Hearthstone’s Whispers of the Old Gods expansion is live

The sound of all those excited Hearthstone’s fans squealing with glee is much louder than a whisper.

The latest expansion for Blizzard’s digital card game is now live. Whispers of the Old Gods adds 134 new cards to Hearthstone. The digital card game market is worth $1.2 billion, and Hearthstone easily leads the field. Joost van Dreunen, analyst at market research firm SuperData Research, told GamesBeat that Hearthstone makes $20 million a month. Expansions like this keep players engaged and spending money on new content. A preorder of 50 packs of Whispers of the Old Gods cards cost players $50, and people can buy more as they hope to open rare minions and spells. The free-to-play game is available on PC, Mac, iOS, and Android devices.

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Players who log into Hearthstone during the expansion’s launch week will receive three packs of Whispers of the Old God cards for free. You can earn more by playing Standard mode, which is also launching with the expansion (along with Wild mode). Wild allows you to use every card released for your decks, but Standard will make minions and spells from the older sets (Goblins vs. Gnomes and Naxxramas) illegal.

To prepare for Whispers, Blizzard introduced a series of nerfs to many of Hearthstone’s most played cards from the original release. Those changes went live yesterday.

Now then, you’ll have to excuse me as I spend a very busy work day “researching” all of these new cards.