan to print new hero cards: they might make a few adjustments before, but they know many players have fond memories of them.
  • The new versions of the Dragon Aspects reflect what their original versions were about - changing the text was what they wanted to do to bring them in modern Hearthstone. They think they'll be more playable.
  • Malygos will rotate to Wild and will still be playable there.
  • Malygos was pretty limiting for the Spell Damage design: they wanted to have more design space to experiment with.

Forged in the Barrens

  • They were looking for a keyword that represents the strength and resilience of the Horde, and Frenzy was perfect: a minion survives damage and does something crazy!
  • Alliance is gonna have their place, even in the Barrens.
  • Forged in the Barrens features 10 Mercenary cards, one for each class - 5 of them belong to the Alliance, 5 to the Horde.

Duels

  • No, the new mode is not getting left behind.
  • Later this year we'll receive new Duels heroes.
  • During the next expansion, Duels is gonna be seeing the addition of the Forged in the Barrens and Journey to Un'Goro sets to its pool

Hearthstone Classic

  • They want players to come to Classic and experience what once was the meta, which is something not many players experienced back in the day.
  • They're open-minded about Classic feedback. Keep your Twitlonger open!

Hearthstone Mercenaries

  • In this game mode, you'll start as a level 1 Mercenary - along the way you'll unlock new equipment, tools and even new forms. More information will come in the future.

Miscellanea

  • The devs based the designs of Darkmoon Faire's Old Gods on the original versions of Whispers of the Old Gods
  • Team 5 wants to give control decks finishers (just like C'Thun, the Shattered), other than giving them resource generators like Archivist Elysiana or Galakrond, the Unspeakable - control decks need they a way to close games that isn't pure value generation.
  • There might have been a bit too much card generation with Lackeys, but they are happy about the mechanic overall
  • They want to make sure incredibly big "feelsbad" moments won't happen very often
  • OTK memes, Boulderfist Ogre (good stats for the cost) and Rank 1 Legend posts are the memes the devs like the most.
  • They'd love to do a Murlocs-related expansion - it might happen in the future. Buff Murlocs incoming!
  • Fireside Gatherings will be back, but their priority is to make sure that players are safe and sounds.
  • They love Quest cards: they learned a lot after Un'Goro and Uldum ones were different - in particular, they wanted to make them easier to be completed.
  • If they were to introduce new Quests in the future, they'd add a twist to them.
  • They really expanded the team size in the last couple of years - they have a lot more capacity to create and experiment new things: we can see that in the new game modes, adventures and mini sets. Hearthstone isn't just a game that releases 3 expansions per year anymore.
  • They want to be careful about introducing new hero skins in the future that aren't specific to Warcraft - there needs to be a right occasion for the right character.
  • Class mechanics (like Choose one, Overload and Outcast) for classes that don't have any may come in the future.
  • Priest will get face damage back - it won't be big, but it will at least re-establish its shadow identity trait. Now we see why Shadowform will be back.
  • There may be new passive weapons like Sphere of Sapience in the future: they just have to be flavorful and fit with the expansion.
  • No specific details available, but we'll receive the option to set random hero skins just like we can do with card backs.
  • The same mechanic for The Coin isn't as urgent, but it's definitely gonna arrive in the future.

Watch Live

You can watch BlizzConlive on the official site or the stream below.

Learn more about Forged in the Barrens

Head on over to our dedicated guide for Forged in the Barrens to learn more about the new expansion and to see all the revealed cards!

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