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The future of Hearthstone. There’s a lot

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Blizzard’s mighty CCG is out now; read our Hearthstone review to see what we thought of it.

Blizzard have been showing off a truck load of new content coming to their various franchises over at Blizzcon. Hearthstone — while being fairly new — is getting all the trimmings and then some in future patches and content updates. A new ranked mode, golden heroes, increased arena rewards, a reconnect feature, new legendary effects and an adventure mode to be exact.

A revision of ranked play sees players leveling up their avatar from chicken to dreadlord in an effort to separate the casual from the hardcore. Winning games will earn you a shiny star until you earn enough to progress to the next rank. There is a caveat however as you can actually lose stars as well in this mode. Players start at 25 and work all the way to rank 1, but it doesn’t stop there. At the end of every season — lasting roughly a month — players will be reset back down to rank 25. The best of the best however can progress past rank 1 and into “legend” status. Once in this status they will next be reset back to rank 25. Instead their rank is replaced with a number indicating their rank for their entire region.

If you choose to participate in the months season of ranked play, you’ll also obtain flashy exclusive card backs that rotate every month. If you’re really good, you can even get your hands on a golden version of a hero if you go 500+ wins in ranked play with that specific class. Arena is also getting a touch up. Now you can go to a whooping 12 wins with three new reward tiers.

Need a hand in building your Hearthstone decks? You should probably check out ourbest Hearthstone decks for beginners.

If you’re looking for a more PvE experience then Hearthstone has your back. Adventures offer heroes a single player quest to defeat a number of epic bosses. You can earn special cards associated with each boss, which inturn can be played in other game modes. There will be roughly 20-30 cards per boss to unlock. Expansions are also on the table. While nothing was announced, they certainly were mentioned.

It’s a pain in the ass sometimes to pay some real money in an arena game only to disconnect/crash, begrudgingly earning you one of your three allowed game losses. Thankfully this is getting address with the addition of a reconnect feature. There’s no word on when it’s coming, but the sooner the better.

Additions aren’t the only talking point. Change is coming to the current set with cards being nerfed and buffed due to player feedback. Mind Control — a card which takes over any enemy minion — is getting bumped up to a ten mana cost card (which is only shared with Deathwing). Starving Buzzard which draws you a card for every summoned beast is being bumped down from a 2/2 to a 2/1. Finally Call the Hounds is being reworked, but the outcome is yet to be decided.

Legendary cards are also getting a facelift. When summoned, each legendary will have a unique entrance which will pay homage to their characteristics. An example shown was King Krush — a huge dinosaur — stampede onto the game board Jurassic Park style.

The future is bright for Hearthstone. The new, the old, the casual and the hardcore are all being catered for. Will you being going for the legend status? Maybe you will be jumping into Adventure mode and wailing away at the many bosses. If you’re like me, you’ll be doing it all.