Esports.gg interviewed Cora Georgiou and Aleco Pors about Hearthstone’s new Into the Emerald Dream expansion.
The release date of Hearthstone's next expansion, Into the Emerald Dream, draws near. Ahead of the March 25 launch, esports.gg sat down with lead designer Cora Georgiou and senior game designer Aleco Pors for an interview about what players can expect in terms of Into the Emerald Dream decks, keywords, mechanics, and more. Read on for details!
Hearthstone Into the Emerald Dream interview
Each Hearthstone expansion typically has an expansion lead, and this time, it's none other than Georgiou. Having been with the Hearthstone team for over five years, she's witnessed a lot of collaborative efforts between her peers plus the Hearthstone and World of Warcraft teams at Blizzard. In her interview with esports.gg, she revealed that the Into the Emerald Dream expansion has been a long time coming. The World of Warcraft team initially delayed the idea, but after releasing Emerald Dream content last year, they gave Hearthstone the green light to move forward.
"And at that point, they were like, 'Okay, you're good to go.' And we were like, 'What's the earliest we can get it in the schedule?' And it happened to be 32.0 Into the Emerald Dream. So it was one that we had a bunch of ideas built up over time," Georgiou told esports.gg. "Everybody was on board to take on the challenge of Emerald Dream."
She continued, "And now we had expanded stories, characters, and environments from the WoW team that were really recent [to] build off of for this expansion. So it was one that was a really long time coming, and I would think probably the number one expansion that our team's been wanting to make."
Into the Emerald Dream decks: Midrange, control, and value
Hearthstone's first expansion for Year of the Raptor also includes the new Imbue and Dark Gifts keywords, Wild Gods, and the Choose One keyword going beyond the Druid class. Throughout the expansion's development, the Hearthstone team experimented a lot with different archetypes at various stages as well, and in this context, Georgiou said her favorite deck to play is Imbue Shaman. She also gave a shoutout to Dragon Warrior. Meanwhile, Pors told esports.gg about Dark Gifts Warlock and Imbue Druid.
Pors also noted that Dark Gifts are mostly value-focused. They generate extra cards like the Discover mechanic, and if they become popular, then they could push the meta toward midrange and value-driven gameplay. He added that hopefully, the Imbue hero powers will encourage different strategies across classes and lead to long-term game plans. If these strategies take off, then the meta could become slower overall.
Into the Emerald Dream decks: Imbue Shaman and Malorne the Waywatcher shenanigans
"My favorite, I think, is the Shaman Imbue archetype. I like Evolve. I tend to be the type of player who likes midrange playstyles or control playstyles. And I like when things are maybe a little bit silly or there's a little bit of controlled randomness to it. I think that the Shaman hero power is a good way to do that with the Evolve growing and becoming bigger and more exciting over time and then being able to resurrect those minions with Merithra, I think, is really fun.
Also, honestly, any Imbue deck because you get to play [Malorne the Waywatcher]. Malorne gives you the different Wild Gods, and the Wild Gods themselves are these big, sort of bombastic, larger than life effects and characters. I think anytime that you can engage with effects like that, I have a lot of fun with it."
Dark Gifts Warlock plus Wallow, the Wretched
"I think the one I'm personally the most excited for — the first one I'm going to queue up when the set goes live — is the Dark Gifts Warlock deck. I really enjoy that style of play. I enjoy the Dark Gift mechanic a lot. It's just a very fun mechanic to play with. As you're playing with it, you're really getting the feeling of fun decision-making. And this is the key Dark Gift archetype for the expansion.
It's not just saying like, 'Hey, here are some other mechanical things you can do and here are some Dark Gifts [that] can go along with it.' It's really saying like, 'Let's do a whole deck where we're trying to really get as many Dark Gifts as possible and build around Wallow, the Wretched."
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Dragon Warrior returns with Clutch of Corruption and synergy galore
"One more that I will shoutout is Dragon Warrior. I think [when] players think of Dragon Warrior, they think of [the old-school version] like Alexstrasza's Champion Dragon Warrior. I think this is trying to have some feelings of that, but I actually really love the dragon eggs [via Clutch of Corruption] that you can use to copy dragons like Ysondre [and Naralex, Herald of the Flights] discounting all of your dragons and maybe being this giant swing turn that you can play with Ysera and gain extra mana crystals."
Into the Emerald Dream decks: Imbue Druid with buffed tokens
"I think that the Imbue Druid deck is just a very dreamy one. You get to summon a larger and larger plant golem as the game goes on. There's also a few different ways you can kind of go about it. You could build it up as more towards a controlling strategy where you're trying to overwhelm with the value of the plant golems. There's others where you're trying to click that button all the time and really press the advantage."
Hearthstone's storytelling, visual effects, and details
When we asked both Georgiou and Pors what they hope players take time to appreciate beyond card mechanics in this expansion, Georgiou said she loves the storytelling, flavor text, artwork, voice lines, visual effects, and so on. She feels that the talented team's work makes every set exceptional and worth noticing.
"We've got incredibly talented artists and engineers and effects artists," she said. "And they all do such awesome work, so that's always something that I hope players pay attention to."
As for Pors, he drew attention to Toreth the Unbreaking, which is a legendary Paladin minion. This card gives minions triple Divine Shield and was an idea the team had been exploring for some time. He mentioned that the card's visual effects and general feel were really well-executed, too.
"So I would say just look out for this cool, new mechanic that took a lot of effort and special love to get into the game," he said.
Beyond patch 32.0: Hearthstone Arena revamp to welcome casual and pro players
That's all for esports.gg’s portion of the Hearthstone group interview. However, the session also revealed that the upcoming Arena revamp will cater to both casual players and those in the "upper echelon" of the game mode.
Georgiou said that she learned how to play Hearthstone and built her collection through Arena. She also noted that Arena has been dominated by top-tier players over the past 11 years, making it difficult for new and returning players to win matches. The upcoming Arena revamp hopes to create separate environments where new players can learn and experts can compete to be the best of the best. This Arena update is slated for patch 32.2.
Are you excited about Hearthstone's Into the Emerald Dream expansion in patch 32.0? Stick around on esports.gg for more interviews, news, and updates!
