Blizzard Entertainment

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. We do not have plans for any further scheduled updates for Duels, and the Mode itself is scheduled to be removed from the Hearthstone client in April 2024.

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. To that end, Battlegrounds Duos is scheduled for an upcoming Battlegrounds patch, and we’re trying out some Duels Treasures in our next Arena season—more details soon.

We want to thank all our passionate Duels fans for every pile of loot, treasure, and hard-fought victory you’ve collected along the way. It’s been a heroic run, and we couldn’t have done it without you.

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Trolls, draenei, and warlock Tyrant and Darkglare demons get a glow up in the Seeds of Renewal content update.

Five New Troll Hair Colors

Refresh your hair color before you head out on your latest adventures. You’re bound to stun your enemies with your glorious locks.

Journey into Northrend to the Wyrmrest Temple and face Halion and his minions within the Ruby Sanctum on January 11 at 3:00 p.m. PST (23:00 GMT).

Gather your allies and make plans to heed the call of the red dragonflight in their time of need.

Discover Bel'ameth, the arms of the Goddess, a much-needed place for the kaldorei to seek much-needed repose and solace. This new night elf settlement lies adjacent to the Ohn'ahran Plains in the Dragon Isles. It rests beneath the new World Tree, Amirdrassil's boughs, and can be explored in the next Dragonflight update, Seeds of Renewal.

Points of Interest

Traverse through a vibrant wilderness teeming with flora and fauna as you explore several points of interest.

Are you a wall-riding legend? Can you use Ice Wall to reach new heights? Does the kill feed light up when you use Self-Destruct or Dragonblade? Prove your skills with all new Hero Mastery courses! Lucio’s course launches today, and courses for Echo, Genji, Mei, and D.Va will be premiering each week for the next four weeks. You’ll also be able to earn new cosmetic rewards in a limited-time five-week event.

Hero Mastery is an always-available, single-player mode for honing a hero’s skills and abilities. Reach for the highest scores when you complete for fast times, defeat challenging training bots, and collect emblems throughout the course. You can already play Hero Mastery courses for Sojourn, Tracer, Mercy, Reinhardt, and Winston, along with Lucio’s course launching today.  As mentioned at the start of the season, we’ve made improvements to scoring in each Hero Mastery course, and we’re resetting the leaderboards, giving everyone a chance to prove ...

Each week, we'll look ahead to what's in store for World of Warcraft, share the latest news, and keep you in the know byte by byte. New discoveries await in the Dragon Isles when the Seeds of Renewal content update goes live on January 16. 

Mark Your Calendars: The Seeds of Renewal Goes Live January 16!

Discover the buried history of Azeroth and the Dragon Isles through the Azerothian Archives Public Event, explore Bel’ameth—a burgeoning new zone offering hope to the Kaldorei, take Dragonriding to the skies of old-world continents, storm Dragonflight Dungeons alongside AI companions, complete new Campaign chapters in the continuation of the Dragon Isle epilogues, and more!

Time is on your side with this month’s signature item—the Golden Mobile Timepiece transmog.

Visit T&W** (Tawney and Wilder) just outside the Mage District in Stormwind or the Zen’shiri Trading Post next to Grommash Hold in Orgrimmar to check out all the latest items*** they have available.

Ride the Final Surge to the Finish

This month, new activities are available to help players catch up on their activity bar. These events will begin one week before the end of the month.

Here’s What’s in Stock for January

Pets, Mounts, and Toys

Diablo’s anniversary is right around the corner, along with the Darkening of Tristram event! Whether you’re a series veteran craving nostalgia, or a newcomer hungry for your first taste of the franchise’s past, this annual loving homage to the earliest days of Diablo is for you.

Read on for more, including a closer look at the anniversary dungeon and its unique rewards.

Stop the Cultists

Your journey begins on the trail of a group of mysterious cultists causing trouble in Sanctuary. As you hunt them down in Adventure Mode, you’ll uncover clues leading to a po...

We’re teaming up with Amazon Prime Gaming* for a special offer From December 26, 2023, at 9:30 a.m. PST (16:30 GMT)  until January 30, 2024, at 9:29 PST (17:30 GMT) Prime Gaming subscribers can claim the Swift Windsteed mount^*.

Claim Offer

Not a Prime Gaming member? ...

Whether you’ve been naughty or nice this year, you’re bound to find a surprise waiting for you from Greatfather Winter! Just visit the Winter Veil tree in Orgrimmar or in Ironforge to collect your gifts! You’ll have until January 1 to get yours before the magic of the holiday dissipates.

Happy holiday!

We've loaded up Greatfather Winter's sleigh with a bounty of delightful deals—become a whole new you with discounts on select game services, and stock up on a variety of pets, mounts, and more!

Get Up to 65% off with the Azure Pack¹

Show off all your blue hues around Azeroth in cerulean style with a turquoise-tinted transmog, periwinkle-peppered pets, and eight magnificent mazarine-marked mounts when you purchase the Azure Pack.¹

This time-limited² Azure Pack bundle contains some of A...

Reignite the fire early when you sign up to play World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Classic™ Beta before it hits the servers in 2024!

Sign Up Now!

From the fires of destruction, a new Azeroth arises. Following Deathwing the Destroyer's cataclysmic entrance, which left a festering wound across Azeroth, heroes are called once again to experience a dramatically reforged Azeroth and defend it from utter devastation.

