In Hearthstone, players were almost taken to Karazhan. The cult instance from “The Burning Crusade” could have been the setting for the first expansion, as is now clear from an interview.
Hearthstone is here to stay. Blizzard is definitely counting on ten years. This requires a lot of ideas for possible expansions. The first adventure took players to the horror necropolis Naxxramas. It could just as easily have gone to Karazhan, the 10-player raid from “The Burning Crusade”. This would have suited producer Yong Woo, as he mentioned in an interview with IGN.
Karazhan back in the idea pool for Hearthstone
He himself was part of the team that would have preferred Karazhan over Naxxramas as the setting for the first expansion. He loves the instance personally. Since content is needed for ten years anyway, that’s no problem. Karazhan as a possible location for an expansion has not been discarded but merely postponed. The idea has just returned to the pool and is waiting for its time. The pool is well-stocked. Given that we can look back at ten years in World of Warcraft, there is no lack of options.
The nice thing about a game like Hearthstone, Woo says, is that you don’t need boxes and aren’t limited to one expansion per year or every two years. For Hearthstone, the team plans to release 5 new contents at regular intervals. Fans should be patient for a while, and then they will see.
Mein MMO thinks: For the next expansion, one can probably assume that Blizzard will not orient itself towards a raid instance. These are probably more suited for adventures with bosses. For the next expansion, which is supposed to bring over 100 fresh cards in booster packs to Hearthstone, you don’t need bosses but a lot of story, mobs, and faces. Perhaps they will draw from the quest and story lines of Burning Crusade, leave out the raid instances, and maybe map a few 5-player instances instead?
As for the adventure expansions, Yong Woo is surely right: In ten years, many cult instances have accumulated. Whether Hearthstone players will go to Karazhan, Icecrown Citadel, Black Temple, or Ulduar in the next adventure remains to be seen.
