A satirical horror set? We ask Hearthstone developers about their dream sets

While it seems unlikely that we'd get these, we are told that "maybe it's not in the cards".

Hearthstone has had some really wacky and crazy sets over the years, with perhaps the highlight being the murder mystery set Murder at Castle Nathria, which launched in mid-2022. Considering Hearthstone doesn't seem to have to play by the same rules as World of Warcraft, for example, I recently took the opportunity to ask the developers at Blizzard what their dream Hearthstone set would look like.

As part of an interview at the Warcraft 30th Anniversary celebrations in London recently, I posed the question to lead designer Cora Georgiou, who told me the following:

"Oh, there are so many themes that I would love to do. I don't want to give anything away, so I won't say anything that's in development, of course. I am a horror buff myself, so I will just say I think it would be really interesting to maybe make a rather satirical type of horror set and see how we could do that in Hearthstone. I don't know, maybe it's not in the cards, but I do think it could be fun to explore."

As for what's next for Hearthstone, the game will soon receive its next expansion known as Into the Emerald Dream. With that coming up and introducing a slate of new mechanics and features, I also asked Blizzard how they go about continuously balancing the game and ensuring its many mechanics don't overwhelm or clash too much.

Georgiou told me the following: "We have two separate teams actually, one for creative development and one for, we call them final design. They're our balance and live balance team. So, we have different phases of the project and now that we've been working on Hearthstone for 10 years, we've gotten pretty good at scheduling things out. We've made 32 expansions now plus minisets. So, it's all about having those dedicated phases of the project, knowing when you're moving from one to the next and just making sure that you've got the right people in the right places to be able to serve those different parts of the project."

You can see the full interview with Blizzard about Hearthstone below, and can look to check out Into the Emerald Dream when it launches in-game on March 25.