Blizzard Announce their Plans for Hearthstone’s Year of the Hydra

Blizzard have shared some of their plans for Hearthstone for 2022, what they call as the Year of the Hydra. Namely, the company is going remove some sets from the Standard rotation, as well as significantly update the Core Set.

The year begins with the launch of the upcoming expansion Voyage to the Sunken City, which was recently announced to be released on April 12th. Besides the new content, the developers are going to remove Ashes of Outland, Scholomance Academy, and Madness at the Darkmoon Faire sets from Standard.

The Core Set is going to be slightly increased – the developers plan to rotate out 57 cards out of it, while adding 72 other cards. Among the added cards are some from the League of Explorers expansion, as well as Voidwalker, Wild Pyromancer, Acolyte of Pain, Mossy Horror, Cloaked Huntress, and Fandral Staghelm. Thus, the Core Set will consist of 250 cards instead of 235. The removed cards will still be available in the Legacy set.

This year the developers will focusing on improving the current game systems, instead of introducing new ones. However, they are still working on some quality-of-life features, such as the random hero skin feature and the in-game reporting. On top of that, they are going to work on the game’s optimization. The company has shared their roadmap for the year, which looks as follows:

This year the developers will also continue supporting the Mercenaries and Battlegrounds modes, however will focus on rarer but bigger updates. To learn more about their plans, head over to the official website.