On Thursday afternoon, the Hearthstone team released a short video on their official Youtube and Twitter channels showing off a few upcoming Saviors of Uldum cards.
If watching the best Hearthstone players in the world compete against one around wasn't enough of an incentive to watch the Grandmasters Season 1 playoffs this weekend, players can now earn card packs by doing so as well.
On Monday afternoon, the Hearthstone development team revealed the upcoming expansion titled Saviors of Uldum to the community. Alongside the announcement was a patch that went live and included the new cards being rotated into the Classic set. An unexpected change that took place was the alteration of art and names for eight cards that had blood and suggestive imagery in them. The Hearthstone team has done this in the past, most famously to Jaina Proudmoore's hero portrait. When the news broke that the game was slowly but surely removing any blood or nudity from the game, Hearthstone's subReddit community (r/hearthstone) went to work finishing the job for the rest of the card collection.
The League of Explorers are back at it again. This time, Reno Jackson, Brann Bronzebeard, Sir Finley Mrrgglton, and Elise Starseeker will be featured in the newly teased expansion, "Saviors of Uldum" which is slated to go live on August 6. As the League of E.V.I.L is looking to extend their reach from the city of Dalaram to Uldum, players will attempt to put an end to their reign in a new 135 card set and a single-player adventure mode.
Monday afternoon, members of the Hearthstone's development team released a blog post that outlined what's to come in an upcoming patch. The three main talking points where: two cards being Hall of Famed, the development team wanting to create class identities and 10 new cards being added to the game in the near future.
Long-time Hearthstone players all have a favorite class deep down in their hearts. And while it's common to play all nine of them to complete different daily challenges, try out new decks and climb the ladder, everyone has one they prefer playing most for one reason or another. Perhaps the fantasy of being a Hunter in the World of Warcraft universe appeals to you. Or you feel powerful wielding massive weapons that Garrosh holds in his arsenal that attracted you to play Warrior the longest. Maybe you just are a naturally good Shaman player and that has been your go-to class of choice when you want to put your "try hard" pants on.
The 2019 competitive Hearthstone year kicks off starting today in Las Vegas with the Master Tour stop, featuring a $500,000 prize pool, half of which was funded by the game's community. 350 competitors, who qualified from around the world, will take place in a three-day event that will award first place a cool $50,000.
24 hours after the Hearthstone design team revealed their first set of nerfs in the Year of the Dragon card rotation, a blog post was shared that revealed details for an upcoming in-game event. Starting on June 3, players will be able to log in and receive a new free golden Legendary minion, SN1P-SN4P, play with 18 cards that were buffed and experience the next Arena draft rotation as part of the "Mech-vitational" event.
Since the release of Hearthstone's most recent expansion, Rise of Shadows, one month ago from today, the game's development team has been hyping up the single-player adventure mode as the biggest in the game's history. On Thursday afternoon, a video was revealed that revealed the name of the adventure mode, when it is being released, what it includes and more.
Few individuals in Hearthstone’s five-plus year history have a better understanding of the competitive scene better than James “Firebat” Kostesich. The first ever World Champion even has a card named after him. So, prior to him leaving for the Hearthstone World Championships taking place in Taipei, he opened up about the upcoming changes to the competitive scene with the upcoming “Specialist format” being introduced as well as his recent selection as one of the North American Grandmasters.
Jeremy “DisguisedToast” Wang understands Hearthstone’s official subReddit (/r/Hearthstone) almost better than anyone else on it. He got his start curating content on the page before anyone knew who he was and years before anyone would ever see his face. Once that began gaining traction, he took his talents to Youtube where he has over one million subscribers across his two channels then began streaming on Twitch where his success has continued. Last Wednesday, Toast was streaming when it was brought to his attention that there was a thread about him on the subReddit that he should check out. Toast, who has seen hundreds of threads about him over the years, sat perplexed when he saw that shortly after the post had gone live it already had over 4,000 upvotes. Less than a week later, that number currently stands at nearly 13,000, one of the most popular in the past year.But the thread wasn’t showcasing a play he had made or a funny response from Blizzard on his content, like usual. It was in reference to recent videos he had made with clickbait thumbnails. While lighthearted in nature, hundreds of comments began pouring in calling Toast’s integrity into question and pointing out his clickbaiting ways.
