Blizzcon kicked off November 7th, setting off a flurry of news about StarCraft II, World of Warcraft and a new IP called Overwatch. What caught my eye, however, was none of that. Blizzard has finally announced the first expansion for Hearthstone, Goblins vs Gnomes! The new content will go live sometime in December of this year, which is nearly a full year after the game entered its open beta, and nine months after the game’s release.
The expansion will add over 120 brand new cards to the game, as well as a completely new type of minion: Mechs. The cards will be available to purchase in the Hearthstone store as separate booster packs with the same pricing as the current Expert Packs. For those who prefer Arena Mode, all of the cards in the expansion will be added to the random card rotation, regardless of whether or not you have them in your collection.
I should mention that Blizzard also announced the addition of Spectator Mode. If any of your friends are online and in a game, you can jump right in and watch their game. That’s a pretty cool feature, and I can see it working quite well with a bit of modification for tournament play.
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is free to play, developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment. If you haven’t already, you can download it here. You can also download it straight from the Battle.net launcher if you have it. It’s available on PC, Mac and iPad, with release on Android tablets scheduled for December 2014. Release on iPhone and Android phones should be early 2015.
