It wouldn't be a proper Hearthstone season without some sort of a leak preceding any of the official announcements - although we are unsure whether we can even call it that here, seeing as the following information comes courtesy of the existing Twitch Drops campaign credited to Hearthstone/Blizzard. Eagle-eyed streamer Zeddy was the first to notice and call everyone's attention to this peculiar fact.
If you've been eagerly awaiting the news about the final Hearthstone expansion of the year - already confirmed by the former game director Dean "Iksar" Ayala to be "bigger than normal" - it would seem that all the answers and more will be given to us during a special Twitch stream taking place on Tuesday, November 1. Conspicuously dubbed as 'Hearthstone Theorycrafting':
Quote From Blizzard Join us on a very special stream for Hearthstone’s next expansion reveal and more!
If you wish to find out for yourself (as long as this doesn't get removed), you can simply navigate to your Twitch account and access Creator Dashboard from the dropdown menu. All open campaigns are being listed under the Viewer Rewards/Drops.
As you might've already noticed, there is one Castle Nathria pack that's going to be available for watching the stream for 15 minutes (a very short window of time, which had caused a lot of complaints the last time such a promotion happened).
Attempting to click on the 'About This Drop' link takes us to the following Hearthstone blog article - but you won't find anything there currently other than an Error 404 i.e. page not found. What's most interesting about this is the URL/web address itself, with a designated number 23852693. For reference, the latest published blog post (that of 24.4.3 balance patch notes) is currently listed as 23852692. And we're still expecting at least one other Blizzard article about the upcoming Masters Fall Championship to appear before the said esports event kicks off on October 28. Given this line of reasoning, some sort of expansion-related announcement might be imminent.
Disclaimer: Now, while this being scheduled on Twitch could pretty much act as a full confirmation, with the set reveal time and date unlikely to be moved around - do NOT take it all for granted until we see an official Blizzard social media post, a blog article, or hear from one of the developers. Events like this are likely to be pre-recorded well in advance, and so it wouldn't be impossible for these plans to change.
But in the event this is more than a simple placeholder, we might start seeing vague expansion teasers in the days leading up to the big reveal. Perhaps even something more detailed. There's been a lot of hopeful rumors circulating about the arrival of Death Knight as a new playable class. And one way or another, a supersized expansion is a novelty we aren't exactly used to in Hearthstone. That alone promises something special to come.
Death Knights, Spooky Creatures, & Mercenaries
We are also still awaiting the annual Hallow's End celebration to arrive in-game, and it wouldn't be particularly surprising if that was one of the main topics of the upcoming blog post. There is also this tease the Hearthstone team thought to share with the latest round of card nerfs:
Quote From Blizzard The one notable outlier that is not getting changed, but which we are keeping a close eye on, is Prince Renathal. He is powerful and popular, but we don’t want this patch to completely shake up the meta, because we have something fun coming in Patch 24.6 and we want to see how Renathal performs in the next expansion before making changes to him.
It's been almost four months since we've received Prince Renathal as the free Legendary paving the way for Murder at Castle Nathria, so the expectation here would be something similar. Typical cycle of .6 Patches is when Hearthstone usually shares the next set announcement along with all the other patch notes. The proposed excess coins solution for Mercenaries features on this extended list as well. Before we know it, there might be a ton of news dropping all at once.
Excited to find out what's in store for Hearthstone's final expansion of the Year of the Hydra? Do you have any predictions or wishes that you would love to come true?
![All The Great Dark Beyond Card Reveals for October 23 - Day 13 [Finished]](the-great-dark-beyond-day-13.webp)
Comments
Wow that's great for reading
I do not want to see the reborn keyword back in the game ever again. Kharut Defender, Making Mummies (paladin quest), and the priest reborn spell are not fun to play against. The design leads to turtley strategies that abuse the unbalanced copy/res mechanic.
I do want to see an undead tribe that reflects lifesteal healing back onto the hero as damage instead. This would be a healthy nerf to lifesteal in general as well as neutralize the powerlevel of Sire Denathrius himself. The Sire would probably disappear for a while considering everyone and their brother will be playing the deathknight class for at least the first week or 2. No nerf needed at this point. Also as a downside undead minions should be able to be damaged by basic healing ( spells, battlecries, etc.). C'mon Team 5, this is not the first RPG game anyone has played and it is not too complex for the users!
