As if Tuesday's announcement wasn't enough, Blizzard Entertainment's Hearthstone team announced one of the largest patches in the game's history is going live on Thursday, impacting two multiplayer game modes. Titled patch 18.6, more than 30 cards and hero abilities in the Battlegrounds and Duels game modes saw balances changes, substantially changing metas and playstyles.
Chaos, pandemonium and a little bit of fun were announced on Thursday morning as Blizzard Entertainment revealed their upcoming Hearthstone expansion titled Madness at the Darkmoon Faire. Scheduled to go live on November 17, players will be able to summon the Old Gods once again to go along with a 170 card set, the largest in the game's history. Traditionally, Hearthstone expansions release the full set of cards all at once but for the Madness at the Darkmoon Faire, things are changing. Mid-way through the expansion's life cycle, a 35 card mini set will launch that will build off of existing content while keeping players excited for something new.
Dust off your dancing shoes, pick up your finest suit from the dry cleaners and make sure your hair is looking fresh as a glorious affair has arrived in the world of Hearthstone. On Monday afternoon, Blizzard Entertainment revealed the newest in-game event for their collectible card game titled the Scholomance Academy Masquerade Ball. Taking place between today and October 21, players from around the world will get to experience never-before-seen content across each of the game's playable modes.
On Thursday afternoon, Blizzard Entertainment announced the next set of content coming to their digital card game, Hearthstone, and the title's popular auto chess game mode, Battlegrounds. Beginning on Tuesday, September 8, players will be able to team up with seven of their friends in a lobby for a match of Battlegrounds against one another as part of their Forbidden Library event.
At this point in the six-year history of Blizzard Entertainment's collectible card game, Hearthstone, it's almost routine that long-time professional player and content creator David "Dog" Caero will, at one point or another, break the speed at which he plays. Back in 2018, Dog was known for mastering a one-turn-kill combo that required as much APM (action per minute) as it did brainpower to pull off. For a casual player tuning in to watch his stream on Twitch, it was mesmerizing and inconceivable to see so many moving pieces on a 2D board in a game that, by definition, aims to limit the number of actions a player can make in a single turn by having a mana cap.
Hearthstone Patch 17.2 goes live on May 12, just over a month after the last game update that curbed the scorching hot influence of Demon Hunter cards.
Ever since Blizzard Entertainment released their take on the next great thing in gaming, auto-chess, it's all the Hearthstone community is talking about. When Battlegrounds went live in the Hearthstone client back in the middle of November, a switch was flipped. Content creators, professional players, and viewers flocked to the game mode in droves. In the weeks since, that remains true. At this point, one may forget that Hearthstone is a digital card game opposed to an auto-chess giant. Or is it now both?
On Tuesday evening, data miners revealed that inside Hearthstone's most recent patch (15.6.2.36393) were four upcoming heroes for the game's auto-chess game mode, Hearthstone Battlegrounds. While the information can change at any time with if new patch ships, the League of Explorers will become selectable characters when players first fire up a game of Battlegrounds. All of them except maybe their most famous member that is. The following custom art images are from Hearthstone Top Decks to visualize what players may experience.
Although the game has only been out for one week, Activision Blizzard's development team is making sure that Hearthstone Battlegrounds is getting the respect it deserves. On Monday afternoon, a member of the Hearthstone community team shared the game's first patch notes since the mode went into Early Access last week. With numerous balance changes, game fixes, and updates taking place, Blizzard is working to ensure that Battlegrounds isn't a flash in the pan. The following changes are currently live on the PC version of the game while the mobile version will be updated over the next few hours.
Activision Blizzard's take on the popular auto-chess genre, Hearthstone Battlegrounds, has only been live via early access for three days but that hasn't stopped the game's community from debating over what (or who) is best. With 24 different heroes to choose from, all of which have a unique hero power that is intended to keep gameplay fresh, there are bound to be some that are better than others at any given time depending on the meta.
Inven Global spoke to Ben Thompson, developer and Art Director for Blizzard, and Mike Donais, Hearthstone's Principal Game Designer, at BlizzCon 2019 about the creative integrity of Hearthstone, the humble beginnings of Battlegrounds' development, and the importance of looking at the long- term with the sudden uptick of competition from other developers in the industry.
Activision Blizzard's take on the popular auto-chess genre, Hearthstone Battlegrounds, has been live for only 24 hours but that hasn't stopped players from grinding to the top of the game's leaderboards. Currently, the title is only available to those who attended BlizzCon, purchased a BlizzCon Virtual Ticket, or pre-purchased the upcoming Dragons of Descent expansion card bundle. For those who haven't done any of the above, Battlegrounds is scheduled to go live on Tuesday, November 12 at 10 a.m. PDT.
