Hearthstone devs discuss Reign of the Black Empire, the Monk, and that one

• Feature
• Interview

As part of a busy BlizzCon weekend, I took a moment to catch up with the Hearthstone team about what's next.

Ozzie Mejia September 14, 2026 3:30 PM Blizzard Entertainment 1

The Hearthstone team laid out a full picture of the game's future during a busy BlizzCon weekend. Beyond the next expansion, titled Reign of the Black Empire, fans got a first look at the new Monk class, as well as a roadmap of the next several months leading into the 2027 Standard year. As part of my time at Blizzard's big event, I took time to talk to Hearthstone VP & Executive Producer Nathan Lyons-Smith and Senior Game Design Manager Brenden Sewell. Among the items on the agenda were the new expansion (specifically the latest incarnation of the Old Gods), some of its new mechanics, the Monk, and whether the Hearthstone team also wants to get in on celebrating the return of another storied Blizzard franchise.

Shacknews: When did the team first float around this idea of an expansion that pits the Old Gods against the Titans tens of thousands of years in Azeroth's past?

Brenden Sewell, Senior Game Design Manager: Probably a year and a half ago, along the timelines in which we normally kick off our initial design process. Old Gods are something that, as flavor and for characters, are near and dear to Hearthstone designers' hearts. We were really interested in seeing how far we could push it in the contemporary experience of the meta of Hearthstone. And so, this delightful kind of revisiting of an era where they were at the peak of their power was a really compelling initial hook that inspired a lot of the subsequent explorations.

Nathan Lyons-Smith, Hearthstone VP & Executive Producer: We've done Old Gods a couple times, so I remember the first pitch was like, "Ok, Old Gods, what's different this time? Oh, we're going way, way, way back!" And there's Titans, and I was like, "Ok, Titans are cool, Old Gods are cool, putting them together is gonna be awesome. Let's see that."

Shacknews: How did you decide on the Old God effects, and when did you decide that the best direction would be to only allow one for each deck?

Sewell: Yeah, for the direction for one being in each deck, we wanted to make sure that we were able to have each of the old gods have a sufficient level of impact when you place that card on the board, that it was going to live up to that narrative dynamic of, "These are the Old Gods at the height of their power." And by making that deck-building limitation of only having one of them, it allowed each one of them to have abilities, the four abilities that you can choose from, that each had that threshold of impact, without needing to worry about the interaction effects, where that would potentially be problematic. Also making them Neutral, making sure that each class is able to bring them into their set of 30 cards and each have that Old God flavor added to it.

Shacknews: I have to ask about that Assemble keyword. How did you decide on the initial Assemble minion pool?

Sewell: Very deliberately and carefully. With Assemble, we wanted to make the pool as wide as possible and started pretty open-ended to that. As we were going through and investigating all of the cards that would be in Standard, in Core, within the new set and analyzing, "Does it fit this concept of an impact and a trigger effect on the top and bottom selections of the cards? Does that align with these cards organically or are we having to make individual decisions to sort of isolate them out, so that you're not having problematic combinations there?" There were a few that we identified needed to be moved out of the pool early and, then a lot of playtesting and iteration to identify more and more, but generally we wanted to aspire to have that pool be as large as possible. We're really proud that we got to 250 cards total across the pool, which is enough combinatorics that we're still getting surprised by some of the combinations that we see in playtesting in a way that maintains that joy and delight.

Shacknews: Was there a minion that started out in the Assemble pool that had to be removed? You mentioned that there were quite a few, but is there one specific example of a minion that started in the Assemble pool that just had to come out because it didn't work?

Sewell: Oh, certainly! It's actually more, not an individual minion, but about the combinations of minions that ended up creating hyper-manageable effects. Some of these were discussed in the What's Next panel, but there were minion combinations, for example, that would trigger infinite effects like, "Oh yeah, when damage is applied to my hero, do more damage to my Hero," and that would end up getting into a loop.

Shacknews: The Flame Imp! Yeah, I saw that. Is there room for the Assemble minion pool to grow in future expansions?

Sewell: We're not making a specific comment on that at this time, but yes, absolutely, that would be something that we are open to for the future. The Assemble mechanic, much like Discover before it, as kind of a root core mechanic of Hearthstone is something that a lot of design energy and eagerness is around. We're seeing if we can push that further in the future.

Lyons-Smith: It's one of those mechanics that is very digital-first. It's really hard to do that in paper and really want Hearthstone to be leaning in on those kind of experiences, and so [it's] definitely on the radar of, "Ok, what would it take to do that, which cards might work, and how much do we want to continue to make that happen?"

Shacknews: Tell me about the new Journey feature. How does this open up new storytelling possibilities for Hearthstone?

Lyons-Smith: There is narrative and VO for that narrative directly in the clients. And every patch, there'll be a new chapter. Every week, there's a new tranche of Journey quests, content for you to go complete. They're relatively lightweight and easy. They then unlock more narrative and VO. And so, you'll have that experience directly in the client of "This is the story of the expansion." We've got one cooked for Reign of the Black Empire that's coming out on October 20th. We're going to see how players react to that. We'll prep one for the next expansion. We're really excited to hear feedback from players on what they like, what they didn't, what other variations, twists, or types of narrative content they'd love to experience in the game and then we'll go and do that as well. Excited for version one out the door, but primed for feedback and then iteration to continue to keep Hearthstone fresh and fun.

