Hello Hearthstone community,
Nathan Lyons Smith. Last week’s promise To provide more details about our strategy regarding Hearthstone.
As someone who has played Hearthstone since the beta, I am passionate about ensuring that the game we all love continues to thrive. As Executive Producer, it’s my job to oversee the health of the game, our amazing team, and our equally amazing community.
We’re doing significant research and development into the future of Hearthstone to ensure the Tavern remains a favorite place for you for the next decade or more. We’re not ready to share more about this work just yet, but for a while—We are focused on Hearthstone as we know it today, and we want you to know that this work is happening in parallel with what is detailed below.
Over the past 18 months, we’ve made some changes that were different from what you’ve come to expect from Hearthstone. We didn’t communicate our strategy around these changes well, and for that, I apologize. Moving forward, it’s my goal to be more open. We need to proactively share the changes we’re making with the community, along with some context for why we’re making these changes. That’s what I’m going to do now.
Have fun, be focused, be fearless
Hearthstone strategy is based on three words: fun, focus, and fearless.
Hearthstone offers a unique look and feel to the game, as well as ingenious, puzzle-like combat that makes it even more fun. We work hard to make Hearthstone your own, and to give you the tools to inspire you to experience the game in your own way.
Constructed, Battlegrounds, and Arena are the modes our community plays the most and are where we get our biggest updates, like Battlegrounds Duos earlier this year. Focusing on these modes allows us to make more meaningful improvements to the areas that impact the majority of our community.
We are bold in our quest for more fun experiences and strive to challenge the status quo. We saw such an opportunity with Arena. Over the past eight months, the Arena community has been energized with small but impactful design changes. Early access to expansion cards, new draft rules, and a curated card pool had a major impact on the game mode. This has worked very well. Arena’s popularity has skyrocketed, and we are excited to do more. We are currently working on a large and very cool update for Arena, which we aim to release early next year.
Taking bold, focused steps is a decision our team is committed to. We appreciate your passion for Hearthstone. We won’t always be perfect, but we promise to listen and respond as quickly as possible. We’ll keep an eye out for things that aren’t working as expected, and go the extra mile when we find great things.
Creating room for innovation in personalization
We should have communicated this sooner when we decided not to create a Perils in Paradise board. Going forward, we will communicate these changes earlier and provide more information about what we’re working on instead.
We plan to release one new board per year, but have some ambitious ideas that we know will be big undertakings. Reducing three static game boards per year to one will allow us to start working on the coolest dynamic things possible, like a choose your favorite board system. Pets(!)We’ve also received a lot of positive feedback about C’Thun and are working on an exciting new hero skin. While it’s too early to share specifics about what’s coming next, we plan to rapidly incorporate all existing Hearthstone boards into the standard format board rotation.
We also surveyed many of you, asking you which cosmetics you found most interesting. The responses were mostly about further personalizing your play space, and this feedback reinforced our desire to innovate and challenge what we’ve done before.
Thank you for your feedback.
Hearthstone is here to stay. While it has evolved and adapted over the past decade, one thing remains constant: there is an amazing team behind it, as passionate and energetic as ever. We have an incredible lineup of cards and themes that explore new stories to be told in and beyond Azeroth, as well as events and features that are sure to surprise and delight you.
Many of our team members (including myself) are lurking in the Hearthstone community. It’s because we’re big fans of this game and want your feedback. We have a passion and love for this game and want to make it the best it can be so that we can enjoy it together. As a team, we frequently discuss what we see and hear from you all, and we need to make this a two-way conversation. With that in mind, I promise to check in with you all again here before the end of the year to update you on any upcoming strategic changes.
Until then, enjoy Perils in Paradise and join the tourists in exploring new possibilities. See you at the tavern!
-Nathan
