Recently, we talked about how Hearthstone‘s (Free) developers were considering making big changes to the Arena in order to make it more fun to play. Now, we officially know what’s going to happen and that those changes will go live in the next patch, which will hit before the end of February. The biggest change is the shift from Wild to Standard; from now on, when you play Arena you’ll only get to see cards from the current Standard rotation. The reason behind this is to make Arena more about current card synergies and also to make Arena feel fresh when new cards hit the game. The other big change is changes to card rarity distribution. As it stands now, common cards are about 78% of all Arena cards, which the developers felt was too high given that common cards aren’t that interesting. So, expect to see more Rare, Epic, and Legendary cards. Additionally, Flamestrike and Abyssal Enforcer will show up 50% less often than they currently do.

Spells will also be seen more often now in a move to make Arena less about who goes first and who gets minions faster on the board and more about who can be more strategic. Finally, neutral Classic cards will be seen much less because, let’s face it, they are boring cards with no interesting effects. The changes are coming at the end of this month, and I’m personally very happy to see the developers taking steps to improve the game.