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Hearthstone Marks 2018 as the 'Year of the Raven'

The Year of the Mammoth is at an end, as Hearthstone prepares to usher in the Year of the Raven, with a new Druid Hero and a new round of Hall of Fame cards.

Ozzie Mejia

February 27, 2018 10:05 AM

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Hearthstone is officially ready to introduce a new Standard year. With that said, say goodbye to the Year of the Mammoth and say hello to the Year of the Raven. And with the introduction of the Year of the Raven comes a few new reveals, including a new Hero and the next batch of Hall of Fame cards.

A new Druid Hero was revealed on Tuesday morning. It's the dryad Lunara, first daughter of Cenarius. Heroes of the Storm fans will recognize this character as the ranged assassin character first introduced after BlizzCon 2015. She didn't make her World of Warcraft debut until later when the Legion expansion was released. She'll be fairly easy to unlock for Hearthstone. Just like Maiev last year, players will simply have to win ten Standard games.

The next round of Hall of Fame cards was also revealed, but unlike last year, the list is noticeably smaller this time around. While last year saw six cards from the Classic set get shifted into Wild, this year it's only three cards: Ice Block, Coldlight Oracle, and Molten Giant.

"But wait!" some Hearthstone players may exclaim. "Wasn't Molten Giant already nerfed a long time ago?" It certainly was, hypothetical Hearthstone player! But as part of its Hall of Fame induction, Molten Giant is getting a rare nerf reversal. That means it's going back to its original 20-mana cost to give Wild players a new toy to play around with. Just as was the case last year, players will get the full dust value for all of their Hall of Fame cards as a bonus, with no disenchantment required.

While it's interesting to see which cards have made it into the Hall of Fame, it's more intriguing to see which ones didn't. In particular, Shacknews was surprised to see the Silence-inducing Spellbreaker not make this cut, given its overwhelming presence in decks over the last few months. But according to Hearthstone Game Director Ben Brode, the minion was never under consideration.

"We actually did not have Spellbreaker on our list of cards that we were considering," Brode told Shacknews. "I think it's important to have cards that help in a scenario where the meta goes in a certain direction and you need an answer. Right now, there are a lot of cards where you really feel like you want Spellbreaker to deal with those cards and if you don't have that in the Classic format, that's okay, but then we need to make sure we have answers to those things in all of our rotating sets. Right now, we this with dealing with Secrets, where in the Classic set, only Hunter can deal with it with Flare. But if you're really frustrated with Secrets and you want an answer to Secrets, we have to make sure to print one of those in every other year of Standard so that there is an option for players if we happen to make Secrets quite good and they're frustrated by seeing it over and over again. So I think Spellbreaker is in an okay spot. He sees a lot of play when there are lots of cards that are quite good to be Silenced and you can predict the meta well. If there's lots of different things and you can't predict the meta well, or the meta goes too far in one direction, having cards that brings that back in the other direction I think is helpful. I think Spellbreaker lands in that spot for us right now."

Brode did point out that with Ice Block going into the Hall of Fame, it does mean that a disproportionate number of Mage cards have been sent into Wild. One potential solution to this involves bringing cards from older expansions into Classic, an idea the team has been tossing around since the Hall of Fame's inception. But Brode is looking to make sure any new Classic additions aren't considered meta-defining.

"A lot of players really like playing Mage," Brode said. "It's one of the most played classes coming out of the tutorial. I would like there to be the same number of Mage cards as other classes. The trick is, the cards that we decide to rotate in, ideally are not meta-defining. That's the whole point of doing these rotations in the first place. The evergreen cards set the tone and class identity for the cards and are powerful, but not '60 percent of all the cards in the Standard' viable. It needs to be a smaller percentage than that. So we need to make sure they're, in some ways, either weak or niche. So the kinds of cards that we're rotating in are not the level of power of the power of the cards that are rotating out. An example for this is, we've considered rotating Shatter back in. I don't think players are itching to see Shatter, but I think it does help define what Mage is about and that's freezing effects. It's actually exciting for players coming into the game, because it's a cool combo, but it's not like we would rotate cards back in that are going to make a huge impact on the Standard environment."

Hearthstone players can also expect to see a new Tournament feature coming soon. This will allow anyone to create in-game tournaments, where the client takes care of matchmaking and deck requirements. While this is mainly aimed at Fireside Gatherings, anybody can utilize this feature. Look for the beta to kick off this summer.

More information on the aforementioned additions to Hearthstone can be seen in the video below.

One thing the video did not cover is that the Year of the Raven will usher in some changes to daily quests. All 40 Gold quests are going by the wayside, with all quests going forward awarding a minimum of 50 Gold. On top of that, requirements will be eased. For example, quests that require three wins will only require two wins, while quests that require playing 50 certain card will only require 40. This is in an effort to make completing daily quests easier and make the overall game more welcoming to newcomers. With that in mind, the team is open to further changes down the road.

Lastly, there's the subject of expansions. The Year of the Raven will see three new expansions, with the next one set to be revealed in March. In addition to new cards, the expansions all promise to feature new single-player content. While Blizzard didn't offer any hints as to what the next expansion would be, there is one minor hint. Remember that the "Year of the Kraken" heralded the Whispers of the Old Gods, while the "Year of the Mammoth" hinted at Journey to Un'Goro. So take the Raven as your sole hint.

Those looking for a chance to talk to Ben Brode and Yong Woo themselves will get their opportunity on Friday, March 2 at 11AM PT. That's when they'll jump on the Hearthstone Twitch channel to take community questions and look back at the Year of the Mammoth.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?