Shacknews: I asked this to the team last time, I talked about single player content for Hearthstone and you guys talked about how it takes a lot of resources, etc. etc., but is this considered the next best thing to an actual single-player campaign in terms of getting actual story content out there?

Lyons-Smith: I don't know that I'd frame it as like the next best thing. We know that there's a lot of players that want story content. They want to know more background on the setting that we've put the card set in and so we want to deliver that to them, [but] also tied in to having fun in gameplay. And so [we're] looking forward, again, to see reaction from that. But one of the reactions might be, "You know, I could imagine XYZ being some sort of single-player content," and we'll be also watching for those as well. One of the great sources of ideas does come from the community and then we take it and say, "Maybe not exactly that wa, but if we also did X, Y and Z, that will really pop." And so, ears are open wide with this [and] with 2v2 Tavern Brawl, of "Hey, what do you want to see? Where should we go?" And then we'll go and make that.

Shacknews: I know you guys are not revealing specifics at this time, but I know players have asked about the Monk class for years and years and, every time it's come up, I've always heard you guys say that the time wasn't right, that something special would have to come along. So, after all this time, what makes 2027 the right time for The Monk?

Sewell: Yeah, about a year and a half ago, we started an R&D cycle of, "Hey, let's go make something really big and cool for players." And it was a bit open-ended, [we] solicited some ideas from thought leaders on the team of, "Hey, what are we excited to see?" [We] took a couple of people and said, "Ok, let's go prototype some of these ideas." And the first thing we prototyped was 2v2 and said "Hey, Battlegrounds Duos was really fun, [there's] a lot of players in there experiencing it. You know, there's some fundamental technology that we probably could go and repurpose and make actual 2v2 Hearthstone," and then figure out what the constructed version of that gameplay could be. What are you passing? How does it work to beat one opponent, etc., solving some of those fundamental questions about a gameplay format like that. So we went and did that and really liked that a lot, but then there was also a lot of, "Hey, what are players going to expect here?" Are they going to want a whole lot of 2v2 specific cards? How would we go and get them those cards? What other features might they want? Do we have enough interaction between the players to coordinate what's happening, right? In Battlegrounds Duos, all the combat, of course, is automatic and, so, there's maybe less need to coordinate. You're just working on building your board. But there are additional questions we think happen in constructed. With that, we said, "Hey, let's figure out how to put that in Tavern Brawl, get it out the door, get it in the hands of players, and then learn and iterate based on what we see from players," and then let's start the next cycle of R&D. And so that became "New Class," which became Monk.

We actually do player consumer insights research, ask players what they're looking for. Monk pops very high on what players are excited to experience. [There's] a lot of love and passion for that class and, certainly, that setting also in World of Warcraft. So that became the thing we went and prototyped next, and the team had a bunch of great ideas for, mechanically, how it could work that will line up with the gameplay fantasy of what that class is in World of Warcraft. [We're] super excited as we get closer to the reveal of that expansion to also talk about Monk, how it works, and how we're going to delight millions of players coming back to Hearthstone to enjoy that.

Shacknews: Last question for me, there are so many Blizzard franchises that are getting celebrated this weekend. One of the biggest ones for this particular weekend is StarCraft. And it reminds me of that fun time that you guys released a Heroes of StarCraft mini-set. Has there been any discussion about maybe revisiting that idea for a second mini-set?

Sewell: We talk about all sorts of fun ideas. So the answer to, "Has this been discussed?" Almost anything you see is a yes, because we're active and consuming all of the community contents. Anything that gets any sort of visibility, somebody from the team comes [and says], "Hey, look, let's talk about what this could be." And, you know, that's actually one of the most fun parts of the job. There's some passion here from players, some passion from the team, how could this work? Is this the right thing? And so the blanket answer to your question is... actually, yes. In this case, in particular, yes, we've had more discussion about, "What would the right version of that be? Would we do more StarCraft? Are there other IP that we go and entertain?"

We also want to figure out with players on like, what's in bounds? What would they want to see? What would not? We watch IP partnerships that happen in Diablo, we watch what happens in Overwatch, we watch happens in other card games, and we have to figure out what's really right for our players, and then really deliver something delightful. I think the Heroes of StarCraft mini-set did do that. Really strong fantasy of playing as the three factions, but also, if you remember, we mapped them to different classes. How other IP maps in becomes one of the challenges and want to make sure to really do that correctly, as well.

Nothing to announce now. We always talk about that, trying to find what the next right version of that is. And, there could be some different forms of IP collaboration that comes in different phases. We've done Diablo in Battlegrounds, we've got Diablo Tavern Brawls, there could be some other small Diablo-like things coming as we figure out our path toward a fun anniversary.

Hearthstone: Reign of the Black Empire is set to release on October 20. The Monk class will debut with the March 2027 expansion.

Shacknews staff does not use generative artificial intelligence (AI) in their content. Shacknews strictly prohibits the use of its content for AI training or to generate text, including text in the style or format used for this publication. Shacknews reserves all rights to this work.

Ozzie Mejia Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?

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