Hearthstone Is Officially Giving Away Two-Thirds Of The Game For Free Very Soon

2 days ago 5

Published Feb 9, 2026, 12:46 PM EST

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It's hard to believe that Hearthstone is 12 years old at this point. It's older than Overwatch, and the Hearthstone team has released numerous expansions and modes for it over the years.

Now, it's time to revisit one of the most memorable events in Warcraft history. Thankfully, there's a deal sweetener coming with the next expansion drop.

Cataclysm Is Coming To Hearthstone

On March 17

Hearthstone is launching its "next chapter" in the form of Cataclysm, which sees the dragon Deathwing rock the world of Hearthstone with some help from famous Warcraft baddies. To answer the call for the forces of good, the Dragonflight will take up arms and attempt to defend against Deathwing. This battle is represented through two new keywords, as well as the return of the "Colossal" keyword.

Here's the full story setup: "Cataclysm reimagines the 2010 World of Warcraft expansion with a decisive twist: this time, Deathwing won. As his final act, Murozond pulled this alternate Deathwing into our universe, and now it falls to us to defeat the most powerful Deathwing of all time."

Speaking to exceutive producer Nathan Lyons-Smith and game director Tyler Bielman, I got a sense of how the team views Hearthstone going forward, and how they've learned from their past successes. Speaking to the longevity of Hearthstone, Lyons-Smith noted:

"The things that we look at are how well we engage our players and keep them in the game. And so like retention is a very common free-to-play metric. We specifically are looking a lot at players that are in the constructed mode, and we know that we want to give them a variety of experiences to keep them there. So it's not just, 'hey, you should just go play ranked every day.' We've got tavern brawl, we've got arena. You can go have fun in battlegrounds. And so really, having a set of experiences and events and rewards that keep them retained and having fun in our client is a big goal of ours. And then the other goal is to bring in players as best we can, and we do this with awesome marketing that our marketing teams help with."

Before its March 17 launch, there's going to be a prelude event running starting today, where players help Chromie stave off Deathwing's forces.

There's Going To Be A Massive Free Card Program

Dubbed "a new era for the game," the launch of Cataclysm is going to be pretty big for multiple reasons, but the most prominent thing about it is the promo Blizzard is enacting alongside it. Dubbed the "Free Trial Card" program, starting March 10, you'll have access to all cards from the Into the Emerald Dream (March 25, 2025) and Lost City of Un'Goro expansions (July 8, 2025), including Golden cards.

This is a massive deal, as you're getting two-thirds of the standard card pool for free, and deck recipes will be available at launch to help ease players into the idea of using all those free cards. According to Blizzard, "players who already have a significant amount of cards from Into the Emerald Dream will receive a signature Ysera, Emerald Aspect," and "players who have significant amounts of cards for Lost City of Un’Goro will receive a signature Endbringer Umbra."

I pressed the team to highlight why this effort was different, and how it compares to promos they've tried in the past, and executive producer Nathan Lyons-Smith fired back:

"Yeah, over the last I've been on the team seven years, so before me, the team has consistently worked on one of the challenges of getting players into the game. Sometimes that's the cost of getting started. Like, what do I buy? How do I go and have fun? Sometimes it's the complexity of getting started, like, what even do I build? And then some of it is, like, what's that early experience? And so there's a, you know, a newbie player experience now, where you're only playing with other new players, and you're not getting stomped by, you know, veteran players that have been a long time.

But the trial deck, loaner deck, and getting to keep that was one of the biggest 'ahas' of, like, yeah, that's just working. Let's keep doing that. Those things don't always break out to players. It's hard maybe to grok like, trial decks that can be exactly it's a good deck, right? And that, yeah, actually, they're, like, pretty good, especially in the, you know, early player ladders. And so with this effort, we're trying to break through in a bigger way of a holy cow, like two full expansions are free like that."

I asked the team whether, if this program were successful, they would consider repeating it. Game director Tyler Bielman responded, "Definitely."

All The Hearthstone Cataclysm Cards We Can Reveal

The Catalcysm expansion will sport two new keywords:

Herald - Used by classes aligned with Deathwing’s Lieutenants. The more you Herald, the stronger they become.
Shatter - A Shatter card splits into two halves when drawn, on opposite sides of your hand. You can cast them separately or combine them back together for twice the power and value.

Interestingly, these keywords are tied to classes that are aligned with Deathwing or the heroic Dragonflight faction. While it's tough to make a call on what faction will end up the strongest at launch, in our experience, the Herald mechanic was very powerful and immediately impactful.

Shatter is a neat mechanic, but takes a bit more setup, since you need to manually combine Shatter cards by playing other cards from your hand. Deckbuilding (which we did not have access to) will be crucial for circumventing Shatter limitations.

The Year Of The Scarab Begins

2026 Will Be An Interesting Year For Hearthstone

As 2025's sets come to an end, the Year of the Raptor will end, and the Year of the Scarab begins. Rotation is upon us, and "stronger class identities" are going to be a mainstay, according to my chat with the game's producers and designers.

Hearthstone has a lot going for it, as it's still one of the longest-running digital trading card games. Based on my time with the new expansion, things are shaping up for a fascinating, if risky, meta. The free cards are the cherry on top.