Players can tackle this milestone expansion again with new quality-of-life changes, including a faster content cadence, improved leveling experience, ...

Whew! It has been an incredible year for the WoW Team. We are endlessly grateful to our community for being in our world as we grow, change, experiment, and deliver as much magic and fun as possible!

This time last year, I posted our first roadmap. I’m so thankful to our team for seeing it all become real, and then some! We know that promising a thing is a far distant second to actually delivering on that promise. With that said, we continue to learn and evolve with each release and announcement this year, and we are fully focused on listening and responding to you and building for a strong future in Azeroth for all of us.

Listing everything we did together this year is huge: six Dragonflight content updates, Wrath content updates and the return of the Icecrown Citadel raid dungeon, Classic Hardcore launch, BlizzCon 2023, an incredible Race to World First in Dragonflight Season 3, and just recently, Classic Season of Discover...

Patch 28.2.3 is a data-only patch going live today with updates to Standard and Battlegrounds. This patch is our last scheduled patch for the year, and our aim is to make the most fun patch we can for the holiday break. We hope you enjoy and we’ll see you in the Tavern—and in the new year!

Standard Updates

Dev Comment: The overall goals for this patch are to make buffs across underperforming classes, decks, and cards, especially ones from Showdown in the Badlands, and to weaken a few overperforming decks that are keeping other decks down. Our intent isn’t to kill these decks that players generally like, but to bring them down a little to make more room in the meta.

Paladin has been the biggest overperformer since the last adjustment. We’re targeting its AoE board clears because that’s a mechanic we want Paladin to have access to, but not excel in. There are other potential targets that we looked at...

The War Within expansion introduces Hero Talents as a new update to World of Warcraft classes. They are an evergreen form of character progression for each class specialization that introduces new powers and class fantasies. Feedback is critical to us as a part of creating an impactful and fun addition to the game, so we are sharing our goals for Hero Talents with the community to get first impressions of them and learn how well we’re meeting those goals.

What Are Hero Talents?

Hero Talents are new, self-contained talent trees that players unlock access at level 71. Hero Talents build on the abilities and talents of current classes and specializations. Players can choose a single Hero Talent tree to activate on a character and these talents can be changed in the same way class talents can be currently changed in the game. There are three Hero Talent trees for each class (excepting druid with four and demo...

Each week we’ll look ahead to what’s in store for World of Warcraft, share the latest news, and keep you in the know byte by byte. Make Merry throughout Azeroth as the Feast of Winter Veil continues and prepare to enter the Ruby Sanctum in Wrath of the Lich King in the New Year.

Wrath Classic: Enter the Ruby Sanctum on January 11

Journey into Northrend to the Wyrmrest Temple and face Halion and his minions within the Ruby Sanctum on January 11 at 3:00 p.m. PST (23:00 GMT).

Gather your allies and make plans to heed the call of the red dragonflight in their time of need.

News and Events This Week

• December 18
  • (Article) Get an Early Look at Hero Talents in The War Within
  • (Article) ...

The Arena World Championship (AWC) and Mythic Dungeon International (MDI) return in 2024 to culminate the final champions of Dragonflight and usher in a new age with The War Within™.

2024 is a massive year for Warcraft. With WoW celebrating its 20^th anniversary, Arena World Championship (AWC) and Mythic Dungeon International (MDI) will celebrate the culmination of Dragonflight before diving into The War Within with a full year of scheduled programming, including three seasons of competition and additional bonus events throughout the year.

For all competitions in the upcoming year, we’ve ...

The fine folks of Smokywood Pastures aren’t letting a little thing like a shattered sky and ominous portents get in the way of spreading holiday cheer—or gaining a bit of profit. Winter Veil has begun in Azeroth, and with it come all the fripperies, fineries, and delectable comestibles of the holiday.

When: December 16 – January 2
Where: Initial holiday quests can be found in Orgrimmar and Ironforge, but festive decorations can be found throughout the world.

New This Year

Dragonflight

'Tis the season for celebration! Strongholds are decked out in festive cheer, and gifts are stacked under the trees. The Feast of Winter Veil has arrived in Azeroth with fresh items added to expand growing Collections.

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The Abominable Greench is upping the ante after his Metzen-nabbing shenanigans with new rewards. Storm his cave and save Metzen for a chance at merry...

Hi there, I’m Kenny Hudson and I’m a hero producer on the Overwatch team. Creating a hero is one of the most satisfying and challenging things we do in Overwatch. We hold ourselves to a high standard when it comes to making anything that goes into the game, and heroes like Mauga are no exception. In this post, I'll be outlining the journey we took to bring Mauga from a short story to the latest addition to the hero roster.

Ideas for new heroes can come from anywhere. Sometimes, we draw inspiration from a cool piece of concept art. Other times, it comes from an ability experiment that's been hiding in the background of our development data. And sometimes, as in Mauga's case, the inspiration comes from the appreciation of great lore in our universe. As the short story “...

Stay up to date with World of Warcraft when you join us each week as we round up some of the latest top blue posts and discussions.

Here are this week's highlights:

Dragonflight

• WoW Community Council Live Chat: The latest live chat occurred with Dragonflight developers on Tuesday. Watch the full recording and check out discussions happening in the council forum.
• Echoed Ephemera Changes: Multiple fixes have been deployed...