As revealed at BlizzCon, Hearthstone is expanding once again with its latest expansion, Reign of the Black Empire. Blizzard’s digital card game based on the Warcraft IP has been trucking along for over 12 years. Regular new expansions, each with their own set of cards, new mechanics, and even an auto-battler, have kept the tavern card game fresh. Taking us back to the time of the Old Gods’ death-like control over Azeroth, the Old Gods and the Titan Keepers are all getting new cards and new ways to play.
Hearthstone also revealed its newest class after 4 years to be the long-awaited Monk, with that coming in Spring 2027. We got to chat with Hearthstone‘s Executive Producer, Nathan Lyons-Smith, and Senior Design Manager, Brendan Sewell, to talk about the latest expansion, Reign of the Black Empire, and the new Monk class.
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The Hearthstone devs want players to theorycraft about The Reign of the Black Empire.
Naturally, with the Monk being a major and exciting addition to the game’s classes, that’s where the conversation began. Sadly, Nathan Lyons-Smith couldn’t reveal much about it. But advised excited players to pay close attention to the reveal trailer. “We’re not sharing any more of the monk today. You know, if you look very closely at the trailer, you can maybe see some hints of what you could expect. And I’ll leave it at that and let you all and the millions of Hearthstone players to theorycraft on what that is.”
Yet for fans expecting more info on the Monk class, Lyons-Smith added that more will be coming early next year. “We’ll do a big, awesome campaign to get everyone excited for the first expansion of next year along with the Monk.” So more is coming, and the Monk may be tied directly to 2027’s first Hearthstone expansion. A Pandaria-themed expansion, perhaps?
To learn more about the variety of cards coming to Reign of the Black Empire, we talked about the lore that this expansion is built on. The age of Ny’alotha was rife with turmoil. The titan constructs were enslaved, the Old Gods cursed them with the curse of flesh, the Elemental Lords ran rampant—just a giant cluster of chaos all across Azeroth. Yet the reveal focused mostly on the Old Gods and their new, badass Kaiju-like designs, and the Titan Keepers of Ulduar fighting back (buff Mimiron is going to haunt my dreams).
The Reign of the Black Empire draws inspiration from beyond the Old Gods and Titan Keepers.
Brendan Sewell confirmed that the entire mythos of this era will be involved in the set’s card range. “Our card range for this set absolutely does take inspiration from a wide variety of the sources and narrative that come from that particular time period. Unfortunately, can’t go into specifics right now.”
He added, “However, yes, there is inspirations that are coming from beyond the Old Gods and the Titan Keepers, and you’ll get a lot of that WoW flavor from the bits of narrative that have been revealed so far, and then a little bit of the Hearthstone–unique twist to it as well.”
Lastly, we talked about the new Journal’s progression. The Journal is going to be the go-to book of Hearthstone lore that will expand as you play. It’ll even give quests that will reward cards as you complete them. But since its reveal, the Journal’s progression has been vague. Is it going to have numerous options available for players to progress? Or will it be strictly linear?
The Journal incentivizes new ways to play and go against the meta.
According to Sewell, it’s the latter. “The initial narrative that is going to appear in the first chapter of the journal is strictly linear. It’s going to unfold as the weeks occur, and you are committing to these quests. We’re unfolding the narrative of over the course of the expansion.”
Sewell also teased that maybe the Journal expansions could involve some player agency. “Think a branching path narrative, where there’s some player agency of choice, is a pretty good idea. That might be one that we mark down.”
Nathan Lyons-Smith added, going into detail about what quests players can expect to progress the Journal. “Yeah, these [are] really fun linear, lightweight quests to progress the story. We haven’t created custom gameplay scenarios of this yet. That is something we’ve talked about, but this is really ‘go play standard’, ‘go play the event, etc.’ and thematically, go fight the old gods, go knock out titans, whatnot.”
It would be cool if eventually the Journal becomes a new form of Hearthstone‘s Adventures, with fighting against NPCs with pre-made decks or new rule sets to dive into the lore. But alas. Still, the Journal seems to incentivize new ways to play or changing deck builds just enough to complete these quests, which could be great for going against the meta for added fun.
Hearthstone: Reign of the Black Empire is available October 20th on PC and mobile.
