What’s Inside? Our Predictions on Hearthstone’s New Content
After the latest release of Blackrock Mountain last April, it has been a while since Blizzard teased us of their future plans for the incoming new content for their card slinging game, Hearthstone.
A few more teasers were sent out in the lead up to the July 22nd release of the new content, including the Innkeeper’s tale — a tale about a unicorn-leading lady. The story included patrons dueling in shiny armors and mages wielding arcane magic.
Recently, a slew of twitter photo teasers of a trumpet-blowing female blood-elf, a female mage troll, a pirate with a barrel as its feet and a Sulfuras-wielding Paladin were also released, igniting a new round of speculation.
All I can say is that Blizzard is doing a good job getting the excitement flow and of course, calling the inner Sherlock in us to speculate on what the new content will be. So here’s our prediction on the incoming “Argent Tournament” expansion!
Did we get it right? Make sure to watch the announcement live on July 23, 5:30 a.m. (GMT +8, Philippine Standard Time)
Argent Tournament
Once the scroll was opened, trumpet sounds filled the air. This is the same music from the Argent Tournament event from World of Warcraft.
The Argent Tournament is a world event from World of Warcraft hosted by Tirion Fordring that required combatants to face each other, and then the last man standing will proceed to go kill Arthas. This event was mostly Paladin and Death Knight class-centric.
It is easy to suspect that the said expansion will be very Paladin/Death Knight-centric as those were the classes which the event revolved around.
Tournament Mode
One of the most requested/suggested by the community is an in-game tournament mode, one that might be a bit more rewarding and competitive than the recently released Tavern Brawl. Popular streamer and caster Octavian “Kripparian” Morosan said himself that the “grindy” set-up of the current ranked play mode is not yet fruitful enough to really exert effort into.
Also, everybody knows that there is an unused “Tournament” asset in the game that appears randomly from time to time (e.g. when playing in mobile and in the deck selection class in play mode, then someone called, you will see the said asset when you get back in game) so this makes sense.
Desktop: 
Mobile: 
Type of Expansion?
The latest expansions for Hearthstone came with a pretty interesting pattern. Curse of Naxxramas (PvE-type solo adventure; released July 22, 2014), Goblins vs Gnomes (lots of cards introduced; released December 8, 2014), then the latest Blackrock Mountain (also a PvE-type adventure; released April 2, 2015). With this pattern, we can suppose that it will be a GvG type of expansion. Or will it?
A New Approach
Or maybe it would be an entirely new approach to releasing content. We might be blind-sided by the pattern introduced by the last few expansions only to be shocked by a different route that Blizzard will take. It would be interesting to see a different type of PvE content, one that isn’t a similar solo adventure to Curse of Naxxramas.
A New Class and A New Hero
Another interesting thing to expect is if a new class would be introduced (Death Knight). But given that the game is still on its early stages, I’d say adding a new class would be very premature as of now.
In any case, the likelihood of a new class has already been dismissed by Ben Brode, Hearthstone senior designer.
Perhaps the most logical one — and I know you would agree if you follow the Warcraft lore — is that this expansion will be a lead-in to the Ice Crown or Wrath of the Lich King expansion.
Armor Cards
This one is an out of ordinary prediction. But since it was mentioned in the latest Tale of the Innkeeper (remember shiny armors?), it actually makes sense that this new mechanic would be introduced in the game. I think it would work like a weapon that can be equipped with effects that differs for each class.
Some examples we’ve came up with:
In our opinion, this will introduce some interesting mechanics that would evoke the creativity of players for deck-building.
Now, with the upcoming announcement on the 22nd of July (make sure your calendars are marked), let’s see how many we hit or miss!
How about you? What do you think will be in the next expansion? Share your thoughts with us and comment below!
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