Hearthstone To Get In-game Tournaments and More with Year of the Raven

Hearthstone has grown a lot since the game’s first days and the development team works hard to continue to evolve the collectible card game while sticking true to its roots. Part of the way that they do this is by ushering in ‘new years’ where the meta for the game’s Standard format changes. This pushes players to explore new deck types, which leads to more variety in the game overall. Today, during a chat with players via Hearthstone’s official YouTube channel, Ben Brode—Hearthstone’s Game Director—revealed that a new year is coming to the game, The Year of the Raven.

There’s no official release date for The Year of the Raven, but fans can tune into a special stream on March 2 at 11:00AM PST. You can tune into the stream on the official Hearthstone Twitch channel, where Ben Brode, Yong Woo, and other members of the Hearthstone community will discuss the upcoming changes, as well as look back at the game’s past year, The Year of the Mammoth.

But what exactly does a new year mean for Hearthstone players? Well, as we stated in our opener, the game’s Standard format is going to change. Cards from the Whispers of the Old Gods, One Night in Karazhan, and Mean Streets of Gadgetzan will all be removed from the drawing board and become exclusive to Wild mode—which allows players to use any cards they want. This is a change that the developers decided to implement to help keep the game’s standard format fresh and evolving, and it really forces players to think outside of their comfort zones and try new things.

On top of the changes to the Standard meta, the new year will also usher in a new here, Lunara. This druid hero will be available to players who win 10 matches in Standard once the near year launches. Hearthstone will also receive in-game tournaments with the launch of the new season, allowing players to go head to head against some of the greatest peers to really help settle the score and find out who the best player is.

You can learn more about The Year of the Raven and how Hearthstone will evolve through 2018 by heading over to the official Hearthstone blog for more details.