GamesBeat: You’re experimenting with a connected story this year. We’re in the middle chapter now. How is that experiment working out so far?
Kosak: Internally, we were super-excited about the idea. We’ve been planting the seeds for these characters and storylines in previous expansions. We were all set for the big year where it all comes together. So far, players seem to really respond to it. One of our fears was, if we do a connected story — we wanted to make sure that each expansion had its own theme that was very strong, so that even if you weren’t paying attention to the overall story, every expansion made a lot of sense. I haven’t seen a lot of confused players. I think even if you’re not following the main story, you get what kind of adventure Uldum is all about. But a lot of people are following the story and asking questions. I think players are going to be excited to find out that some of the villains they played in the Dalaran Heist adventure are returning as bosses in the Tombs of Terror. You get to see what’s happening with those characters.
Then you can — some of them might be appearing in the third expansion of the year. There’s a lot of ongoing storylines within the big narrative. And then the smaller narratives, the little stories. Players have followed the story of George and Karl, the paladins from the original Dungeon Run, and what’s been going on with them. Their story will continue in Tombs of Terror. It’s fun to see that players are also following the little stories that we’ve buried in the big narrative.
Dawson: One of my favorite stories from these smaller things that have been going is the introduction of Vas. I think it’s one of those characters that players have really latched on to and celebrated. We may see him coming back.
Priorities
GamesBeat: Speaking of these kinds of strong characters and how the story has become more prominent, there was the Hearthstone CG series that started a year or so ago and introduced all these new characters. It seems like that’s been pushed to the side a bit, as some of these characters that naturally came from the game have become more prominent.
Dawson: It’s tricky, because we created that wonderful cinematic with all the characters. We love that cinematic, and I think that speaks to the experience of what it’s like to play Hearthstone, what it’s like to be a Hearthstone player. But when we have new expansions we want to announce, given the choice between talking about the new thing or returning to these characters, it seems more important to talk about the new things. We’re going to play with that, looking at ways to — maybe we’ll revisit those characters at some point, because we really think they embody what it means to play Hearthstone. But it’s tricky. This time around we really focused on The League of Explorers, because that’s where the new hotness is. We spent a lot of time with that. But it’s a good question.
GamesBeat: A prequel Brawl a couple of weeks ago set up the upcoming story in Tombs of Terror. Was that a lot of work for a single Brawl?
Kosak: It’s part of that ongoing narrative. We want to have the whole year feel connected. This is one of the ways we could, in the week leading up to the single-player content, make it feel connected to the rest of the game. It was some work, and fortunately we have a different team, an events team, that creates all the tavern brawls and holiday events and whatnot. They put some time into it. We coordinated on the VO and they did the implementation. It’s a great way to get you excited for the new single-player mode.
Dawson: It’s nice to have that refresher before you come into Tombs of Terror. As Dave said, the live events has taken point on a lot of these things.
GamesBeat: Now that you’ve been working on these characters for a while, do you each have a favorite explorer?
Donais: I was expecting it to be Reno, because I play a lot of Reno, and I really like his story in general. But after playing through with all the explorers, it’s definitely Elise. She’s a druid and a priest. She has some really cool combinations going on. One of the things I really liked about this new adventure is all the new treasures. With Kobolds & Catacombs we did the treasures that people might expect. There are some really cool ones in there, but every expansion since then we’ve gone a bit more to the wild side, because you’re playing PvE anyway. It’s all replayable, so we may as well throw in some crazy stuff. In the previous expansion you saw [the treasure card] Duplatransmogrifier as one of the really crazy cards, the one that copies a minion in your deck over top of all the other minions in your deck. In this adventure, there’s a lot more like that. There’s a whole bunch of cards that really push the envelope of design and do some crazy stuff. You can come up with some crazy combos.
Dawson: For me it’s definitely Reno. In Tombs of Terror he has a hero power called Arcane Craftiness that’s a lot of fun. He can just keep casting that over and over, and you can really build your whole strategy around that. It does two or three damage, but if it kills one of the enemy minions, it shoots these missiles out. So you can just go again and again. You can clear a whole board with it pretty easily.
Kosak: It’s hard to say what my favorite character is, because I love them all. But I think playing through Tombs of Terror I’ve been having the most fun with Brann. Brann is a hunter/warrior, and what I was doing, I was building a deck one time that had the hunter quest from Un’Goro, I can’t remember the name of it, but you get Queen Carnassa and you get all the raptors in your deck. The quest was to summon 1-cost minions. I built my deck and had a lot of one-cost warrior minions that were doing stuff for me. That was how I got the raptors out. He also has a signature treasure that’s Brann’s saddle. Brann’s saddle gives a beast +3/+3 and a Deathrattle to attach the saddle to another beast. If you keep some beasts on your board you can keep that card alive. I just had this endless stream of raptors coming out and the saddle would just bounce between the raptors. I was just wrecking faces with it. So much fun. But I have fun with all four of them.
GamesBeat: Somebody say something nice about Finley now so he doesn’t feel left out.
Kosak: Finley does some weird stuff. Finley is a shaman/paladin, so aside from the obvious murloc build, you have so many different ways of playing shaman and different ways of playing paladin to combine together.
Donais: The characters have a lot of personality, because they’re these characters we’ve followed for years, and they’ve grown in personality as time has gone by. Because they have these new signature treasures you can choose from, that adds a lot to their builds also. It also lets you customize them in this new way we’ve never had before. It really brings another dimension to the single-player content.
