Hearthstone Adds Monk Class Next Year, Reign of the Black Empire Revealed at BlizzCon
Blizzard is pairing a new class with an Old Gods expansion, and the Monk's placement in the first expansion of next year gives the team a fixed date to build toward while it finishes this year's rollout.
Reporting from 1 source: Game Spark.
Blizzard detailed Hearthstone's next expansion, Reign of the Black Empire, at BlizzCon 2026, held September 12 and 13 in the United States. Senior game design manager Brenden Sewell and executive producer Nathan Lyons-Smith said the expansion returns to the Old Gods with an adjusted Yogg-Saron and a new Assembly keyword, and that the Monk class arrives with next year's first expansion.
The Monk is not tied to any current Hearthstone release. Lyons-Smith said the team is focused on this year's rollout, so a detailed introduction of the class comes next year, with implementation starting with next year's first expansion. Sewell pointed to Chen Stormstout, a key figure in World of Warcraft's Mists of Pandaria expansion, as the character who anchors the Monk in Hearthstone, and described the class as agile, built to answer an opponent's strategy rather than commit to one line.
Sewell also said the Hearthstone team does not coordinate its storyline with World of Warcraft. Expansions are settled about a year and a half ahead through internal brainstorming, and the Old Gods return because the team likes the concept, with the timing against WoW called a coincidence.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.