Today at Blizzcon, Blizzard announced a brand new expansion for Hearthstone coming TKTKTKTK, as well as the game’s first brand new class in four years planned for early next year: the Monk.
The new expansion is themed around the Old Gods, set tens of thousands of years in Warcraft’s past, and entitled Reign of the Black Empire. It features the conflict between the Old Gods and the Titans, and TKTKTKT says it’s closely tied in with the upcoming storyline over in World of Warcraft.
Reign of the Black Empire introduces a new keyword: Assemble. Assemble allows you to merge the text boxes of two separate minions, potentially leading to some wild combinations. It will also add a new minion type in Battlegrounds, called Apparitions. With each one of your Apparitions that is destroyed, it gets you closer to waking a powerful Old God to fight for you.
Other features coming with Reign of the Black Empire include The Journey, a new part of the Journal that will serve as a home and hub for game and narrative events, stories, and new game modes. The Journey will be added for free to all players alongside the expansion launch. All of this is coming to the game on October 20th.
Finally, the new class. We weren’t given much details about the Monk, but we do know that it’s coming in March of next year, and a few more details will be teased later on in Blizzcon panels.