Goblin vs Gnomes (GvG), Hearthstone’s first expansion will supposed go Live later tonight. You can see the cards here.

I have not talked about Hearthstone in a while, primarily because I had stopped playing for a while. The Naxx Adventure mode (e.g. mini-expansion) brought me back for a bit, but once the PvE content was finished I once again retreated to getting my Hearthstone fix via Twitch.

It is not so much that the game stopped being fun to play, rather it became… well, a bit more prescriptive. An aggressive deck hits its curve? GG. The opponent plays a card you cannot immediately deal with next turn? GG. Don’t get me wrong, it is possible to dig yourself out of certain holes. The means of doing so are completely known though, which means the opponent can either play around it or know when they are safe not to.

Looking at GvG, I am not entirely sure anything will change.

Nevertheless, I have been knocking out daily quests these past two weeks or so. And, surprisingly, been enjoying it. Indeed, I might even show an uncharacteristic break in willpower and straight-up purchase some GvG packs this week.

Some of this interest might be due to the shake-up of the metagame, some due to an ipso facto renewed interest from buckling down and playing Hearthstone some more. Hmm. You know, it might simply be because the marginal value of in-game gold has increased due to the upcoming expansion. After all, once you own 95% of the cards you want, the sense of progression from gold pretty much evaporates as each additional pack/arena run is likely to result in nothing but disenchanting materials. Which is is still useful, of course, but much less exciting. Getting 2-3 brand new cards per pack though? Super exciting.

I suppose we’ll see what happens with GvG tomorrow and in the days ahead.