Blizzard’s collectible card gameHearthstonereleased its Titans expansion earlier this month which introduced 145 new cards based on Warcraft’s iconic Titans, some of the most powerful individuals in the Warcraft universe. Along with the new cards and the never-before-seen Titan, Amitus,Hearthstone’s latest expansion has brought new keywords like Forge and Titan that add a new layer of depth to gameplay and deck building.
In an interview with Game Rant, Lead Narrative Designer Valerie Chu and Lead Designer Chadd Nervig discussed all things Titans, including how they approached the creation of Amitus and how each class was assigned its own Titan or Titan-like character. They also spoke aboutHearthstone’s process for creating new cards and how Hearthstone ties in withWorld of Warcraft’s lore.The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
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Q: Bringing a new Titan into the Pantheon is a big deal. Can you talk about the behind-the-scenes process involved in creating a new Titan?
Nervig:We knew Titans were going to be a big thing. People love Titans fromWorld of Warcraftand Warcraft lorein general, and we wanted to bring them into Hearthstone. We’ve been wanting to do Ulduar and other Titan-related stuff for quite a while. The Titans themselves are super impactful, big-name characters, and we thought it’d be really cool if every class got to play with Titans.
There’s a bit of a problem there in that there are not enough Titans to go around for all the classes. So we used a bit of “Hearthstonecreativity” to fill some of those roles, including creating a new Titan and counting a few others as Titans, though lore-wise, they’re a little different. That gave us a great starting point and we were thrilled with the gameplay we were developing for it. It was really exciting to look at how to bring these epic characters into the world ofHearthstone.
Q: When it comes to creating a new Titan for the expansion, did you come up with the character first or did you look at gameplay and then develop the character to fill that role?
Chu:We went through a few passes on which Titans would best suit which classes because their power kit is quite different. When that lore was initially created for the Titans,Hearthstone’s 11 classeswere not at the forefront of anyone’s mind, and many classes do have a little bit of thematic overlap.
It’s important forHearthstoneplayers to feel very unique and defined in terms of their role in our game, so we were really excited to find a place to bring to life a possible Titan who would see the paladins and represent them as they are now, however they may have originally received power or what that lore foundation was.
There are some references in different pieces of Warcraft lore to unnamed Titans out there, and as they are these powerful beings who can exist all over the universe, I’m sure there are some we haven’t met in other Warcraft games. So it was exciting for us to think about howHearthstonecould approach those characters and things that might come up in the tavern as people think about different Titans and different powers that they could have.
Q: Amitus is somewhat of a peacekeeper among the Titans keeping their ambitions in check. How did the team come to choose this personality and lore background for her?
Chu:We’re excited to add another female character – Eonar is a little lonely there – and explore what those different personality archetypes could look like to fit with the Paladins, and the idea of having someone who’s very powerful but tied to peace or harmony could potentially be an explanation for the characters in the tavern wondering who these Titans are like, “Oh, this is why that Titan isn’t around anymore! Because harmony was lost with Sargeras who betrayed the rest of the Pantheon.”
So it sort of works as a possible explanation for why there was this type of Titan, and now she’s not around anymore. But it’s really exciting to see that people are interested in her and want to know more about her, because I feel like as far as Warcraft characters go, that’s a good sign. Something interesting is happening, and hopefullyHearthstone’s Paladin playerswill feel that their Titan is absolutely as cool and exciting to play as any of the others.
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Q: Occasionally, Hearthstone characters have ended up in World of Warcraft. When coming up with Amitus, how much did you prepare for that possibility?
Nervig:We attempt to create characters that fit withintheWorld of Warcraftworld, but they’re not necessarily official canon. We want to ensure they feel natural. Rafaam feels like a character that you could imagine seeing inWorld of Warcraft. They’ve still got theHearthstoneflavor and their personalities are on the wacky side but as long as it doesn’t feel off, it feels like it could fit, I think we’re in the right place.
Naturally sometimes that inspires theWorld of Warcraftteam to be like “Oh, well we’ll take Elise and Reno Jackson,” and it’s cool to see those characters make their way into the official canon. In Amitus’ case, I don’t think there’s an expectation of that, but we did want to just ensure that it feels like the sort of character that is plausible.
Q: In terms of gameplay, what does Amitus bring to the table for Paladin players?
