Blizzard has published a new update with a few members of the Hearthstone team including Tyler Bielman, Hearthstone's Game Director.
The three talked about some behind the scenes info including design, in-game events, and arena (?!?!). You can watch the video down below or keep reading on for a recap of everything they covered.
Lessons Learned From Year of the Raptor
Imbue and Quest were shipped back-to-back which due to their "prescriptive" nature, they homogenized the meta.
They both reward you for doing more and more of the same thing which gets dull.
Neutral Legendaries really overstayed their welcome.
Year of the Scarab Plans
Almost every patch during an expansion cycle is going to introduce new cards into the game.
Sets this year will launch with stronger cards with more aggressive tuning after launch.
This will allow players to enjoy a larger variety of cards right away.
More power is going to be put into class-specific win conditions instead of Neutral cards.
Patches are going to have a larger narrative throughout an entire expansion.
We can expect to see more event cards throughout the year (think Raptor Herald).
Expect these in .2 and .6 patches.
Going back down to 135 cards a set from 145 is the team reducing the amount of Neutral Commons which don't really help the game.
The class sets of cards (replaced mini sets) will arrive during an expansion cycles .4 patch.
Every class will get a set of cards during the year, not all at once.
The world championship will be returning to BlizzCon later in the year (September 12 & 13).
Arena
Dual Class Arena is making a return! With updated UI!
We can expect to see dual-class arena more often instead of just during Hallow's End.
Making it easier to get into a game with improved flow is a big part of their changes.
More arena-exclusive cards are happening with a goal of bringing forward balance without touching standard.
We may see a change during pre-release arenas where you could have smaller deck sizes and you'd only be able to use cards that you've opened from packs, like a more traditional sealed card game experience.
That's some awesome news for this year of Hearthstone and especially with dual-class arena coming around more often which has always been a popular Hallow's End feature. What are you looking forward to in Year of the Scarab?
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