Hearthstone Officially Out of Beta With New Patch

The latest Hearthstone patch is a big one. According to a post on Battlenet the main feature of this patch is that it officially takes us out of beta. The post also contains some class themed Facebook cover photos and Twitter icons to celebrate.

Other features included in the patch are some ranked play rewards, a couple of card tweaks and some nice added features. The full patch notes can be found here but a summary is below.

Golden Heroes

Covered in more detail here, these heroes will now come into play when you win 500 ranked matches on any given hero.

New Card Backs

Again we had already been shown the new backs but we now know that they are rewards for ranked play. Participating in each official ranked play season will offer a new card back that you’ll get at the end of each season.

New Ranked Play Reset System

In order to ensure veterans aren't stomping on newcomers at the start of each new season you’ll now receive bonus stars at the start of each season based on your performance from the previous season.

You’ll receive one bonus star for each rank you achieved in the previous season. For example, if you attained Legend, Innkeeper (Rank 1), or Black Knight (Rank 2) rank in any given season, at the start of the next season you would start off at Questing Adventurer (Rank 16) rather than Angry Chicken (Rank 25).

Card Changes

Tinkmaster Overspark is now a 3/3 (up from 2/2) and now reads: Battlecry: Transform another random minion into a 5/5 Devilsaur or a 1/1 Squirrel.

Nat Pagle now reads: At the start of your turn, you have a 50% chance to draw an extra card.

Reconnect Feature

A reconnect feature has been added. If you’re disconnected from a game, the reconnect feature will give you 60 seconds to re-log into Hearthstone to keep the action going.

Hearthsteed Mount

The Hearthsteed mount reward has been added and can now be obtained for your World of Warcraft account. Win 3 games in Play or Arena mode to acquire one.

There are also a whole host of bug fixes and few nice extra features such as the ability to play on American servers should you so desire. You can read the full patch notes here.

Welcome to Hearthstone, officially. If you are yet to join the ranks of players you can download the game here and play for free.