14 DAY TRIAL // Blizzard promises that it will continue to evolve and support Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, its free-to-play online card game, for a long time, just like it's doing with the likes of Diablo 3, World of Warcraft, or Starcraft.
Blizzard is responsible for quite a lot of stellar franchises and products, ranging from the Warcraft and Starcraft real-time strategy experiences, to the Diablo role-playing dungeon crawlers, or even World of Warcraft, the MMORPG that practically made the genre what it is today.
As such, when Hearthstone was revealed, fans were a bit surprised to see Blizzard invest in an online trading card game, even if it had roots within the Warcraft universe.
However, the fact that the game is made by a small team and tries to innovate in the genre doesn't mean that Blizzard will only keep it around for a short while, until the experiment ends. The Production Director, Jason Chayes, pledges to GamesIndustry that the online title will be around for quite some time.
"There's definitely different ways that different companies approach the development of their games; when Blizzard approaches a game it's with the intention of making something that's going to be around not for a month or two or a year or two but something that we're really into for the long haul. A game that we plan to support for many many years to come, and that's certainly the case with Hearthstone."
What's more, he confirms that the team tried to implement quite a few elements from the World of Warcraft or even the old Warcraft games into the online title, so that veterans can feel rewarded for their loyalty.
"We definitely very consciously thought about the players of World of Warcraft, even Warcraft, as Hearthstone was being designed. There are a lot of hooks built into Hearthstone that would be great points of nostalgia whether you used to play Druid or you used to play Rogue, that there's going to be familiar things there that you recognize from those days."
Chayes even admits that Hearthstone has resurrected interest in World of Warcraft, with many players coming back to the popular MMO after the online card game whet their appetites.
"We've definitely seen it going the other way too, where people who have picked up Hearthstone, they're intrigued by the game, have gone back to World of Warcraft where maybe they haven't been playing it recently."
Hearthstone just saw its first single-player expansion, Curse of Naxxramas, appear a few weeks ago and Blizzard is already looking to add new things to the experience.