Nervig:Resurrect for the “first time,” wink wink. Now that we’ve launched, I haven’t seen many decks playing her specifically, but I think there’s potential there for a resurrect-heavy Paladin archetype that could see play. Maybe in the future or something. But I think having returning waves of past minions might make for a neat archetype for Paladins.
Q: How do you strike a balance between representing these powerful Titans’ abilities while also supporting each class’s playstyle and maintaining the overall balance among each other?
Nervig:The gameplay has to come first. If it doesn’t come first it has to be the highest priority because ultimately, we’re a card game that needs to be fun to play. A lot of that comes down to finding the right matches for which of the Titans goes with each class and also the interpretation of that Titan that fits well with the gameplay we think works best for them.
Sometimes we’ll have those sort of top-down designs where the lore and the flavor were the source of the design idea and a lot of times they’ll also go the other way and they’ll be what we call “bottom-up” designs where we design the gameplay and then mold the flavor to fit on to that. We have to make sure we line those things up close enough that it feels right. It feels reasonable to expect Norgannon to be doing big magic bursts and casting all these spells and such.
How to handle Roguein general was a big question and I think V-07-TR-0N going with Rogue and counting as a Titan was a clever way to do that because we were really loving the Mech Rogue aspect for this. I was tearing up the ladder, it did great for me on launch day. But yeah, getting those to feel appropriate and lining up flavor and mechanics is a big priority.
Q: On the player’s side, we mostly just see some card art and flavor text, but behind the scenes, how deep does the Hearthstone team go when coming up with storylines and narratives for characters like Amitus?
Chu:We were pretty lucky with the Titans because there are a number of Warcraft sourcebooks, The Chronicles, that go pretty deep into what the Titans were up to before everything went wrong in poor Ulduar. So there’s a pretty good guide there. But there are some kind of patchy places where, you know, “Who was this unnamed Titan?” or “What is the exact power kit of this lesser featured character?”
We were also a bit interpretive with theroles of the Titan Keepersas well. Like Sif originally is not a Keeper, but she sort of serves that slot in the set because she’s a very notable character and a powerful character that players encountered in Ulduar.
So having that sense of what works well with the mechanics that we’re looking to pursue for the set, as well as being reasonably within the spirit of the lore that’s come before seems about right for what’s going down in the tavern. And it’s really exciting to kind of fill in those details as we go.
For this set, we did focus a little bit more on the lore for some of the flavor texts for the key cards. For other sets, we’ve explored different ways to show the story from cinematics to solo content to other potential things we could do. We’re always looking for where players are wanting more content and wanting to do stuff, and responding to that with each set.
Q: The previous expansion, Festival of Legends, was a sillier music festival-themed expansion while Titans seems more grounded in lore. How does the Hearthstone team decide on a given theme for each expansion?
Chu:For this particular set, our Set Lead Designer Alex was especially excited about the subject ofUlduar and the Titansand particularly visiting it before Yogg-Saron corrupted Loken and the others, having that idyllic time period. I was excited too, obviously because the lore is right up my alley. I think the rest of the team was intrigued by having Titan-level powers at their fingertips for the very first time.
One of the things that is important to us overall, though, is not doing the same thing back to back so that Hearthstone players will always be getting something new, a good amount of variety. Unless we’re doing something like a year-long narrative, I think that would be the exception, but trying to take people to new places and give them a new experience so it doesn’t get too stale.
I think with Titans it’s hard to get much bigger and newer than that just because they’ve never been playable before, and it was such a cool opportunity and we’re really happy we were able to bring this one to life.
Nervig:Our process for deciding what new expansions we do is a team-wide involved discussion. We have big brainstorming sessions for the whole team to throw out ideas for what new expansion themes should we do next, And Titans or Ulduar have basically been in the top five in all those brainstorming sessions for years now. So it feels great to finally find the right time to do that.
Q: One interesting set in this expansion was the Mage’s spell school group that encouraged Mages to cast as many spell schools as possible. Do any other sets from the expansion stick out to you for shaking up their class’s gameplay?
Nervig:I mentioned Mech Rogue and that’s been fun, and I actually saw people trying Pirate Rogue today, too. The lightning andnature side of Shamanwith the big bursty lightning storms fit well with Thorim and Golganneth and these big storms are part of the power that you see coming from Titans, I thought that fit really well canonically. I thought Eonar growing treants from saplings to treants to ancients was a really cool fit there, too.
