Blizzard Insider: Hearthstone Numbers are "off the charts" 75+ Million Players

A source inside Blizzard Entertainment, who cannot be named due to company policy about speaking to the media, stated on January 29, 2015 that Hearthstone's numbers were "off the charts". The game's next expansion is set to be released sometime soon and will focus on more PvE content (Think matches vs themed AI). The Hearthstone team has also been experimenting with 2 vs 2 gameplay, which would add an entirely new layer of gameplay to an already dynamic game. The most amazing nugget of information from inside Hearthstone is that the game's player base has exploded to over 75 million. The last publicly disclosed number was over 20 millions, which was released months ago. 75 million users is absolutely enormous. Much of the success can probably be contributed to the game's Mobile launch in the U.S. and release in China.

The game's success has already surpassed the most company's most optimistic internal expectations. Besides Hearthstone, the next Starcraft 2 expansion, The Legacy of the Void, is already finished and ready to ship. No official release date is announced, but the company expects shipment sometime in Q2 (April-June 2015). Also revealed - Blizzard's newest upcoming title "Overwatch", a Team Fortress 2 like game, still hasn't decided on a business model. Blizzard is trying to decide between free to play or expansion type model. The game will definitely be free to play initially, but the way to purchase / unlock new heroes has yet to be decided.

Correction: This Blizzard insider vastly over stated the Hearthstone numbers. Blizzard reported in their Q4 2014 earnings results that Hearthstone had over 25 million registered users in its lifetime. Nowhere near the 75 million claimed by the inside source.

Key Details and Source Information:

• Executives have “low expectations” for Heroes of the Storm. The insider thinks many of the senior staff on the Heroes of the Storm team will be laid off.

• The next Starcraft 2 game is already done and ready to go. The release date is still not settled. The current time window ranges from April to June.

• The World of Warcraft team has “quadrupled” its art outsourcing, which has been a bottleneck in the past. The next expansion is almost “feature complete.”

• The insider says the members of the Diablo III team have been moved to a new project set in the Starcraft universe. The game will be similar to Warframe and contain gameplay aspects from Left4Dead, DayZ, Smite, and other MOBAs. It is in early pre-production, which means late 2016 or later.

Source: Yahoo Finance Editor