Hearthstone's Year Of The Mammoth Delivers Big Changes With First 2017 Expansion

Hearthstone's Year of the Kraken is coming to an end with the release of the first 2017 expansion. With it, standard expansions and adventures like Blackrock Mountain, The Grand Tournament, and League of Explorers (Go away, Reno Jackson) will move to the Wild format. Blizzard is making some other big alterations as well.

Adventures are OUT in 2017. Instead, Blizzard plans to release three 130-card expansions. The storytelling and single-player missions typically associated with adventure content will be rolled into expansion content. This merging of adventure and expansion content concept begins with the second expansion of 2017.

Six Classic cards from the core set are rotating out into the Hall of Fame set. Although these cards are in the Classic set, they will only be allowed for use in Wild play. So what are the big six?

Azure Drake
Sylvanas Windrunner
Ragnaros the Firelord
Power Overwhelming
Conceal
Ice Lance

Players will receive full dust value for these cards and they will not have to leave their collections either. You'll simply be awarded the full dust value for the cards (up to the maximum number you can include in a deck) when the Year of the Mammoth begins, and the cards will stay in your collection.

Login rewards will lead up to the next expansion's release in Year of the Mammoth, including dust, gold, and packs. Players can also win a new Rogue hero – Maiev Shadowsong – by winning 10 games in Hearthstone in Standard Ranked or Casual mode after the first expansion launches. When will this expansion launch? We don't have a date yet, but with all this information regarding Year of the Mammoth happening, expect that it won't be too far away.

Check out the full details and more on the official Hearthstone blog

Our Take
Seeing Classic cards rotate out into the Hall of Fame set seems like an inevitability that they've decided to address head on. I'm glad they're offering players full dust value and not requiring they even disenchant the cards, so that should take the sting out of seeing some of your favorites in Standard. The new concept of three expansions a year early mid and late with baked in adventure content seems like a cool way to focus on bigger chunks of content and still offer some of the neat single player fun that made the adventures a cool, flavorful addition. Regardless, these changes look like they are going to shake things up. Now, how about some information on that first expansion of 2017? (Maiev seems like she might be a pretty big clue...)

from www.GameInformer.com - The Feed http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2017/02/16/hearthstone-39-s-year-of-the-mammoth-delivers-big-changes-with-first-2017-expansion.aspx