Team 5, the developers of Hearthstone, have quietly released all the new cards for the upcoming expansion, United in Stormwind, on the game’s website. The game’s developers, as well as Blizzard, have canceled the livestream events for the expansion’s launch, and have foregone the usual fanfare ahead of the launch in favor of a more muted, respectful reveal. This is done out of deference to the rest of the team’s
All 135 of the cards in the expansion can be viewed on the Hearthstone website right now. Ordinarily, the reveals of these cards would be much more involved and spread across various websites, streams, and influencers. This usually culminates in a card reveal livestream where any cards not previously shown would be unveiled. Blizzard has canceled all of these events, and so the cards have been put onto the site in their entirety.
Activision Blizzard is currently embroiled in legal trouble we won’t get into here. While Team 5 is not directly implicated in said legal trouble, they fall under the same umbrella. Lead designer Dean Ayala said on Reddit that “Having any celebration is a hard sell right now” and that the team is keeping the card reveals quiet out of respect for their co-workers.
Ayala also added that this won’t affect the game’s launch: “All that said, we still care about our work and are still passionate about delivering a great game. It’s the whole reason most of us are here in the first place. We don’t have plans to delay our launch or push back further developments.” Team 5 also released a list of the updates it rolled out to the game in Patch 21.0. These include a new Hero, Galewing, an Arena rotation, and an update to Duels. United in Stormwind launches on August 3.