Kobolds and Catacombs is the newest expansion for Blizzard`s Hearthstone. Along with new cards, it introduces Dungeon Run, a single-player, roguelike mode that doesn`t require you to bring your own deck--you build it from cards given to you throughout the adventure.We spoke to longtime Hearthstone designer Dean Ayala about the origins of the new mode, got some in-depth balancing insights, learned about Hearthstone`s approach to microtransaction rewards and find out how he views Blizzard`s passionately critical fanbase.GameSpot: Dungeon Run is the big new thing for Hearthstone, so how did the creation of this mode come about? Was it something you had gestating for a while?Dean Ayala: Oh man, one of the designers, Peter Whalen, and I had been wanting to make a single-player roguelike Dungeon Crawl experience for... ever since he got hired. That was around The League of Explorers expansion, so we`d been talking about wanting to do it forever, and we had a bunch of different versions on paper. But I think the biggest problem that we had early on was that we had a mode that we liked, but it wasn`t really Hearthstone. The mechanics didn`t work the same, and it wasn`t like you just drew your card every turn and then you ran out of cards. It was a sort-of deck-building experience where your cards shuffled back in at the end of the turn, but one of the problems was you would play it, and it didn`t feel like a game of Hearthstone; it was a different game basically.Dean AyalaOnce we got over that hurdle, we actually ended up hiring an adventure team. There were three guys on that team, and the biggest reason we were able to do Dungeon Run was that those three people are three of the most talented people I`ve ever worked with. One of those people is named Dave Kosak. He was the lead narrative director on World of Warcraft. So basically all the World of Warcraft stories that you know, like the Dragon Flights, or I don`t know specifically what he came up with, but that was al ...
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