Blizzard will be officially supporting Hearthstone Wild tournaments in 2017, potentially create sealed formats

Blizzard is planning on bringing new competitive formats into the Hearthstone competitive scene. According to Matt Wyble, the man on Hearthstone’s Team 5 responsible for the game’s esports side, those formats will be coming as early as this year.

In an interview with Yahoo Esports, Wyble confirmed Blizzard’s plans to dive deep into the Wild of Hearthstone.

“We are going to have Wild first-party tournaments this year that we’re definitely going to support. I think that has the opportunity to continue to grow,” he said.

According to him, this is the year for Wild to make its place within the scene.

“The difference between this year and last year is that last year, there were only two sets rotated out. So the difference between Wild and Standard was significant, but it wasn’t huge. This year, you’re seeing a lot more divergence. I think as you have more divergence, it becomes more interesting to have a separate Wild format. That will only be more true going forward.”

When asked about the potential of sealed or drafting formats coming to Hearthstone, Wyble was more hesitant to confirm things one way or another.

“I think that’s still down the line in some ways. When we launch the Hearthstone Invitational brand and start doing events around that, one of core goals of that is to have flexibility to try out new and different things and put a Hearthstone spin on them. The Red Bull [Team Brawl] was amazing. I think sealed events are cool and lot of people have history in those events. One of the things that is nice about them is that they highlight deckbuilding, and that’s something that’s a huge, massive component of Hearthstone.”

Despite his admiration for sealed formats, Wyble couldn’t say if his team at Blizzard was working on something similar. “It’s a possibility, we still need to figure out what that would look like, though.”

The need for more competitive Hearthstone formats has been discussed at length by a variety of community members.

Wyble also discussed the history of Hearthstone esports, Blizzard’s successes and failures in developing it, among other topics. You can watch the full interview below. For more, head over to Yahoo Esports’ Hearthstone hub.

Follow Taylor Cocke on Twitter @taylorcocke.