BlizzCon 2021 brought a slew of new announcements about the biggest Blizzard games, including the free to play digital card game, Hearthstone. Hearthstone game director Ben Lee recapped the Year of the Phoenix, which gave fans the new Demon Hunter class, the Madness at the Darkmoon Faire expansion, and much more. Hearthstone will now transition into the Year of the Gryphon and introduce a new wave of content including a new Classic format and the Mercenaries game mode.

After mixed reactions to the Tavern Pass rewards track introduced last year, Blizzard looks to assuage complaints about Hearthstone's accused pay to win elements with new content that attempts to make the game easier to access for new players. One of those changes is a new Core Set for Hearthstone which will be free to obtain for all players. The new Core Set will include some cards from Basic and Classic sets, but the others will still be usable in the new Classic format.

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The Classic format will bring back classic Hearthstone cards from the game's 2014 launch in their original forms. Some well-known cards returning to their original states are the Leeroy Jenkins and Blade Flurry cards. The four main playable formats in Hearthstone will now be Classic, Standard, Wild, and Casual. The Classic format will have its own matchmaking pool and any games played in the format will be put toward corresponding achievements in the game.

Hearthstone will also be introducing a new Mercenaries mode to coincide with the Book of Mercenaries stories in the Forged in the Barrens expansion. The Mercenaries mode is designed as a strategic RPG experience featuring rogue-like missions that will earn players loot and experience. Iconic World of Warcraft characters like Sylvanas Windrunner and Ragnaros the Firelord can be picked as part of a team of mercenaries that can evolve into more powerful versions of themselves as players play more Mercenaries runs.

Both the new Classic format and the Mercenaries mode are scheduled to be released sometime this year, though Blizzard is not ready to announce an official release date just yet. Year of the Gryphon content will be rolling out in three phases this year, and the announcements from BlizzCon 2021 have so far all been included in the first phase. The second day of BlizzCon 2021 starts today, with more Hearthstone content to come. Today's Q&A session will see Hearthstone developers sit down to answer fan questions about Year of the Gryphon and anything else related to the game.

Hearthstone is available on PC and mobile devices.

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