Hearthstone's 'year of change' begins with a twist on one of WoW's biggest expansions, and a bucket of free cards

Being set in the Warcraft universe lets Hearthstone's developers do pretty much whatever they want with familiar moments in its history, so its next expansion puts a dark spin on a critical time in World of Warcraft. Hearthstone: Cataclysm is what would've happened if the big evil dragon, Deathwing, took over WoW in 2010 and was never defeated by players.

It will be your job to fight him in an alternate universe with a bunch of new cards and characters from Hearthstone's past. The expansion will launch on March 17 and will also be the start of a new year of Hearthstone, bringing a new core set of cards and balance changes.

Cataclysm will bring back colossal minions, minion cards that summon more minions, new keywords tied to Deathwing's lieutenants and allied Dragonflight characters, as well as powerful new class spell cards called Triumphs and Last Stands.

A week before the expansion drops, on March 10, every card from the Into the Emerald Dream and The Lost City of Un'Goro expansions will be made into free trial cards to use. And as pointed out in today's Spotlight video, all those cards will be usable until the next expansion. I'm no Hearthstone player, but hearing that nearly all of the cards in the game will be free almost makes me want to see what it's all about.

The developers in the Spotlight stressed that 2026 will be a "year of change" for Hearthstone, and that the meta will shift even more than it usually does. At the end of the video (and in interviews during a recent press event at Blizzard HQ), the developers teased that there will be some big Hearthstone news at BlizzCon in September. I got the sense that it won't just be the next expansion, but something much bigger (that also isn't a sequel, according to the developers).

Given the recent Overwatch news and how the developers want to aim for annual updates that feel like expansions, my guess is Hearthstone will start to have a more regular cadence of updates with something big to kick off each year.

Hearthstone: Cataclysm launches on March 17.