Hearthstone enters the Emerald Dream with its first expansion for 2025

It has been just over 11 years since the Tavern opened its doors, allowing World of Warcraft fans to explore Azeroth from a new perspective: collectible cards. In that time, we have traversed its most iconic lands, participated in its most extravagant events, and faced its most nefarious characters through the card expansions that bring the game to life.

Hearthstone now takes us to one of the most magical places in Azeroth: the Emerald Dream. Set in this mystical dimension, Into the Emerald Dream arrives today, March 25, as the first expansion of the year. Featuring 145 new cards, the story focuses on the struggle to protect this dreamlike realm from the corruption that threatens to turn it into a nightmare. It also introduces new keywords such as “Imbue” and “Dark Gifts” that reflect the story of this expansion. Ahead of this release, we had the opportunity to speak with Edward Goodwin (Lead Designer) and Dez Bencosme (Concept Artist) to learn more about the creative process behind this expansion.

Waiting for the Emerald Dream

One of the first questions that came up was why the Emerald Dream was chosen as the setting. We were told that this location had been under consideration by the Hearthstone team for some time, but World of Warcraft always had the final say on when to tell its story.

“For the last couple of years, The Emerald Dream has either been the top or the second top of the stories we have been excited about,” Goodwin explains. “But it’s always been up to the WoW Team to tell their story, right?. Every time we wanted to do it, the answer was ‘nope’. I’m so glad we waited because there’s so much lore, so much world building. It’s good to wait for their epic tale as they told it, and just made our story better.”

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Between words and conflicts

Another question that came up in the conversation was how the keywords that come with each expansion are chosen. Unlike other collectible card games, Hearthstone strives to make its mechanics accessible so that players do not have to read long texts to understand how the cards work. Goodwin explained that the keyword creation process is closely tied to the narrative of the expansion.

“We have a conflict, a war between good and evil,” says Goodwin. “How do we ensure we are telling that story and making it as cool as possible? Early on in development, one of the keywords we set for the Emerald Nightmare, which was very obvious, was Corrupt. As we were playing with it, we think it is cool, it works, but we know we can do better, go for something the players had never seen before. We ensure we capture that environment’s essence.”

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