On March 25,Hearthstoneplayers will be able to check out theInto the Emerald Dream expansion, which features a total of 145 brand new cards. It will also introduce two brand new key words, Imbue and Dark Gift, as well as expand the Choose One keyword. Overall, there are a lot of interesting things coming down the pipeline forHearthstone’s 32.0 update.
Ahead of its release, Game Rant spoke withHearthstonelead designerEdward Goodwin and concept artist Dez Bencosme about the making of the new expansion, the various design decisions at play in Into The Emerald Dream, and overall, what fans should expect on March 25.The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Going Into The Emerald Dream
Q: How did the team land on the Emerald Dream for this expansion’s theme?
Goodwin:This theme is one we’ve actually wanted to do for a very long time in Hearthstone. Whenever we start brainstorming for a new expansion, like where we want to go, what we want to do, what character stories do we want to tell, we always have this meeting with a giant whiteboard. Everyone throws their wacky or random ideas on it, and as a team, we kind of vote on which ones we like the most.
I think, for the most part, Emerald Dream has always been voted for the most or the second most. But, every single time we went to WoW and said, ‘Hey, can we do this?’ They’re like, ‘No, please give us room to tell our story first before you go and venture into the Emerald Dream.’
I’m so glad we did. If you look at the Emerald Dream andEmerald Nightmare zone in WoW, oh my gosh, it is so awesome. It let us build many more stories and add a lot more Hearthstone whimsy to the epicness that WoW had. For us, it was kind of a waiting game.
Q: Lore is always important to the Hearthstone team. How did you approach this expansion on that front?
Bencosme:Since there was all this new content added by the WoW team, we had a lot more to work with, especially artistically. As far as the environment, a lot of that work was really well-developed, but we were able to pull a lot of that for The Emerald Dream to redesign the Wild Gods.
For the Wild Gods, we really wanted to ensure that you could tell which side they were aligned with, whether it was the Dream or Nightmare. We took that opportunity to give them those treatments; the gods associated with the Dream have some really glowy, like ethereal, wispy, windy effects on them. I’ll useOhn’ahraas an example, where they are inspired by eastern dragons and have a feathery, blue celestial tail. The wind chimes that float around them give them this larger-than-life feeling.
On the opposite side, there’sOmen who is a character that was already nightmarishto begin with. You had a dog, but we did the exposed skull and paws and gave it the silhouette of a dog but in red flames. It was just a lot of fun giving these characters this treatment and pulling them into those two sides.
That was, I feel, the biggest thing we did visually that’s distinguishable from what was done in Wow. It was honestly really fun for our concept artists to work on.
Q: The Expansion is introducing two new keywords, Dark Gift and Imbue. Can you talk about how these will impact player strategy and the meta?
Goodwin:I could talk about this for hours, so I’ll try to condense this as much as possible. Specifically, I think it’s fun to talk about Dark Gift and how I think it changes long term player strategy.
Let’s rewind time eight years inHearthstone: League of Explorerscomes out and Discover is released. It’s one of the most player-positive keywords Hearthstone has; it often rates as our best keyword by a lot of players. It’s been eight years since then, and players have gotten really good at Hearthstone. What used to be, in some instances, an interesting choice between option A or B, players are now good enough that they often know the right answers. There’s usually at least one card you may say, “Ah, I would never consider this.”
What I think is really cool about Dark Gift and how it changes the player strategy long term is that we’re now giving players a much more meaningful choice. In a lot of ways, we’re asking you questions about like, which card you want to pick that you may have never thought of before. There’s a card in the game that I like to point to for this, which is called Bucket of Soldiers. It’s from theWhizbang’s Workshop expansion. It’s a 3-mana 0/2 with deathrattle. When this dies, you summon 5 1/1 soldiers with bonus effects.
That card, by itself, isn’t really that powerful. We have one where you can summon a 2/2 copy of it. That’s awesome with Bucket of Soldiers, so what I think is great about Dark Gift from a long-term strategy perspective is that it really adds a bunch of that skill testing back to Discover, which I’m really excited about. I think players will be too, along with it just being an exciting keyword.
For Imbue, I think it’s going to be big for meta updates and what strategies are going to be playing in the game. I thinkDruid Imbueis really interesting because what it’s asking you to do is mostly a deckbuilding question of ‘can you play all the nature spells?’ Then, because of that, it’s going to totally change how you approach the game if you had been playing more minions, Arcane spells, or stuff like that. I think it’s going to have a huge impact on the meta.
Q: This expansion touches on some important subjects to players. What cards did you feel were absolutely necessary to include in the Emerald Dream?
Goodwin:Before getting into specific cards, I think the most important thing is the characters, right? Because Hearthstone often tells the story of the characters in a location. For us, the number one thing was we have to have the Wild Gods and ways to show the corruption in Emerald Dream. Xavius, being a huge component of theEmerald Nightmare in World of Warcraft, was one of those characters we had slated as just ‘Yep, we have to do these.’
