The next Hearthstone expansion might be “Return Of The Lich King,” according to clues found by the card game’s reddit community. It’s been a couple of months since the game’s last expansion, Journey To Un’Goro, and fans are digging around for any clues as to where the next set is going to take place. Reddit user PenguinJ2 has been mixing potions together, theorycrafting why the Game Of Thrones whitewalker of Azeroth might be the centerpiece of the next set.
Why Return Of The Lich King?
Blizzard tends to fill out trademarks and buy website domain names for future projects as quietly as possible. The company does everything in their power to make sure leaks don’t get out and the community can actually get surprised when something unexpectedly awesome catches them off guard. Unfortunately, Hearthstone players are like bloodhounds when it comes to any scrap of information and have consistently uncovered the last few expansions before they came out.
Journey To Un’Goro was discovered when a fan uncovered a voice actors resume who had made some dinosaur noises for the set, completely ruining the surprise. Mean Streets Of Gadgetzan didn’t have nearly as big of a scandal, but fans were able to uncover that the “gadgetzan.com” domain name had been purchased by Blizzard a few days before the official announcement. If there are any bread crumbs leading to an answer, you bet someone with to much time to kill online is going to find it.
Four months ago , Blizzard trademarked “Return Of The Lich King” and reserved the domain on GoDaddy.com. The Lich King, for those of you who have never played World Of Warcraft, was an evil knight with a frozen sword who controlled an army of zombies called the Scourge. He was one of the biggest bad guys the game has ever seen, with an entire WOW’s expansion, Wrath Of The Lich King, dedicating to sealing him back in his tomb, the Frozen Throne.
It’s been nine years since Wrath Of The Lich King changed World Of Warcraft forever, which means it could be time for him to return. The trademark and website alone could just be clues for a World Of Warcraft expansion or story, but fans have been able to find a few other clues leading back to Hearthstone. In the post on the Hearthstone forums announcing Year Of The Mammoth, three expansions are listed as arriving this year. The first was covered in leaves and fauna, teasing the jungle and wild aesthetic of Journey To Un’Goro. Around the second expansion, there are blue runes that death knights and the Lich King himself used in battle.
None of these are guaranteed facts, but there does seem like an awful lot of evidence backing up this claim. Arthas, the evil sucker that became the Lich King, visited three different places on his journey around Azeroth. The first two, Sunwell and Dalaran, were the last two Hearthstone monthly card backs. If the third one is Northrend, it pretty much confirms the theory.
The Lich King would be the perfect enemy for a Hearthstone expansion. There are cards for nearly every other super-being in Azeroth, from the Old Gods to Deathwing, so why should the Lich King be left out of the fun? Many fans of World Of Warcraft fondly remember the Wrath Of The Lich King expansion as the game’s peak, so why not try and bring some of that nostalgia to Hearthstone ?
Do you think the Lich King is going to make an appearance in the next Hearthstone expansion or is it just a bunch of people trolling online? Tell us in the comments.
