Hearthstone Update: Looking Ahead

 

Yours truly, Hearthstone community.

Nathan Lyons-Smith here, following up on last week’s promise to give you more insight into our Hearthstone strategy.

As a Hearthstone player since the beta days, I’m passionate about making sure the game we all love continues to thrive. As Executive Producer, it’s also my job to look out for the health of the game, our incredible team, and our equally incredible community.

We’re doing some important research and development for the future of Hearthstone to ensure the Tavern is your home for another decade and beyond. While we’re not ready to share details about that work just yet (and won’t be at this point), some time—I want you to know that we are committed to Hearthstone as we know it today, and that this work is happening in parallel with what I will detail below.

We’ve made some changes over the last 18 months that aren’t what you’ve come to expect from Hearthstone. We haven’t been very good at communicating our strategy for these changes. I apologize for that. My goal going forward is to be more open. We need to proactively share the changes we’re making with our community, along with the context of why we’re making them. I’ll start addressing that now.

Fun, focus and courage

Our strategy for Hearthstone is based on three words: fun, focus, and fearlessness.

Hearthstone is a unique kind of entertainment: moments of wonder and puzzle-filled combat, combined with the unique look and feel of the game. We strive every day to provide you with tools that inspire you to experience the game in your own way, so Hearthstone can deliver your own unique style of entertainment.

Constructed, Battlegrounds, and Arena are the most played modes by our community and the ones we’re making the biggest updates to, as you saw with Duos Battlegrounds earlier this year. By focusing on these modes, we can make more meaningful improvements in areas that impact the vast majority of our community.

We want to be bold in our quest for ever-more fun discoveries, and we strive to push beyond the status quo to do so. We saw such an opportunity in Arena. Over the past eight months, the Arena community has been energized by a few small but impactful design changes. Early access to expansion cards, new draft rules, and curated card pools have had a profound impact on the game mode. It’s worked well—Arena’s popularity has exploded, and we want to do more. We’re currently working on a very cool, substantial update for Arena, with plans to release it early next year.

Our team is committed to making bold, focused decisions. We value your passion for Hearthstone and we won’t always be perfect, but we promise we’ll listen and respond as quickly as possible. We’ll keep an eye on what’s not working as well as we’d like, while doubling down and pushing further when we find something great.

Making room for innovation in personalization

When we decided not to create a board for Perils in Paradise, we should have let you know sooner. In the future, we’ll make sure you have early visibility into changes like this and give you more information about what we’re working on.

We still plan to release one new board per year, but we also have some ambitious ideas that we know will be a significant undertaking. Going from three static game boards per year to just one allows us to start working on the coolest dynamic elements possible – like a system that lets you choose your favorite boards and pets(!). We’ve also received a lot of positive feedback on C’Thun, so we’re working on some truly revolutionary new Hero skins. It’s TOO EARLY to get into the details of what’s coming, but we’re going to be accelerating the integration of all existing Hearthstone boards into the Standard board rotation.

We also surveyed a lot of you to find out what cosmetics would be most interesting. The responses were mostly about deeper customization of the play space, and this feedback reinforced our desire to innovate and challenge what we’ve always done.

Thanks for your feedback

Hearthstone is here to stay. While it has evolved and adapted over the past 10 years, one thing hasn’t changed: it’s powered by an incredible team that’s as passionate and energetic as ever. We have a fantastic slate of upcoming maps and themes, exploring new stories to tell in Azeroth and beyond, as well as events and features that we hope will surprise and delight you all.

Many members of the team (myself included) frequent Hearthstone communities because we are huge fans of the game AND because we want to hear from you. We share a passion and love for the game and want it to be the best it can be so we can enjoy it together. As a team, we frequently talk about what we see and hear from you, and we need to make this a two-way conversation. With that in mind, I am committed to reaching out to you before the end of the year to update you on any changes to our strategy.

In the meantime, we hope you enjoy Perils in Paradise and discover new entertainment with the tourists. See you at the Tavern!

-Nathan