Hearthstone's next expansion, Perils in Paradise, won't have a new game board, and what might seem like a minor miss to you or I has quickly snowballed into doom-and-gloom predictions about the future of the game among quite a number of fans.
Game boards are exactly what they sound like: Different backgrounds on which Hearthstone is played. The game currently has 36 boards, though some of these are only available in the WIld mode, and aside from some cosmetic interactivity—on the Naxxramas board, for instance, clicking the spider eggs will make a squishy noise and eventually release some spiders—they have no impact on gameplay.
Nonetheless, the absence of a new board in Perils in Paradise is clearly being felt. The missing board itself isn't really the issue, though, but rather what it's perceived to reflect about the state of the game, exacerbated by the fact the audience has some real trust issues with Blizzard, as was notably seen with the quest XP debacle in April.
Hearthstone is of course 10 years old now, and perhaps no longer the apple of Blizzard's eye—or at least its accountants—leading some to worry that the game is slowly but inevitably moving towards some kind of maintenance mode, where it will continue to operate but future updates will either be minimized or halted altogether.
"I’m honestly shocked," redditor daddyvow wrote. "This seems like such a small thing but it’s so meaningful. It’s a sign of things to come and how much effort they want to put into this game. It feels like they have their priorities all wrong."
"I don't think it's going into maintenance mode anytime soon, but I do think it's heading towards lower creativity and no new surprises, like new classes/modes or crazy new mechanics," Gram64 wrote. "Just going to be three standard expansions every year with no real innovation, soulless."
A few made comparisons to Heroes of the Storm, Blizzard's 2015 MOBA that was slowly bled out after Blizzard decided to move some developers to other projects and discontinue its pro league. At the time, Blizzard committed to "actively supporting the game with new heroes, themed events, and other content that our community loves" despite the shift, but by 2022 it was all over.
"I don't want to spread doom/gloom," redditor Lexail wrote. "But I've already faced this in HotS, and the simple things were the first to go. In HotS they stopped giving the free mount each BlizzCon and in-game flag/emote."
To be clear, Blizzard hasn't indicated that it's moving any resources away from Hearthstone, but the reaction reflects a lack of trust in the studio in a broader context. Revelations about working conditions at the company that emerged from a civil rights lawsuit filed against Activision Blizzard by the state of California in 2021, which was eventually settled for $54 million, cost the company untold amounts of goodwill.
As we noted at the time, though, trouble had been brewing for years prior to that, evidenced by incidents including the disastrous announcement of Diablo Immortal, layoffs of hundreds of employees, a ban on Hearthstone pro Chung "Blitzchung" Ng Wai after he called for freedom for Hong Kong, and the hiring of former Homeland Security advisor Frances Townsend, known for defending the use of torture on detainees as part of the so-called War on Terror.
To a degree, when a game is a decade old you can expect some substantial bumps in the road. But what we're seeing with the current brouhaha is how little room Blizzard has to maneuver in terms of player trust, something that's visible across the publisher's slate of games. The long-awaited launch of Overwatch 2 was a complete botch that doesn't seem to be getting better, while PC Gamer's Hearthstone expert Tim Clark recently called out the studio for imposing "nakedly egregious" changes aimed solely at boosting "phony player engagement numbers."
Team 5 acknowledged the current unhappiness on Twitter, writing, "We hear your questions on what's changing and why, including why there is no new board for Perils in Paradise. Hang tight, as we’ll be sharing an update next week on that, along with what the team is focusing on for the future."
Inevitably, Blizzard's somewhat cryptic tweet hasn't calmed the waters: Many players want to know why it takes a week to release a statement addressing ongoing concerns about the state of the game, and of course some suspect that bad news is on the way.
For now, though, there's little basis beyond rampant speculation to expect a major change of course anytime soon. I would be very surprised if the planned announcement amounts to anything more than a clarification, an apology, and possibly a 'we'll do better in the future.'
