Just when you thought you had collected every card…
Fans of Blizzard’s online Trading Card Game Hearthstone had pretty much nothing but praise for its single-player focused Curse of Naxxramas expansion set. But, as cool and as fun as it was, it only added 30 actual new cards. Blizzard says that to remedy this, it is currently prepping a full expansion for the game, that will contain over 100 new cards.
“I think we’re going to mix it up a little bit with this next release, which will be our first expansion,” Hearthstone production director Jason Chayes told Polygon. “It will have a lot more cards. We’re talking about more than 100. We are going to have a central theme for how that will all fit together. That’ll be the next thing coming up.”
Chayes explains that in order for a TCG, even an online TCG such as Hearthstone to thrive, it takes a constant influx of new cards for players to acquire and master. He says that Blizzard is closely monitoring the game to decide just how often they will allow new cards to trickle into it.
“One of the things that we spend a lot of time talking about is pacing,” said Chayes. “Not just the pacing of the game as it is, but pacing of the rollout of new content. We really want to make sure the pacing is great not just for seasoned Hearthstone players but for new players coming into the game too.”
Indeed, no-one wants to come into a game as a fresh new player, and discover that there is a gargantuan pile of content they have to acquire before they can butt heads with the veterans (I’m looking at you, League of Legends).
Chayes added that if the upcoming expansion works out well, “we could imagine a future where we do a combination of [single-player] adventures like Naxxramas and [card-focused] expansions kind of intermixed to have different sorts of experiences going out over the course of a year.”
In terms of non-card related ways to expand the game, Chayes said that the team had an “idea to expand and have new modes where players can play in different ways,” but stressed that this was more of a long-term project.
As for when this expansion will launch, Chayes wouldn’t offer more than the trademark Blizzard “Soon”.
Source: Polygon