One week from today, 16 of the world’s best Hearthstone players from around the globe will be competing against one another in the Hearthstone Championship Tour (HCT) 2019 World Championship. Taking place in Taipei, a $1 million prize pool is up for grabs, as well as the glory of the title itself. On Wednesday, all 16 competitor’s deck selections were made public. Each player got the opportunity to select four decks from four different classes. The full list of decks can be found here. Below are a few takeaways from the pool of decks and cards that will be showcased next week.
For those that are unsure of what they want to play right-off-the-bat, we have compiled a list of decks that some of the most popular players are using and streaming live on Twitch. If you want to try out the decks themselves, the deck string is below as well.
There is a common stigma about the gaming industry from the general public that it's a "kids hobby" and they will "grow out of it eventually." Well, apparently Brian Kibler missed that memo as he is set to celebrate his 39th birthday in September. Kibler is currently one of the most well-known and accomplished individuals in the industry. His storied career that spans two decades has led him down the paths of a professional player, game designer, streamer, broadcaster, and more. Last weekend, Kibler attended PAX East, a gaming exhibition held in Boston, Massachusetts where he took to the casting desk for the Magic: The Gathering Arena $1 million Mythic Invitational event. In between matches, Kibler took a few moments to reflect on his journey in the game's industry and if it at all feels weird to see teenagers-- no younger than himself when he started--making tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars playing games in 2019.
What was meant to be an exciting day in the world of Hearthstone turned out to be, for many, a big letdown. Prior to launching a new card expansion for the game, it’s routine that a member of the Hearthstone development team pairs up with a popular figure within the community to showcase some new content being revealed in the upcoming weeks via Twitch. To show off some new cards for the upcoming “Rise of Shadows” expansion being released on April 9, a trio was assembled to get the playerbase hyped. Peter Whalen (Senior Game Designer), Cora “Songbird” Georgiou (Hearthstone competitive player/esports caster) and Chris Sierra (Community Manager) were paired together for the event. The stream started with 15-minutes of back-and-forth banter between the three about content that had already been revealed and some developer insight into the expansion as a whole. Those tuned into the stream to see new content (which was in the tens of thousands) grew bored of the conversation only a few minutes in.
At last, the eleventh expansion of Hearthstone’s franchise was revealed moments ago. Titled “Rise of Shadows,” the central theme revolves around a group of villains from the game’s past all working together to take down the floating city of Dalaran, for reasons that will likely be revealed throughout the single-player campaign. The first card set in the Year of the Dragon will introduce a new keyword: Twinspell. Similar to Echo-- a previously added keyword-- when you cast a spell another copy of the card will be added to your hand to be played again at a later time. The copied card does not have the Twinspell keyword available.
Over the course of the past week, Hearthstone’s Creative Team has been hard at work slowly teasing the upcoming in-game expansion and Wednesday’s Youtube video might be the final one before the official reveal. Throughout the four sub-minute long videos, the Fortune Teller, a character shown during the Whispers of the Old Gods expansion talks about assembling a team of plotters and schemers. Each of the tarot cards she has turned over has revealed a member of the evil squad being assembled for a reason that has yet to be revealed. It started with King Togwaggle, a final boss in the Kobolds and Catacombs expansion who lost all of his wealth and treasure to adventurers who defeated him in the single player game mode. The Fortune Teller knows he values fortune more than anything else and promises working with her will help him recover that.
Christmas came early for fans of Blizzard Entertainment's Hearthstone as the team released a blog post in the middle of the night that outlined numerous upcoming balance changes that are slated to go live later today. A few of the five cards that Blizzard deemed problematic have been topics of discussion within the Hearthstone community for years while others have only popped up his past calendar year. Blizzard's developer note regarding the specific changes states: "This balance update is focused on improving the long-term health of both Standard and Wild. We've opted to make these changes earlier in the expansion cycle than we normally consider; we'd like to hear your feedback on the timing of this update, in addition to what you think of all the individual card changes."
Overnight, Activision Blizzard (ATVI) stock dropped by an estimated 10 percent after their Quarter 3 earning’s report was made public. While the estimated revenue for the company was in-line with their projections of $1.66 billion for the quarter, a drop in monthly active users for the third straight quarter turned out to be a cause for concern for some.
The 10th expansion of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft was officially revealed at the annual BlizzCon event, held in the Anaheim Convention Center in California. "Rastakhan's Rumble," the name of the set, focuses on a couple of classic tribes that have existed in the World of Warcraft universe but have lacked a presence in the digital card version of the franchise.