Q: You mentioned how some of the class’s Titans aren’t necessarily actual Titans. Although you made the Titan Amitus for Paladins, what was your process behind those not-quite-a-Titan Titans?
Nervig:We talked a bit about Mimiron making his own Titan there, but there’s also the Primus for Death Knights. For one,Hearthstone’s Death Knightsdidn’t feel like they had a clear Titan that was the right one for them. There’s not one with a strong, unholy-seeming association. That felt like it was counter to most of the Titans. So we thought that we’d just go in the opposite direction. “Is there an opposite of the Titans that we can do?”
And while the Titans make up the Pantheon of Order, there’s another Pantheon of extremely powerful beings in the cosmos of Warcraft lore, the Pantheon of Death. We thought maybe we could just treat the Primus or one of the others from the Pantheon of Death as filling that role of being the counterpart to the Titans. Though not technically a Titan himself, he’s at that power level.
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It’s nice to see some more exposure for the darker powers in Warcraft lore. I’d love to see a Void Lords-themed expansion come to Hearthstone.
Nervig:I would too, both for Hearthstone and for WoW. I love all the Void stuff, it’s super cool.
When Shadowlands came out we talked about it a bunch on the team, like, “Shadowlands is super cooland every zone here in Shadowlands could make a cool card set!” We did one about Revendreth, Murder at Castle Nathria, with a mini set with The Maw, and now we get to see the Primus involved here, too. I love the Shadowlands, it’s a great source of ideas and material for us.
Q: Since we’re looking back on past WoW expansions, are there any others that you’d be particularly interested in revisiting with Hearthstone, like Mists of Pandaria?
Nervig:Of course, I can’t tell you anything that would announce anything. But I’ll just say that Mists of Pandaria probably is my favorite WoW expansion of all time. I love that place, and I would love to see that coming intoHearthstone. No plans to announce anything like that happening, but I share thepassion that players have for Pandariapersonally. A lot of team members love all sorts of different areas within WoW.
Q:Hearthstonehas over 4,400 cards now. What are the challenges involved in coming up with an expansion full of new cards? Are there certain goals you keep in mind when creating a new set of cards?
Nervig:We definitely want new cards we make to be distinct, and not just duplicate things we’ve done before. One of our core values is to surprise and delight, and so that often means coming up with ideas that are like, “Oh, we’ve never seen that before!” So that’s a big source of inspiration for us.
In terms of ways that we can think outside of the box of things we haven’t done before both in terms of gameplay and flavor? I’d actually say that the process of coming up with ideas of what cards to make is that we’re definitely not scraping the bottom of any barrels here when we make an expansion.
We ship 145 cards, but in the process, we probably made almost 1000 in some cases, and it’s just a matter of, “Okay, what are the best 145 of this? How do we concentrate that down to the most distinctive, the most emotive, the most exciting ones there, and what are the card ideas that we save for a future expansion to seed our ideas forthe next expansion’s gameplay or lore?”
I don’t think we’re in any danger of running out of ideas. It’s always a challenge of “What ideas for this expansion fit well and are going to be the most exciting to put all of our efforts behind to bring to the players?”
Q: Will future cards utilize the Forge and Titan keywords, or are those mechanics going to be exclusive to this expansion’s cards?
Nervig:The current plan is that they are exclusive to Titans. However, we’re always open to hearing player feedback about the things that they really like, the things that they may want to see come back at some point in the future. I think Tradable fromUnited in Stormwindfor example was intended to be specifically for Stormwind, but we really liked the gameplay of it and players really liked the gameplay of it, so we’ve kept it around.
I think there’s always a chance for mechanics that are really successful and we think have a lot of legs for the future to come back. We have to be careful about how much we have in the base game and how many different layers of complexity there are, but there’s room to grow there and so player feedback is a huge part of that.
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to say or share aboutHearthstoneor Titans before we wrap up?
Nervig:I love theHearthstonecommunity. I think our community is amazing. So big shout out to all the amazing fans we have and I’m so thankful to have them.
Chu:We’re so happy everyone can go back to the early days of Azeroth with us and explore the power of the Titans, a power that has reshaped the world! We know that a lot of people couldn’t handle this power, but our community can. So please have lots of fun out there and try not to destroy any worlds accidentally. On purpose is okay.
Hearthstoneis available on Mobile and PC.
