[appicon[ Hearthstone‘s (Free)The Grand Tournament is almost upon us (hopefully, next Monday), but the TGT patch has already dropped in preparation for the upcoming expansion release. As always, the good people over at Hearthpwn.com have brought in their datamining pickaxes and uncovered some interesting new information and the fascinating possibility that a Co-Op mode of some sort might be coming our way. But let’s start with the sounds and sights of TGT. The datamining uncovered all the lovely gold Legendaries as well as all the sound files of the new expansion, 20 minutes of new sounds and voiceovers. We can also now see the new Daily Quests added, one that has you winning 5 Tavern Brawls (a clever way from Blizzard to make its new mode more valued), as well as dailies for winning 3 games with each class.

What has got the most attention, though, is the references to a possible Hearthstone Co-Op mode that no one really expected to see in this patch. Many have tried to decipher what the “HRW" stands for in the test strings, whether it’s a new Adventure or anything along those lines. The test strings have lines like “Well Done! You’ve defeated the boss together.\n\nBoth players win," “Defeat Gearmaster Mechazod together to win," and several others that seem to point towards matches that have two players cooperating.

Now, there’s the possibility that all these references are nothing but an internal test, or perhaps a reference to an event a long time from now (in a galaxy far, far away). Still, even the possibility gets me quite excited because bringing co-op in CCGs brings a new, very fun dimension to the game. If I had to guess, I would say that we might see come kind of a co-op match in Tavern Brawl and, depending how it works out, Blizzard will go from there. The datamining also found extensive new information about Tavern Brawl, from new backgrounds (minus the text) to new playable Tavern Brawl cards. If you want to check out all the datamined info, including all the flavor text, check out Hearthpwn.