Hearthstone, one of the most played online card games on Twitch and Blizzard’s foray into the Trading-Card-Game (TCG) and Card Battle genre, is getting a massive overhaul really soon.

The update will introduce two new modes of play called Standard and Wild.

Standard will retire most of the cards already introduced via payable expansions and unlockable content; whereas Wild will be the exact opposite, as the word entails.

Essentially, the way that Hearthstone has always been played will be kept intact via the Wild game mode whereby players will be able to play the way that they have always played in ranked and unranked matches. Wild will have no impact on a player’s collection of cards or currently built decks.

Standard is where the safest play will happen; a new game mode which introduces ‘Friendly Challenges’ along with its own Ranked and Unranked play. Standard will not affect the Arena, Solo play or the Adventures categories added through the expansion content.

Standard is added mainly as a way to increase the tactical play in tournaments and will be the official format of the Hearthstone Championship Tour going forward. This also allows newer players to get a grip on the game much faster than ever before.

A number of cards will be retired entirely from Standard play, including most of the Adventure content cards and all of the Goblin and Gnomes cards. This way Standard will have a lot of the heavily critiqued Random Number Generation (RNG) removed in favour of a more predictable format of play, allowing the skill aspect of the big-leaguers to shine through.

Understandably, this overhaul might be met with a bit of disdain from many casual players who will have to destroy all of their decks in order to play the new Standard mode. Thinking forward, Blizzard have allowed any player that had already unlocked all nine heroes an extra nine slots, upping the total of decks a player can have to eighteen.

[Sources: Blizzard, The Guardian]

Blizzard is introducing and making Hearthstone Standard the default way for gamers to play both normally and competitively.

Junior Editor at Vamers. From Superman to Ironman; Bill Rizer to Sam Fisher and everything in-between, Edward loves it all. He is a Bachelor of Arts student and English Major specialising in Language and Literature. He is an avid writer and casual social networker with a flare for all things tech related.