So lengthy, Year of the Mammoth! Blizzard are flipping the Hearthstone calendar over to a brand new 12 months, and this time we’re going goth for the Year of the Raven. Blizzard laid out their free-to-play card sport’s plans for the following 12 months on their DeadJournal, which embody launching one other three expansions whereas rotating others out of the Standard format, freshening Standard up additional by shifting a number of highly effective Classic playing cards (together with Ice Block) to the Wild Format, making Quests faster, and including in-game assist for operating your individual tournaments.
Blizzard are protecting shtum concerning the expansions for now, however maybe you would possibly like to invest on this teaser image which supplies little hints of themes. Let’s say they characterize Poe goth, cybergoth, and energy metallic. That’s virtually definitely appropriate.
When the primary growth does arrive, it should shunt Whispers of the Old Gods, One Night in Karazhan, and Mean Streets of Gadgetzan out of the Standard rotation to make room. They’ll nonetheless be playable within the Wild format.
Also leaving Standard are the playing cards Ice Block, Coldlight Oracle, and Molten Giant. They’re graduating to the ‘Hall of Fame’ set, which implies they’re highly effective and customary sufficient that Blizzard really feel they’ve an excessive amount of presence within the format and so they’re not fairly certain the way to repair that. Molten Giant may also revert to its pre-nerf casting price of 20. All these stay playable in Wild, and Blizzard will refund gamers their Arcane Dust worth too.
Most Quests will grow to be faster within the Year of the Raven, decreasing the variety of occasions you could do particular issues – whereas lowering the rewards to match.
As for in-game tournaments, they’re attributable to enter public beta testing “around the middle of this year.” They’ll let gamers organise and run tournaments mediated by the sport, reasonably than having to rearrange and juggle every little thing externally ought to be helpful.
Oh, and a brand new Druid hero is coming, the dryad Lunara.
Blizzard don’t say fairly when the Year of the Raven will start, however the truth that they’re selling a livestream with sport director Ben Brode to debate it on March 2nd would recommend, y’know, not tomorrow.
Speaking of, Brode scrubbed off his corpse paint and slicked again his mohawk for this video introducing the Year of the Raven:
