Hearthstone’s fifth expansion, ‘Journey to Un’Goro’, was officially announced on February 27th (PST).

As the first expansion of the ‘Year of the Mammoth’, 135 new cards based on the theme of the Un’Goro Crater region of World of Warcraft will be added to Hearthstone.

Among these new cards, the first set of legendary spell cards, ‘Quests’, have been revealed, and a new keyword ‘Adapt’ will allow players to choose a keyword depending on the situation. Also, as three sets (Blackrock Mountain, The Grand Tournament, The League of Explorers) will rotate out of Standard, players will have to adapt to a radically different metagame when they venture into Un’Goro.

We met with Yong Woo, the Lead Game Producer for Hearthstone, once again and asked him about the newest expansion. (The interview was done in Korean, and translated into English.)

Can you give us an introduction of the newest expansion, Journey to Un’Goro?

I’m glad that I can finally tell the world about the first expansion of the Year of the Mammoth, Journey to Un’Goro. It’s been a long time coming, and we have great expectations for this expansion. Dinosaurs, Elementals, and ‘Quest’ cards will be added to Standard, so I hope you are looking forward to it as much as we are. The card reveal will start from next week.

How did you form the theme of ‘Un’Goro Crater’ into the expansion?

We tried to transfer the aesthetics of the Un’Goro Crater from World of Warcraft into Hearthstone. For example, Un’Goro’s geographical characteristics such as swamp, geysers, and dinosaurs will be featured in the new battlefield theme and card backs.

Also, we thought long and hard about who will ‘lead’ the expedition into Un’Goro, and we eventually settled with a familiar face - Elise Starseeker from the League of Explorers. She will be made into a brand-new card of the new expansion with new effects. Personally, I think she is the most awesome card in this expansion, and she will be revealed next week.
 

It’s a shame that a theme song wasn’t made for this expansion. Will it be added later?

We wanted to try something new for this expansion, so we tried something else for the trailer by removing the theme song. However, we'll consider bringing it back for the next expansion and onwards. It was definitely not a budget-related issue. (Laughs) I hope you can be satisfied with Ben Brode's masterpiece.

Can you tell us why you’ve chosen Un’Goro to be the setting of the newest expansion? Also, I’ve always wondered whether the development starts by choosing a theme from WoW (such as Naxxramas and The League of Explorers) and creating new fitting keywords (such as Adapt and Discover) afterwards, or vice versa.

We have two different design teams for Hearthstone - the 'Initial Design Team' and the 'Final Design Team'. Our process of making new content starts with the initial design team coming up with new concepts and ends with the final design team polishing the concepts with some finer details. We usually appoint a lead designer before starting the development of a new set, and Peter Whalen was appointed to be this set's lead designer. The lead designer's role is to come up with several new ideas, and other designers will choose the ideas that seem to be suitable for the new expansion.

So, we had several interesting ideas during the development phase, and we centered around the idea of putting dinosaurs into Hearthstone. I’m sure a lot of you are familiar with the movie ‘Jurassic Park’, and it looked like a good concept for Hearthstone too. So, we looked for a place where dinosaurs can be featured prominently, and we thought that Un’Goro Crater was just the place.

To sum it up, we started from a relatively vague concept of ‘Dinosaurs’, and then we moved onto more concrete idea of ‘Un’Goro’, and then we imagined how dinosaurs had to ‘adapt’ to survive in Un’Goro. In terms of communication, ideas can travel in both directions whether they are from the top or the bottom.

So far, we’ve had ‘Adapt’ and ‘Quest’ as new keywords. However, all Quest cards will be legendary-class, so I don’t think it will be easy for everyone to obtain every Quest card. Is there a plan to reward certain Quest cards for free like you’ve done with ‘C’Thun’ before?

There will be many more keywords and deck concepts available in Journey to Un'Goro. However, most of the players will chose the archetypes that they are interested in rather than building a deck for every archetype available in the game. I don’t think it will be a good idea to overwhelm players with too many options.

