Hearthstone players go into meltdown as Blizzard confirms the next expansion won't have a new cosmetic board

GamesCard GameHearthstoneHearthstone players go into meltdown as Blizzard confirms the next expansion won’t have a new cosmetic boardWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Blizzard)

Hearthstone: Perils in Paradise key art

Hearthstone’s next expansion, Perils in Paradise, won’t have a new game board, and what might seem like a minor miss to you or I has quickly snowballed into doom-and-gloom predictions about the future of the game among quite a number of fans.

Game boards are exactly what they sound like: Different backgrounds on which Hearthstone is played. The game currently has 36 boards, though some of these are only available in the WIld mode, and aside from some cosmetic interactivity—on the Naxxramas board, for instance, clicking the spider eggs will make a squishy noise and eventually release some spiders—they have no impact on gameplay.

Hearthstone is of course 10 years old now, and perhaps no longer the apple of Blizzard’s eye—or at least its accountants—leading some to worry that the game is slowly but inevitably moving towards some kind of maintenance mode, where it will continue to operate but future updates will either be minimized or halted altogether.

“I’m honestly shocked,” redditordaddyvowwrote. “This seems like such a small thing but it’s so meaningful. It’s a sign of things to come and how much effort they want to put into this game. It feels like they have their priorities all wrong.”

“I don’t think it’s going into maintenance mode anytime soon, but I do think it’s heading towards lower creativity and no new surprises, like new classes/modes or crazy new mechanics,“Gram64wrote. “Just going to be three standard expansions every year with no real innovation, soulless.”

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“I don’t want to spread doom/gloom,” redditorLexailwrote. “But I’ve already faced this in HotS, and the simple things were the first to go. In HotS they stopped giving the free mount each BlizzCon and in-game flag/emote.”

To a degree, when a game is a decade old you can expect some substantial bumps in the road. But what we’re seeing with the current brouhaha is how little room Blizzard has to maneuver in terms of player trust, something that’s visible across the publisher’s slate of games. The long-awaited launch of Overwatch 2 was acomplete botchthat doesn’t seem to begetting better, while PC Gamer’s Hearthstone expert Tim Clark recently called out the studio for imposing “nakedly egregious” changes aimed solely at boosting “phony player engagement numbers.”

Team 5 acknowledged the current unhappiness onTwitter, writing, “We hear your questions on what’s changing and why, including why there is no new board for Perils in Paradise. Hang tight, as we’ll be sharing an update next week on that, along with what the team is focusing on for the future.”

(Image credit: Blizzard (Twitter))

We hear your questions on what’s changing and why, including why there is no new board for Perils in Paradise. Hang tight, as we’ll be sharing an update next week on that, along with what the team is focusing on for the future.

Inevitably, Blizzard’s somewhat cryptic tweet hasn’t calmed the waters: Many playerswant to knowwhy it takes a week to release a statement addressing ongoing concerns about the state of the game, and of course some suspect that bad news is on the way.

For now, though, there’s little basis beyond rampant speculation to expect a major change of course anytime soon. I would be very surprised if the planned announcement amounts to anything more than a clarification, an apology, and possibly a ‘we’ll do better in the future.’

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