It’s great that we can pull so much from World of Warcraft. They’ve already established so many of these awesome characters to pull from, so it’s very easy to bring them over and port them into Hearthstone. I would say those fantastic characters are the most important to include. Personally, there are some other cards that I think were must-haves, but more from a funny perspective, like Mother Duck and the Ducklings. ‘Hey, we’re doing the Emerald Dream set. We have to have those.’
If I had to talk about my only disappointment with the set is that I really wish we had commissioned an ugly duckling art for that card. Then, you have a really low chance of getting the ugly duckling with a weird eye and maybe his head is a little bit misshapen. But unfortunately, we didn’t get it. I wouldn’t say that’s a team stance on an importance card, but I’m really glad we got to do the ducks.
Q: Do characters tend to come first when designing an expansion like Into The Emerald Dream, or is it the case that sometimes abilities or features come first? What’s the interplay there?
Goodwin:This speaks to a pretty critical component ofHearthstone designand design for many games, maybe all games, which is top-down design versus bottom-up design. Top-down design is that we have these characters, we have this fantasy, and we have this setting. How do we tell that story in Hearthstone? Bottom-up design is that we have a game that is served globally to millions of players all across the world. How do we make sure that it’s fun, approachable, people are having a good time, and the metagame is pretty healthy.
The answer is it depends, and there’s usually a mix of both. One example I can point to is Dark Gift. We want to tell a story of corruption, so that is a great way to do it. At the same time, from a meta health standpoint, we make sure that players like playing Dark Gift and that we’re not giving them options that they’re not super interested in exploring. I think we have 10 Dark Gifts on launch; in development, there may have been 13 or so. A couple were cut because we didn’t think they added to the game from a bottom-up perspective. They might detract from it.
For instance, there was a spell damage Dark Gift that would give your minions additional spell damage. There were moments where it was fun, but as a whole, it just didn’t come up often enough to feel impactful. We had a reason to include it from the fantasy top-down perspective, but we ended up cutting it from the bottom-up perspective.
Another example I think is a good blend of both is Omen, the legendary Wild God for Demon Hunter. Omen is a huge support for the deathrattleDemon Hunter strategywe’re trying to go for, but at the same time, it’s a two-headed dog. What does it have? Windfury, right? That’s a very easy top-down perspective. Of course it would have two attacks, so there’s quite a mix of both.
Q: How would you compare working on Into The Emerald Dream to past expansions? Did it involve new challenges or new approaches?
Bencosme:That touches on the last question and how we think about each new expansion. I feel the designers do a really great job of letting us know what these important characters and themes are going to be, and the artists will then try and influence basically proposed designs that fit into that as well. That’s kind of the split process.
I’m not sure if I would say the Wild Gods were a challenge, but they were exciting for us. The Emerald Dream is honestly such a beautiful area in the game, and what we want to get across is making sure mechanics like Imbue and Dark Gift have really clear, visual, and distinct markers for players to understand—that separation between dream and nightmare.
The VFX team did a great job of making Dream magic look very airy and based in nature, like a breath of fresh air, in contrast to the Dark Gift where it’s a suffocating, smoky red flame. It’s things like that we want to make sure not only looks cool for both opposite sides, but that we also give players really clear cues. In addition to that, we took extra time to give the Wild Gods all the little things I mentioned earlier.
And in addition to that, other pieces go into creating this feel, like card backs and card packs. I’m super excited for players to see the card pack because it actually is a really fun little device to do some of that storytelling with the fight between Dream and Nightmare. You see this beautiful pack that’s very Dreamlike, but there’s a small touch of corruption in the bottom right. You see a little puff of niceEmerald Dream magic, but then this corruption erupts and explodes this pack into a bunch of vines, brambles, and Nightmare magic. I feel like these are all challenges. We want to ensure these things are clear and cool, and honestly, they’re so fun for us to work on. We’re always excited when the design team brings these to us.
Q: What should players expect from this expansion compared to past expansions?
Goodwin:Yeah, I think a lot of change. There’s always a ton of excitement whenever we reveal a new expansion, but when we get this one in the hands of our players, maybe more so than usual when it comes to change, right? There’s a lot of stuff changing this expansion. We, first of all, have a new expansion to try out. That’s pretty par for the course, but a lot of sets from a year or two are all rotating out. With that is a ton of meta impactful cards, right?
Titans are rotatingout. All the singleton cards like Reno are rotating out. You might not really consider it as a player, but there’s a ton of little meta contenders. One that comes to mind is Miracle Salesman, the one mana 2/2 that, when it dies, you get a tradeable snake oil. You don’t really think about that as a huge or central part of any specific deck’s game plan, but a ton of decks play it. You were seeing it all the time, now you won’t, so we’ve got those going on. And then there’s even more change, right?
We have a huge Core set of updates coming with this expansion, a ton of different pieces trying to support this upcoming year of Hearthstone. Finally, last but not least, we have a huge balance patch that just got announced. All the card changes in it are very interesting, so I think this is a wide-open meta game. If you’re someone that’s really interested in theorycrafting, brainstorming, and deckbuilding, this seems like a great time to get back into Hearthstone.
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