Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is going to stick with nine classes for the time being.
Publisher Blizzard has done a lot to keep its card battler Hearthstone feeling fresh — like releasing single-player adventures and introducing the Tavern Brawls. But one thing it doesn’t plan to do — at least in the near future — is add a new playable class. Hearthstone senior game designer Ben Brode confirmed as much on Twitter when a fan asked about the possibility of a specific new class coming in a planned update that is coming July 22.
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@3Otterz We aren't planning on any new classes at this time.
— Ben Brode (@bbrode) July 6, 2015
This leaves the door open to new classes coming in the future, but it also means that won’t happen for months. Hearthstone is an active game-as-a-service, which is to say that it is always getting new content. To feed into that, Blizzard is always designing and testing new ideas, and that process takes time.
Now, some fans might find this frustrating. That’s because Blizzard recently started selling skins to change the appearance and animations of existing heroes for $10 each. Hearthstone players felt like this was a bit expensive, and it sets a precedent that would likely dictate a whole new class would have to cost even more.
But while this news might frustrate some fans, it is probably good news for the immediate future of Hearthstone. The existing Heroes seem like they all still have a ton of untapped potential — particularly classes like Priest or Shaman, which aren’t among the top decks according to Liquidhearth, which covers the esports scene that has developed around the card battler.
Throughout the rest of 2015, we’re probably due another major expansion complete with dozens of new cards that will change the way every class plays. Blizzard hasn’t exhausted the fun of those kinds of shakeups yet, and that’s probably why it feels comfortable putting off a new hero.