Hearthstone recently announced the Year of the Wolf - its newest Standard cycle coming alongside the Festival of Legends set. Once the expansion drops in April, the Core set from the previous Year of the Hydra will be replaced, swapping out the free cards available to all players for a new collection. The arrival of the Year of the Wolf will also officially see the cards from the Year of the Gryphon expansions retired to Wild, outside the ones Hearthstone is adding to the new Core set.

Game Rant spoke with Hearthstone senior game designer and initial design lead Cora Georgiou and senior game designer and final design lead Aleco Pors about the Year of the Wolf Core set. Many of the cards from the past two years have given the Hearthstone team many opportunities to learn and grow. The developers shared a few lessons they learned from Hearthstone’s past to make its future even better.

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What the Year of the Wolf Learned from Hearthstone’s Past

hs year of the wolf past lessons

Balancing the desire to give players access to awesome cards in a Core set while also maintaining class flavor and supporting future Hearthstone expansions is no small feat. “It's a lot of fun when the Core set is powerful,” Georgiou said, “But if you have power pieces, like Brann Bronzebeard for instance, it can be a little difficult to design powerful Battlecries knowing Brann is going to be a factor for the entire year.” Brann’s run in Standard during the Year of the Hydra taught Hearthstone the risks of putting game-changing cards in Standard, and drove home the importance of identifying and adapting to those risk factors.

“We must be able to identify when there might be risks we are taking, take risks even though they are risky, and be flexible. Being able to pivot when we need to, being able to adapt our design philosophy for future sets to be able to fit, and being able to balance when we have to.”

Cards from Forged in the Barrens, United in Stormwind, and Fractured in Alterac Valley gave also taught Hearthstone some valuable lessons. “The Year of the Gryphon had some really wonderful highs, but also had some definite lessons we learned,” Georgiou admitted. As these cards rotate into the Wild format, Hearthstone had the chance to examine the impact these cards had during their time in Standard.

Though many of these cards impacted the meta in their own ways, few did so in as profound a way as the Hearthstone Hero cards from Fractured in Alterac Valley. “Hero cards were really exciting for us to do for a second time,” Georgiou said. Some of them, like the controversial Druid Hero card Wildheart Guff, went through some balance changes, but the Hero cards did a great job of encapsulating the character-focused themes from the expansions.

Questlines introduced in Hearthstone's United in Stormwind expansion, on the other hand, may be some of the most contentious cards in the game's history. “[Questlines] are very good at telling players how to build a deck… but there is certainly a lot of risk when you’re putting that much power and endgame potential into a card you are always going to have.” Unlike the Quests that came before, Questlines came with show-stopping minions that often spelled the end of the game once played. During their run in Standard, nearly all the Questlines had to be nerfed at least once.

The Demon Seed Questline for the Warlock class in Hearthstone was so powerful that it actually needed to be banned in Wild, making it the second card to ever be restricted in the format after Stealer of Souls - another Year of the Gryphon card. While doing so was necessary at the time, both The Demon Seed and Stealer of Souls will have to be unbanned with the Year of the Wolf, or the card would be unplayable in every format. Luckily, Pors confirmed Hearthstone was taking a conservative approach to reintroducing it to Wild.

“We don’t want [The Demon Seed] to reappear as this Tier 1 menace everyone has to beat right away… we hope it isn’t going to be this hyper meta-dominant force, and if it is for whatever reason, we would make adjustments to it to stop that from being true.”

All told, Hearthstone seems to be unafraid to learn from the mistakes of its past. Georgiou and Pors are both committed to making Hearthstone a better game by taking more risks while not being afraid to roll with the punches. With all this on top of the Festival of Legends expansion for Hearthstone, it seems like the Year of the Wolf is going to be quite an exciting year.

Hearthstone is available now for Mobile and PC.

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