Hearthstone: Forged In The Barrens Expansion Now Out; You Can Open Classic Packs Again Too

Hearthstone's new expansion, Forged in the Barrens, is now live. The new expansion launch means you can purchase packs a la carte, buy into the new Tavern Pass to start earning towards the rewards track, and try out new cards and new deck combinations.

The expansion launch isn't going off completely without a hitch, however. Blizzard has acknowledged a bug that is preventing players from queuing into games, and it says it is working on a solution. The company has only acknowledged the issue for ranked games, but players have reported it in other modes as well.

The company temporarily disabled opening Classic packs, due to an apparent bug that was still giving out cards that were added later, and were not part of the original Classic set. However, that issue has been fixed, so an update has once again enabled the feature.

Forged in the Barrens also marks the start of the Year of the Gryphon, and a new year means certain cards cycle out of Standard play rotation. This year Blizzard has made that an even larger change than usual by implementing a new Core set system. This curated set of cards replaces the Classic and Basic sets, letting Blizzard swap which cards serve as the foundation of Hearthstone every time it begins a new year of content. You can earn the entire Core set by simply leveling up the various characters, and if you've already leveled them up you'll automatically have access to the entire Core set from the start.

Other changes include some tweaking of the Tavern Pass including new Diamond card rewards, the launch of Classic mode which reverts cards to their 2014 state, and an upcoming Mercenaries mode. For more on Hearthstone's big changes, check out our interview with Blizzard designers on how they reimagined the iconic dragon cards for the new Core set launch.