Now that we have legendary spells added to Hearthstone, will we be able to see legendary weapons added in the near future?

Although I mentioned back in 2014 that legendary cards will be restricted to minions, Hearthstone has come a long way since then. We have a better idea of what cards players like to play with and what players consider fun.

If the players agree that having legendary weapons will add more fun to the game, we will add it in the future. It’s definitely a possibility.

One of the main keywords for this expansion is ‘Elementals’. Players expect that there will be many cards that synergize well with Elemental cards and worry how it might further strengthen Shamans. Will this really be the case?

We have plans for each class when we develop a new set, and we do put more weight into certain classes for a specific keyword, and Shaman is indeed closely linked with Elementals. However, Shaman is not the only class that we’ve had in mind while designing Elemental cards.

Among the Four Elemental Lords, Only Therazane the Stonemother hasn't been made into a card yet. Could it be that she is in this expansion?

We still have a lot to reveal about the new expansion. Elementals will receive something new in this expansion, but you’ll have to wait to find out.

After the Yogg-saron and Pirate meta, several high profile players, including Adrian "Lifecoach" Koy, made harsh criticisms on Hearthstone's RNG and aggro-centric metagame. Did these criticisms have any influence on the design of Journey to Un’Goro?

I think there are both 'good' and 'bad' RNG in Hearthstone. I assume that Lifecoach was criticising this 'bad' RNG, and a significant number of players agree with him. However, I do not think that this represents all of Hearthstone players, and there are players who prefer what others may call the 'bad' RNG.

Still, I'm sure that the 'Adapt' keyword is a 'good' RNG, and different players may have different preferences for every card in the game. I'm sure it won't be easy to satisfy everyone, but that doesn't mean that we won't try. I hope that people will be more generally favorable to the new keywords.

There are worries that the 'Quest' keyword might force each class into a certain archetype.

Not all cards in 'Journey to Un'Goro' are made with Quest in mind. In fact, some classes and archetypes would prefer not to have a Quest card in their deck. Also, while the Quest rewards seem pretty strong, it won't be easy to complete the Quest in the first place.

Jade Lotuses’ Jade Golems are something that is hotly discussed among players for being the only viable archetype for Druids. What are your thoughts on Jade Golems?

We’ve received much feedback regarding Jade Golem after the balance patch announcement, and a significant portion of it is about Jade Druid. While I want to wait for a month or two after a balance patch before talking about the game balance, there will be another balance patch if the players can agree that there is a problem with the Jade Druid archetype.

I think it’s important for players to have freedom of choice when it comes to choosing a deck. Although Jade Druid may feel like it’s unfair to certain archetypes (For example, against fatigue decks, as Jade Idol prevents Druid from receiving fatigue damage), I wouldn’t want to take away Jade Druid from the players who like to play with the deck. We’ll leave it be for the time being.

I’m sure we’ve asked this before, but a significant number of players is still worried that sending Conceal to Hall of Fame and letting Gadgetzan Auctioneer stay in Standard might be a bad idea.

Gadgetzan Auctioneer is definitely still on the list. We did consider pulling him out of Standard, because it will be easier to balance the gameplay if he is not in Standard format. However, we decided to give him a chance because he enables many interesting combos and is loved by combo deck players.

However, we are definitely keeping an eye on him, and we are keeping it close. (Laughs)

Mike Donais recently commented that there are Quests for both control and aggro deck archetypes. With aggro decks being as strong as they are right now, I fear that they might be even stronger when Journey to Un’Goro arrives.

The balance between aggro and control decks is something that we try to balance as well as we can. A good metagame needs to have both viable control and aggro deck archetypes. Although there might be some Quests made for aggro decks, we will take action if such cards become a problem.

Thank you for your time. Do you have anything else that you want to share?

After the announcement of the Year of the Mammoth, I’ve been listening to players through the official forum, Inven forum (for Korean players), Twitter, and even Facebook Messenger. I’m sure this is a good step towards understanding each other and resolving possible misunderstandings. I hope to see you all again soon!