Hearthstone Dev Addresses Power Creeping Concerns

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft senior game designer Ben Brode has addressed player concerns that the game is "power creeping up the cards" and becoming "more daunting over time" to new players.

Speaking in video uploaded to the official Hearthstone YouTube channel, Brode explains how power creeping results from Blizzard introducing powerful new cards to Hearthstone to keep the game fresh and interesting for players. However, this means that cards become more and more powerful over time, inflating the game.

Brode goes on to say it's important for the game to remain "on the right trajectory" as Blizzard hopes to release "hundreds" of expansions for Hearthstone.

"We agree that this is a problem. This is something that we need to solve for the health of the game going forward, both for our new players and our current players. We've been talking about these exact issues on the Hearthstone team for a really long time, and we're continuing to talk about these issues. We want to come up with the perfect solution, if there is one, and try to make sure that we put Hearthstone on the path to success for the really long term," Brode said.

Hearthstone is currently available for PC, smartphones, and tablets. The game's most recent expansion, The Grand Tournament, was released in August. Blizzard has said it wants to keep releasing new content for Hearthstone, expressing the intention of supporting the game for 20 years.