Blizzard releases first Hearthstone expansion

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Curse-of-Naxxramas

Released earlier this year, Blizzard’s Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft manages to do what many would have thought impossible: out MtG Magic: The Gathering.

An astonishingly addictive collectible card game, Hearthstone‘s only failing, if you could call it that, is it was for all intents and purposes multiplayer-only. But today, Blizzard has rectified that by releasing its highly anticipated Curse of Naxxramas expansion for the game on both Mac and iPad.

Best of all? It’s free. Or, at least, the first taste is.

Here’s Blizzard’s rundown of the many, many new features of Curse of Naxxramas:

Curse of Naxxramas can be unlocked with gold or real money and can be accessed by players that have unlocked all 9 heroes.

* Defeat 15 fearsome bosses to unlock a total of 30 new Hearthstone cards for your collection, including Legendary cards! Naxxramas cards can easily be searched for within My Collection using the search function.

* An all-new interactive Naxxramas-themed game board awaits you within the Adventure! Discover the surprises that lurk inside the slime pools, the quivering masses of spider eggs (spoilers: It’s spiders), and more!

* Surmount 9 diabolical Class Challenges that test your skills with each of the unique classes of Hearthstone!

* Defeating all of the bosses within a wing unlocks the extremely challenging Heroic Mode of that wing. Defeating all of the bosses of Naxxramas on Heroic mode unlocks a new card back for your collection.

* Five unique wings await those brave enough to venture into Naxxramas. The first wing, The Arachnid Quarter, will immediately be available to play for free for a limited time. The remaining four wings are immediately available for players to unlock with real money or gold, and will become accessible over a period of time once unlocked.

1. The Arachnid Quarter – A web choked maze filled with many-legged minions.

2. The Plague Quarter – Necromancers brew deadly plagues while a fungal monstrosity lies in wait.

3. The Military Quarter – Tireless undead knights perfect their deadly arts within these chambers.

4. The Construct Quarter – Abominations stitched together from the Scourge’s victims stomp through these slime soaked halls.

5. Frostwyrm Lair – Chilly abode of Sapphiron and the arch-lich Kel’thuzad himself. (A curse upon my air conditioning bill!)

That’s quite a list. The first wing opens today, and can be unlocked for free. The next four wings will unlock at a rate of one per week, but they will be decidedly more pricey: they will cost 700 gold to unlock, or $6.99 per wing.

You can download Heroes of Warcraft on the App Store for free, or for Mac on Blizzard’s website.

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