As far as the hero power goes I don't have any specific idea on what it might be, but I know I do NOT want it to be anything random. I would like to see at least 3 different powers at 1,2,and 3-mana cost where the most costly one that you can afford to play is active. For example, you start your turn 7 with 7 mana and the 3-cost hero power is active. You know you have lethal if you can change the power to the 1-cost power. So you play the 6-cost card or two 3-cost cards and when you do have 1 mana left, the power flips to the 1 mana hero power. I really want something unique and versatile that make you think about how to navigate turns and deck building rather than have another boring 2-cost power.
I still refuse to believe they would actually release DK in the last expansion of the year.
It might actually be possible, assuming activision-blizz wants to make a statement both financially and in the gaming world within 2022.
Overwatch 2 is, from what Ive heard and read, a massive let down, currently problematic in all areas. Diablo 4 is a long way ahead, and the less said about immortal the better. Why not a something big in hearthstone to perk up the financial year? And what is bigger than a new DK class?
It might be weird to insert a DK class out of nowhere with less cards than all the other classes, but as we have seen with dhunter's release, you dont need alot of cards to make a lot of archetypes, and certainly it has no bearing on powerlevels. It might also herald the 4 expansions per year thing a lot better than it would otherwise.
Really? Because the sentiment that I got is that the only thing people are really complaining about is that it's almost impossible to get hero skins for free. This complain makes sense in the context of OW1 were you used to be able to get almost every skin for free through grinding (after paying 40$ for the game), hower this monetization is fairly standard for a f2p game like OW2.
Other than that the over 25 million players (which is 3 times as much as OW1 had at launch) also seem to really enjoy the core gameplay changes aswell as the new main mode, maps and most importantly looking forward to finally having regular content updates in the form of 9 week long seasons that either introduce a new map or hero. And ofcourse the two big pve modes which was the focus of OW2 before they decided to release the content that they had ready instead of not releasing anything for a couple more years until everything is finished.
I will fully admit that Ive not played overwatch 2 as yet (and to be honest would probably never will, just dont have the time and theres better games), but I have been keeping tabs on it from launch because I was stunned to see it now f2p and was interested in its progress since the last time I touched OW1.
Grinding, monetization and some form of phone verification controversy aside, OW2 had a frankly terrible start, with reportedly hours of queuing, being DDoS twice, people complaining (likely unfairly) about tanks, innumerable bugs, and how some characters have to be unlocked if you dont have OW1. Its a blizz sequel so Im not all that surprised at the number of players, but it is surprising how many problems are propping up. You wouldn't think it a good idea to release a game as big as this one in such a state and yet here we are.
A week ago, there's apparently issues with matchmaking, and as we speak there's talk of long queue times because apparently (to no one's surprise) there's not many players wanting to play support.
All this is not to say that it wont be eventually fixed and OW2 making good in future (5v5, and removing most if not all of the CC is probably a step in the right direction) but this is not how I imagine OW2 to be like. OW1 was a resounding success that practically defined the hero shooter genre - its sequel is currently looking more like a cheap derivative with no new defining ideas of its own except living off the name of its predecessor.
Yeah, I agree. The problem is not that the OW2 is bad, but rather that it does not meet the expectations of the first one. I think a big reason for this is the game that was announced a couple years ago is not the one that just launched. Originally it was supposed to launch as a full sequel with a huge focus on pve and a bunch of pvp content. But around last year they realized that, mostly because of the pve stuff, it would still take a couple more years until everything is done.
So instead of not releasing more content for a couple more years they decided to finish up and release all of the pvp stuff, which consisted mostly of reworks (5v5, comp 2.0, rework of indivitual heroes and the entire tank category etc.) than actual new content. Which brings me back to the expectation problem. People expected at least 3 years of work and a full fledged sequel, but what they actually released was one year of work and a full rework of the gameplay. And they did a terrible way of communicating this.
When the release date was originally was announced what they released was titled "Overwatch 2 pvp early access". However I don't think the early access part was mentioned by blizzard ever since. Instead what they did was to call Overwatch 2 "a new era of Overwatch" instead of "a sequel" in the trailers, but did the crucial mistake of keeping the "2" uncommented in the game title, which is a problem because the same name was used to announce it 2019 when they wanted to release a different product.
So long story short: I think the problem with OW2 is not the game itself, but the expectations that came from the marketing, which failed to highlight (or even mention at all) what OW2 actually is compared to what was originally announced. With that in mind I'm really curios about what the opinion of the game will be in a couple years when everything of the original OW2 vision was released.
