Peek into the early development of Hearthstone’s Witchwood – and see which cards survived the Gilnean Express

One of the best reasons to follow Hearthstone is that the devs are willing to do try about anything, including a seven-minute Blair Witch video talking about video game cards. Blizzard Senior Designer Peter Whalen’s Hearthside Chat this week dives into some of the other wacky things the team came up with while brainstorming the upcoming Witchwood expansion, including one of its earliest concepts, when it was still called Murder on the Gilnean Express. Choo choo.

That version of the expansion would’ve had some fun card mechanics, like investigations, mysteries, and ghostly switchups and replications. Of course, that theme, and some of those cards, were lost along the winding roads of development, but the “Ghostly” concept survived: as Echo cards.

Massively OP’s Andrew Ross sat down with the Blizzard devs at GDC earlier this week to hear all about the work behind the expansion, so don’t miss that before clicking onward for the vid.