Expansion Speculation – Are We Going to Pandaria? Is Monk Class Just Around The Corner?

Ever since its inception, Hearthstone – as a non-canonical part of the Warcraft franchise – has taken its settings from Blizzard’s most popular game series. Expansions, adventures, mini-sets – every new content release was and still is more or less tied to the World of Warcraft.

After almost eight years of Hearthstone history, it doesn’t come as a surprise that we have already seen a whole lot of what the Warcraft universe has to offer. However, one particular WoW setting that has even been released as a whole expansion hasn’t been touched by Team 5: Pandaria.

That is why more and more Warcraft fans would love to see the heroes of Hearthstone make their way into the Mists of Pandaria, and it seems that Team 5 has heard these pleas loud and clear – or at least they want us to believe so!

In this spotlight, we try to collect all hints towards a possible upcoming Pandaria expansion while providing background information about Warcraft’s world of Pandaria and its inhabitants. Who are the Pandaren? Where do they come from? And why are so many of them monks?

The Pandaria Hints So Far

With the recent release of Patch 22.4, Team 5 has continued to include Pandaria-related content. First off, there’s the purchasable Jade Gardens Battlegrounds board, showcasing the beautiful setting of Jade Forest from World of Warcraft.

Besides that, it is Hearthstone’s mercenary pool that gets notable additions from Pandaria:

During Hearthstone’s first Mercenaries event, players will be able to collect the four August Celestials as mercenaries – Xuen, Niuzao, Yu’lon, and Chi-Ji (left to right). The August Celestials are wild gods and main deities of Pandaria, protecting the ancient lands in similar fashion to the Dragon Aspects. As the fifth addition, a celestial dragon named Long’xin joins the fray – more about these wondrous creatures later!

Just a few weeks before that, the names of Hearthstone’s annual Lunar Year bundles released with Patch 22.2 caused some rumors already. All Blizzard franchises have been celebrating Chinese New Year for many years now by introducing skins or seasonal content. That includes Hearthstone as well, of course – but some things have been different compared to the last years.

First off, one of the bundle names explicitly mentions Pandaria. That together with the fact that all six skins directly refer to very important figures in Pandaria lore is almost a bit too on the nose. And if that wasn’t already enough, Team 5 doesn’t even care to create a Druid skin for Malfurion – instead, they just introduce Xuen as this year’s Druid Skin!

Another great hint is almost a classic: Almost two years ago, a Mage hero skin called Celeste has been found in Hearthstone’s game files. Players have been waiting and waiting, but to no avail – until Fractured in Alterac Valley’s Reward Track has been showcased, and with it a hero skin called Celeste!

Aha, so Celeste *is* from Pandaria! Time for my next wild theory – hear me out!

In 2022, we are going to Pandaria. According to dataminers, this skin has been in the game files for almost two years now, indicating that they planned around a Pandaria expansion much earlier (?) pic.twitter.com/glsA6DCwis

— Julian Bischoff ???? (@tharid) December 1, 2021

Since then, we know that Celeste is another celestial dragon exclusive to Hearthstone. Lore experts don’t know much about these entities of light other than the fact that they somewhat belong to a creature family called cloud serpents who call Pandaria their home. One named celestial dragon is Elegon, a boss in Mist of Pandaria’s first raid dungeon Mogu’shan Vaults.

This narrative ties in with the general display of the Celeste hero skin in Hearthstone. Apart from the obvious visuals, Celeste’s hero music doesn’t make a secret of its heritage: It’s a track from the Mists of Pandaria soundtrack called Serpent’s Heart, an homage to a big statue depicting the wild god Yu’lon, also called the Jade Serpent, located in Jade Forest.

Our last clue towards possible Pandaria content goes back to February 2020. Blizzard illustrator Jim Nelson has tweeted about unpublished artwork created for Hearthstone, showing beautiful art of a jade stone quilen:

Unpublished artwork created for Blizzard Entertainment. #gameart #illustration pic.twitter.com/bbXN6ZG9OT

— Jim Nelson (@MothmanJim) February 26, 2020

These watchdogs have been the favorite pets of the Mogu, an ancient, titan-forged race of stone-skinned creatures that tried to claim Pandaria from the Pandaren under the Thunder King Lei Shen.

Altogether, we’re now looking at a few very recent hints combined with two clues that have been around for almost two years now – so what can we make of all this? The fact that both art and game files included content related to Pandaria shows that Team 5 definitely had something up its sleeves back in 2020. We should also take the Covid situation into consideration that most definitely had a massive impact on design and development scopes at the time. Maybe the developers back in 2020 decided to put the Pandaria concept on the shelf for 2022 instead of releasing it in 2021?

