Blizzard announced its upcoming plans for Hearthstone today, and they're coming fast, with a mini-set in Darkmoon Races and some Battlegrounds updates due out in just a few days. Hearthstone is Blizzard's popular digital card game, which sees players given access to multiple different modes of play. While the game is free-to-play, it also includes options to buy cosmetics, a new season pass in the form of the Tavern Pass, and card packs to help round out a player's collection should they be interested.

Recently, Hearthstone's monetization model came under fire for the way it was pushing its players to spend more thanks to anemic reward offerings from the free Tavern Pass variant. Blizzard has since iterated on the system several times, with its last series of changes the best received yet, but the distraction of a battle pass controversy unfortunately shifted attention away from the game's most recent expansion, Madness at the Darkmoon Faire. Tavern Pass aside, the expansion was an excellent addition to the game's Standard and Wild formats, and coincided with the release of the new Duels game mode to help further increase the depth of the Hearthstone experience.

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Blizzard unveiled its upcoming Hearthstone updates earlier today, and they continue in the same vein of promising content additions and tweaks that more recent announcements have established. First and foremost, Blizzard announced that Hearthstone is getting a mini-set called Darkmoon Races, which will add 35 cards into the game. These cards will be available for purchase until May 11 for $14.99 USD or 2000 Gold, and buying the mini-set will give players all copies they need of each card. Blizzard also announced that Hearthstone Battlegrounds will be getting an update, with two new heroes, Tickatus and Greybough, coming alongside two new minions, Soul Devourer and Ring Matron. Both Darkmoon Races and the Hearthstone Battlegrounds update will be available on January 21, 2021.

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Blizzard will also be rolling out updates to Hearthstone's Duels mode on January 21, where players will now be able to choose between three Hero Powers instead of two, and between six treasures instead of three. Adding depth to the mode is sorely needed, as it's core gameplay and design remains excellent but with its limited offerings at release, things grew stale over time. Adding that much more variance should help make Duels a desirable mode for months to come.

While Hearthstone is no longer as dominant an online card game as it was at its peak, it still enjoys a lot of success, and its ability to be adapted in so many different ways - the success of Hearthstone Battlegrounds and Duels are evidence of this - illustrates why its longevity has come so easily in spite of many unforeseen problems. Quality content updates like these could see Hearthstone's stock rise in 2021 - and making the game more free-to-play friendly at some point would go a long way towards that, too.

Next: Hearthstone: Deck Archetypes Explained