Blizzard's popular and still growing Hearthstone - a casual spin-off from World Of Warcraft and the paper-based WoW Tradable Card Game - will be getting its first content update this month, and a pricing guide for it has just been released. Curse Of Naxxramas follows the theme of the vanilla Naxxramas raid: structured around five 'wings' containing bosses based around the original encounters; you will once again be challenged by Patchwerk, The Four Horsemen and Kel'Thuzad himself, only this time in card form and without 39 semi-sentient cats to herd.
Those who venture into Naxxramas in the month after launch will have the first wing unlocked free of charge, with the four additional unlocked in tiered plans as above. When unlocked the wing can be played as often as you like, incurring no additional fee. A Heroic Mode version of each wing, with more challenging encounters, becomes available once the normal wings have been defeated.
If you planned to pay using the in-game currency a 700g per-wing fee may seem a little steep, but given the phased release of the expansion (one wing each week after launch) you should have plenty of time to save up the 2800g required to unlock the four pay-for wings. Those who are happy to spend money on the game (rather than being one of the 'free to play only' type) should note that on a gold or cash per pack basis it's best to spend real money on unlocking each Naxx. wing and your gold on card packs.
Ranked play enthusiasts will be pleased to note that Curse Of Naxxramas adds thirty new cards to the available pool (9 of which are class-specific), all of which are acquired by defeating the encounters rather than a random chance from opening packs. As with any TCG they vary in quality greatly, but they should serve to shake up the meta-game substantially.
Fans of the Arena format will see Naxxramas cards appear within their draft picks, whether or not they have defeated the associated boss encounter.
Curse Of Naxxramas is due later this month. Hearthstone is currently available for PC, iPad and Mac.
Source: Battle.net - EU/US
