Hearthstone on smartphones will cross-play with PC and tablets

The smartphone version of Hearthstone, due out this month, will not segment players from the existing user base.

The game’s lead designer Eric Dodds confirmed to GameSpot that whenever users partake in multiplayer they could be facing off with someone on any platform.

“It will be your exact same account, so all your cards on tablet or PC will be available on your phone too,” he said. “When you start a match on a phone, you could be playing someone on another phone, someone on a tablet, on a PC, who knows? It’s all one big ecosystem.”

Dodds also said that Blizzard has considered combining the existing catalogue of Classic and GvG cards in its store so users will no longer have to choose between them when purchasing packs with virtual currency or cash.

“It’s certainly something that we’ve talked about a lot, asking what is our long-term plan for packs of cards,” he added. “We don’t have anything planned right now, because at the moment it’s only two kinds of packs, but it’s certainly something that in the long term we’ll be looking at.”

Also dismissed was the idea of any near-term nerfs to cards accused of being over-powered – with Dr. Boom being the main sticking point.

“Well philosophically it’s our intention to never get to a situation where we need to nerf cards,” Dodds explained. “The only time we would consider it is if the card staying as it is would be damaging to the fun. We changed Undertaker because you were seeing a lot of decks based around that, and so we didn’t have as much diversity, but actually right now there’s a bunch of different decks.

“So, as long as there continues to be a bunch of different types of decks, we really have no interest in nerfing anything. And our long-term goal is to get to a situation where we change as little as possible.”