Blizzard adds new ranks and adventure mode in latest Hearthstone update

Whether you are completing your favorite Class cards collection in the closed beta or still waiting for your key, at BlizzCon 2013, Blizzard has announced some updates for Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft.

With the closed beta going on since early 2013, it’s about time the game goes into open beta, and that will happen within a month, said Rob Pardo, Chief Creative Officer of the game. “Although, it’s Blizzard’s time, so maybe January,” he added. The iOS and Android version will be released around mid 2014.

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft will have an Adventure mode which is kind of like a single player, Player versus Environment (PvE) experience, where gamers will fight bosses and earn new cards as rewards. Even though the cards are going to be game-changing, they’re still keeping their best cards (pun intended) for new expansions in the future.

Following the previous announcement, Ben Brode, Technical Director, also explained about some of the tweaks, card changes, and class balancing done to the game. He also announced that there’s going to be a revised Ranked Play, with 25 new ranks. Each rank features a minion from Hearthstone. Note that ranks now don’t just go up but players could also be demoted if they kept on losing games. The leaderboard is ranked on a monthly seasonal basis and each season will have rewards such as a Card Back with different designs.

Hearthstone is shaping up to be an interesting and exciting new spinoff of Blizzard’s famous Warcraft franchise. Hopefully it will be a worthy successor to the original World of Warcraft Trading Card Game.