Hearthstone’s next mini-set is a StarCraft crossover: one that will reimagine the various units of Blizzard’s beloved sci-fi RTS in card form. In addition to this, Blizzard announced an entire year’s worth of Hearthstone expansions in one go and a dramatic change to the game’s Arena mode, giving players a full picture of what to expect in 2025.
Yes, Blizzard made the bold move of announcing a StarCraft crossover during its Warcraft 30th anniversary direct–a livestream that also celebrated 10 years of Hearthstone. The crossover is the largest mini-set Blizzard has ever done for its digital card game, with 49 total cards.
To learn more, GameSpot sat down with Hearthstone senior game designer Cora Georgiou and game designer Leo Robles Gonzalez ahead of the direct to talk about what it was like adapting StarCraft into card game form, the upcoming changes to Arena, and all of the expansions coming next year.
Gonzalez said the development team is trying to be a bit more “adventurous,” given that the game is a decade old and its players are eager to see new things. That’s one of the reasons it went big on the upcoming StarCraft mini-set.
“I think we’re trying to swing pretty hard here,” Gonzalez said. “It’s the first time we’ve ever done something this deeply outside of Warcraft.”
Different classes will be able to use a specific StarCraft hero. Each StarCraft faction will have its own set of cards, some of which can be used by any class and others that are class-specific. Warriors, Paladins, and Shamans, for example, can use Jim Raynor and take full advantage of Terran cards, while Death Knights, Hunters, Warlocks, and Demon Hunters can embrace the Zerg swarm with Kerrigan. Meanwhile, Mages, Priests, Rogues, and Druids can use the powers of Artanis, with a focus on powerful, high-mana-cost Protoss units that can be made cheaper.
Gonzalez said adapting StarCraft into the card game wasn’t all that different from adapting Warcraft (both involve lots of research). The main difference was instead of looking to specific characters for card ideas, the team had to draw inspiration from StarCraft’s iconic units. Gonzalez said it was also important to capture that feeling of StarCraft’s gameplay.
The gameplay of it–there’s micro and there’s macro–and it was really important to us to make sure that the macro of, ‘What is your game plan overall with one of the three factions’… does that feel quintessentially like them?” Gonzalez said. “That’s not something we had to super duper think about with the average Warcraft character.”
The Heroes of StarCraft mini-set will release in January 2025, but the StarCraft crossover was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to Hearthstone announcements. Blizzard also revealed a full 2025 roadmap with three upcoming expansions, as well a major shake-up to the game’s Arena mode.
Arena, Hearthstone’s premium draft mode, has been largely unchanged since the game launched in 2014, but that will be changing soon. In the first half of 2025, Blizzard will change Arena in a big way by introducing two versions of Arena to choose from. Normal Arena will be similar to what exists now but sport faster runs while still letting players flex their competitive deck-building muscles. Another new version of the mode, the Underground Arena, will take things even further. The Underground will include players of all skill levels (in contrast to Normal Arena, which will still use a win-based matchmaking system), longer runs, and a new feature called “re-draft on loss” that lets players re-draft cards and edit their deck before going again in order to up their chances of winning. Both Arena modes will have their own ranked system.
Georgiou said the splitting of Arena into two modes came as a result of wanting to create an easier entry point for newer players while simultaneously giving existing Arena players more challenge and higher stakes. The mode is currently difficult for new players to dive into because of how heavy the competition can be, as many who specialize in Arena have been playing since Hearthstone first released.
“It was really to raise that ceiling for players who want that but also lower the floor a little bit so Arena can be a place that is welcoming for all types of players again,” Georgiou said.
Hearthstone’s first expansion set for the new year, Into the Emerald Dream, will transport players to the idealized, natural version of Azeroth as druidic defenders of the dream battle against the forces of the Old Gods. It’s something the Hearthstone team has long had in its “back pocket,” Georgiou said, and always knew would eventually be an expansion. It was actually in the running to be released last year, but the team pivoted to avoid stepping on the toes of World of Warcraft: Dragonflight’s Emerald Dream-themed update. The expansion’s mini-set, Druids of the Flame, will add the faction of corrupted elemental druids to further stoke the fires of battle.
Its second expansion of 2025 is actually a sequel, a first in Hearthstone history–The Shrouded City. This set picks up where 2017’s Journey to Un’Goro set left off, as the explorer Elise hunts for a lost Tortollan city, with a Tortollan-themed festival mini-set coming later. The Hearthstone team actually invented the Tortollan race for the original Un’Goro set (which would later be added to WoW), and the upcoming expansion provided a great opportunity to further flesh out the backstory of the Tortollan and “peel back” some of the layers of the original Un’Goro expansion.
“To be able to revisit an area that is so compelling that had so much that wasn’t explored before, and to be able to look at it in a new light, I think will be really, really fun,” Georgiou said.
The third and final Hearthstone expansion for 2025, Heroes of Time, will explore alternative versions of Azeroth’s past, where players will find versions of legendary heroes as players “have never seen them before.” That will all lead to an epic battle at the end of time with the corrupted leader of the Infinite Dragonflight, Murozond. Given how much of an emphasis WoW has put on the Bronze Dragonflight and Chromie in recent years, it’s a little surprising Hearthstone hasn’t dived deep on alternate timeline shenanigans yet. But that’s worked out in the team’s favor.
“I think doing it when there is so much to pull from in Hearthstone’s past feels like the perfect, pun half-intended, time to do it,” Gonzalez said. “There’s so many characters our fans love and characters from Warcraft that our fans might not even be super exposed to that are in that thematic bucket. It’s a really rich theme.”
In other Warcraft news, Blizzard announced as part of the direct that its newly announced remastered versions of Warcraft 1 and 2, as well as a major 2.0 update for Warcraft 3: Reforged, are all available now.