Pandaria and Aya Blackpaw – The Same Story

It’d be wrong to say that Pandaria isn’t somewhat present in Hearthstone already, though. Just recently, the Book of Heroes single-player experience touched on stories that happened during the Mists of Pandaria expansion such as the grand fall of Garrosh Hellscream.

Pandaren art and characters have also found their way into Blizzard’s card game over the years, most noticeably Aya Blackpaw and the Jade Lotus gang. Aya turned out to become quite the fan-favorite after the release of Mean Streets of Gadgetzan – and that for the same reasons why Pandaria has silently become one of the most beloved World of Warcraft expansion settings.

Both Pandaria and Aya look and feel somewhat disconnected from the rest of the Warcraft universe. Nobody really knew where Aya came from – she was just there, doing shady stuff in the streets of the goblin capital. She was one of the first characters exclusive to Hearthstone, showcasing that you can tell a Warcraft story in everybody’s favorite card game without having to use known characters every time. 

Then there is Pandaria, this secluded continent, a new world ready to be explored. Unlike Outland and Northrend, Pandaria was never really covered in the old Warcraft games. In fact, only the Pandaren Brewmaster, a neutral hero in Warcraft III, gave context to what Pandaren and monks in the Warcraft universe actually are. The story that we, as the players, should follow, was very unclear. Getting rid of Illidan in the Burning Crusade, dethroning the Lich King in WotLK – those were the great antagonists that everybody loved and that drove the storyline of WoW’s first two expansions.

Most WoW players will remember the community backlash after Mist of Pandaria’s announcement – and I personally remember a very similar sentiment among the Hearthstone community when Mean Streets of Gadgetzan became reality. Both expansions tried something new – but gamers don’t exactly like something new until they experience first-hand that it is actually good.

But after some years, things have changed. All that is left of Mists of Pandaria is nostalgia and memories about the unique lore, the distinct characters, the fantastic music, the great art style – and, in WoW’s case, the release of the Pandaren race and the Monk class.

Monks and Pandaren

In the world of Azeroth, both Pandaren and monks started out as this fantastically outlandish addition to WoW’s character kit. 

After the release of the Death Knight with Wrath of the Lich King, people were seriously hyped for a new class. However, they wanted to experience more balanced and less overpowered gameplay – and they got exactly that. From day 1 on, monks have been received as one of the most well-designed additions to World of Warcraft. Their use of Chi and Energy as a resource felt true to the zen-like monk fantasy while offering a lot of dynamic gameplay decisions based on a well-thought-out builder-spender system. The class’ specializations also filled blanks in their archetypes.

The Brewmaster tree provided a unique, high-mitigation high-damage tanking playstyle. The Windwalker turned out to become one of the most mobile melee specializations, focussing on a heavy ability rotation and optimal resource usage. The Mistweaver healing spec successfully took a page out of multiple existing class healer archetypes, uniting high-throughput healing with great damage control via useful defensive, high-cooldown abilities.

In Hearthstone, a possible Monk implementation should focus on the sheer versatility of the class. It would be a surprise to see Team 5 introduce a secondary resource system besides mana – however, the release of a Monk class would be the perfect time for it. Bringing peace and balance to your enemy by spending Energy, Chi, and Mana at the same time? Sounds like a versatile system to me!

You also have to remember that the Demon Hunter is WoW’s latest addition to the class pool. It iterated on great design projects like the Monk class, and despite its rocky start, the Demon Hunter definitely found its place in the Hearthstone class meta-game. As already said, the same goes for the Monk and its introduction to World of Warcraft back in the day – so there should definitely be room for them in the tavern!

As far as overall Pandaren fantasy goes, Team 5 has already paved the way by introducing several cards showing Pandaren and creatures of Pandaria. Elementals, for example, play a starring role in the outlandish fantasy of Pandaria, adding to the nature-bound fantasy of the foreign continent.

Pandaria and Hearthstone – A Match Made in Heaven?

The setting, the fantasy, the Monk class – everything that Pandaria was and still is could become Hearthstone’s next Warcraft chapter to explore. Over the current Standard year, we have once again learned that Hearthstone can adapt to a very Warcraftian setting by introducing their own charismatic and unique characters – the mercenaries. 

Pandaria, on the other hand, could become a very “Hearthstoney” setting that creates a lot of the game’s unique story and gameplay approaches on its own already. Combine that with known characters of both franchises, and we should get a different mix of ingredients yielding the same result as this year: A great storyline with cool new gameplay and lots of stories to talk about!

Have you found any other secret hints towards a possible Pandaria expansion? Let us know in the comments!