Hearthstone interview: Deep dive into United in Stormwind, Quests, Classic, and more
Shacknews has a fireside gathering with game designers, Cora Georgiou and Chadd Nervig, about Hearthstone's newest card set, United in Stormwind.
The World of Warcraft Alliance capital city is set to be a focal point of the newest Hearthstone card set, United in Stormwind. Shacknews had the chance to speak with game designers Cora Georgiou and Chadd Nervig about the upcoming card set, new Questlines, Classic mode, and much more. Grab your favorite tankard and pull up to the embedded viewer below to learn more.
“Well, I think this is an exciting time to watch our main characters of this Year of the Gryphon level up and also to take a look at the Alliance side of things,” Nervig explained to Shacknews about what made this the right time to explore Stormwind in Hearthstone. “We looked at the Horde side of things in Forged in the Barrens and that low level—just starting out your adventures—sort-of experience and now we’re leveling things up.” Nervig continues by comparing the previous Barrens card set, “Unlike the Barrens, you’re not constantly struggling to survive in Stormwind. It’s more about that hustle and bustle and the excitement of life in the big city.”
Another big addition to United in Stormwind are Questlines, the third iteration of quests introduced to Hearthstone. Cora Georgiou details the new mechanics that give Questlines more depth than before. “The big difference here is that instead of just a single quest that you’re going on where you do the thing and get the pay out, now we have a series of sort-of smaller incremental quests. So you’ll actually accomplish three separate smaller quests before you get your big mercenary Legendary reward…” Georgiou further explains the ideas behind Questlines, “So we thought, ‘let’s take bits and pieces of what our players really liked in the past of the gameplay and also take an opportunity to tell a really cool story…’”
Other topics covered include the fate of the mercenaries in the next expansion after United in Stormwind, the new Tradable keyword for cards and its utility, profession tools as new weapon cards, the class identities found in the new card set, the challenges of designing a card game over eight years and balancing standard and wild play, and a lot more in this deep dive interview.
Hearthstone’s newest card set, United in Stormwind is available for pre-purchase and will launch on August 3, 2021. Check out Shacknews and GamerHubTV on YouTube for more in-depth developer interviews.
