'Hearthstone: Journey to Un'Goro': Devs Discuss Elementals

By Jessica Ferrera, Christian Post Contributor Thursday, March 23, 2017

Recently, one of Blizzard Entertainment's senior game designers, Mike Donais, addressed gaming fans and discussed several important details about the upcoming "Hearthstone" expansion.

"Hearthstone" is a free-to-play, turn-based video game where the players' main objective is to fight with their collected cards. The game was first released in 2014 – launched under the "Warcraft" franchise – and developed by Blizzard Entertainment. Meanwhile, "Journey to Un'Goro" is going to be the game's fifth expansion title, and it is slated for release next month.

At the beginning of the blog entry, Donais teased, "When venturing into Un'goro, be on your guard—the crater is home to huge dinosaurs, challenging Quests and primordial Elementals!"

In the same post, it was revealed that some existing cards have been revamped to become Elementals in the upcoming game expansion. Donais then revealed what cards should players expect to see as Elementals next month and some of them are: Water Elemental, Anomalus, Ragnaros Lightlord, Lightspawn, Dust Devil, Unbound Elemental, Fireguard Destroyer, Rumbling Elemental and 10 more items.

Donais continued to discuss how his team had come up with the concept of Elemental mechanics. The senior game designer explained: "During the initial design phase of a set, we explore a lot of ideas—even ones we know won't work in the end—because iterating on those ideas helps us learn what kinds of things are fun. ... In Journey to Un'Goro, we knew we wanted to add Elementals, and we tried about 10 different mechanical designs. ... Eventually, we chose our favorite and adjusted all the Elementals to match the one we liked best."

On the other hand, more cards have been revealed to arrive with the upcoming expansion for "Hearthstone." IGN listed some of the 135 cards to arrive that can be good replacements for those that will be removed from the game as "Journey to Un'Goro" arrives in April.

IGN highlights the upcoming Sunkeeper Tarim card categorized as a Paladin Legendary minion. According to its card, the Sunkeeper Tarim goes with the battlecry, "Set all other minions' Attack and Health to 3." The same report notes that while the game's traditional cards roster rotation will take away the Keeper of Uldaman, it is as if Sunkeeper Tarim will provide an upgraded version of the said card.