Hearthstone is releasing a new expansion next week called Perils in Paradise, but they aren’t releasing a new board along with it. And this is heralding the beginning of the end. Possibly.

As with most things, it’s not about the game boards themselves, but what they represent. Every Hearthstone expansion has had a new game board – there are 30+ of them – so the absence of one is notable, especially given this year will be the 10th (!!) year anniversary. Of course, this is the same year that Blizzard discontinued the Duels mode and enacted some boneheaded changes to the quest system in an apparent attempt to inflate engagement metrics.

It doesn’t help when the official Blizzard response plays right into everyone’s fears:

We hear your questions on what’s changing and why, including why there is no new board for Perils in Paradise.

Hang tight, as we’ll be sharing an update next week on that, along with what the team is focusing on for the future.

Why not just, you know, address it this week? Because the $50/$80 preorder bundles are still going until next week. There may be a less cynical argument that discussion over future Hearthstone changes is more appropriate in an flashy expansion release post. On the other hand, there have been plenty of those teaser-esque posts in the weeks leading up to the expansion, and Blizzard community managers have been bobbing and weaving the “where board?” questions for just as long. All the delays accomplish is elevating the doomsaying ahead of what should otherwise have been talk about the expansion itself.

Incidentally, when Blizzard removed Duels it was spun this way:

As we think about the future of Hearthstone and where the team can best focus their efforts, we’ve made the difficult decision to discontinue support for the Duels Mode. […] This change will allow us to shift our resources to where we feel they will have the most impact, including Traditional Hearthstone, Battlegrounds, and more.

Looking at the current state of Hearthstone more generally, it’s difficult to identify what “focusing efforts” has accomplished. Game balance in Standard mode is amongst the worst it has ever been; power is no longer creepin’, it be runnin’. Battlegrounds has re-introduced Buddies (presumably for a limited time), which is worst of the three types of historic meta-shakeup mechanics. Battlegrounds Duos is a mode no one asked for, is rife with trolling, and basically a content-creator dead-end. What could the devs possibly be focusing on, aside from updating their resumes?

I suppose we will see more next week. My guess is that they will start offering Premium Boards in the shop as another channel of monetization. Which, whatever. That, at least, would be less problematic than them coming out and saying “we’re only making one new board per year so we can focus on other things” and then those other things never materialize because it was shareholder value all along.