Same. I doubt they'll be announcing a new class this expansion.
Dean told us multiple times in his Q&As that they're not working on a new class, and I believe him.
Teasing a "bigger than usual" expansion is not the same as hinting at a whole new class, even if there is a location template in some data mine somewhere.
I'm happy to be wrong (and not willing to bet a shoe breakfast), but the timing of all this seems unlikely.
The next couple weeks should make it all clear!
I am certain we won't see a new class unless it happens at the start of a year. Rotation is when they get the most eyes on the game, and it gives them a chance to give a new class a fighting chance without creating a bunch of cards for them that are just going to rotate as every class would have 50+ cards more than a base "Death Knight". That's why they had to do the Demon Hunter Initiate set; A late-year DK release means they have to account for two extra expansions.
Next year though? I still think we'll see Monk before Death Knight.
I'm too lazy to look the source up right now, but I'm 100% sure that it was stated by the devs one or a couple years ago that if they are going to release more classes the (at that time) current order would be: Death Knight - Hearthstone Original class - Monk.
I think we will see DK before monk, because of wrath classic launch and just because Dk is way more populair then monk
Also frozen throne was like their most succesfull expansion/part of their most succesfull yearr
Monk is one of the least played classes in wow. compared to dk being very common.
And ininiate set they can do that for DK IF its next expansion aswell, even a week or 2 before and with core set they can add there aswell.
With next expansion aslo being biggest yet, it could be that theyd have extra cards like DH got in its first year of expansion.
They could have their intiate set a week or 2 before launch, expansion comes out and DK has like 20 cards instead of 10 or such and then with rotation they can review how it did so far , and arent stuck with Op cards/nerfed into ground stuff for entire year and can change /balance around that to greater degree .
And their core set could aslo be bigger for the year, so they dont need to add 3expansion with extra cards for DK only like DH had so it can follow a normal HS year like the other classes.
While true, there is also a notable difference between then and now. Namely the existence of the free Core set and the ability to do as they please with how many cards they please whenever a rotation comes, not being subject to the usual limitations. And perhaps not even being tied only to the rotation in the future, based on some vague dev comments.
I’m saying this with the hope that I’m wrong, I am just speculating though. I’m all caught up on rumors and speculations so this is why I’m bringing this up.
Have we considered the possibility that we’re getting the Evoker instead of the Deathknight? Dragonflight releases in November and with the new Hearthstone expansion releasing in December I wouldn’t be surprised if they added the same class to both games.
God I hope I’m wrong
Luckily for you, this possibility would be very unlikely due to the game files already having a location template for the DK class: https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/wzk2tk/heres_a_clearer_image_of_the_death_knight/
Could you please elaborate what that would mean? You seem to dislike the idea so you clearly have an image of a potential Evoker class while that's the first time I've ever heard about it.
Evoker is the new class for the Dragonflight expansion. I assume he is afraid of a tie in with the new WoW expansion. While I understand his fears it's too early for that I believe. HS would want to build on the nostalgia of WoW or twists on characters and locations. With it not being out yet I don't believe they would target such an unfamiliar place.
Though I am curious if they do go deathknight, how they will theme it going from a death based expansion already? Do we get a hoedown in Hearthglen?? Maybe a Wintersday in Ebon Hold? Just seems like a fun challenge to me. Can't wait to see what they do.
We haven't gone to Stratholme, yet. Recall the newer intro remarks with Arthas vs Uther. That is when they met up outside of Stratholme before the Culling. A lot to work with there both pre and post Culling.
My bet is that we will get the announcement of the new expansion, preorder stuff and all that. But...
We will get an event leading up to the new expansion that seems to be hinted at. So before the expansion launches with the new deathknight class, we get all the old deathknights cards back to standard for x amount of time. Some theme maybe of the pretenders before the real deathknight shows up. Could be fun and would shake things up for a bit. Whatever it is, I hope for some fun times.
I have a sneaking suspicious that there's not gonna be a Hallow's End event this year, with the "bigger than normal" expansion being the excuse as to why it didn't happen.
Hoping I'm wrong coz who doesn't enjoy this event each year?
There actually hasn't been a classic hallows end event in a while. The last one was in 2019 and Rafaam and Reno mostly stole the show there. 2020 instead had a scholomance masquerade ball and last year there was no Halloween event at all