Hearthstone's newest expansion, Journey to Un'Goro, is nearly upon us. The new set brings a new card type called quests, which offer a more defined path for players to follow in constructing decks.

But the new expansion also brings with it the newest iteration of the game's standard format, wherein hundreds of cards will leave the available pool.

Shortly after Blizzard's reveal stream during the 2017 Hearthstone Winter Championship, principle designer Mike Donais and senior game designer Matt Place spoke with theScore esports about the game's coming transformation, how they view the new player experience, and how they struggle against the perception that Hearthstone's strategies are "simple."

What was the biggest challenge when designing quests? Are you afraid that they could encourage a certain playstyle too much?

Donais: Quests are super exciting to us and a lot of people have already given really exciting feedback. One of the things that we specifically try to do in Un'Goro is to try to have a couple different ways to play the classes.

For example, you'll see a bunch of elementals in Shaman. And the quest, at the same time, is not relating to Elementals at all — it's related to Murlocs.

The other thing that it does, that quest specifically does, is it makes you look at old cards — old Murloc cards that you've seen the past few years — and look at them differently. Like, "Hey, now which ones do I want to play, maybe they're more powerful." There's some great new Murlocs also, how do they mix in?

So I think you've got a lot of options. And you also have, outside of just the options of how to build that deck, you have the options of how to play Shaman in general. You could also play some kind of Control Shaman, there's a lot of new good control cards like Tar Creeper and Gluttonous Ooze. So there's a lot of options there.

We also have some specific quests that are really weird, like the Rogue one. A lot of people don't know what to think about that one yet, but there's lots of cool stuff going on and I think it's really open to interpretation. People might play it with the new Elementals, or they might play it with all one-drops, or you might play it with some fancy vanishes or something. In Wild, maybe with Gang Up. There's a lot of different ways to play that deck, and I think that's really cool, to give you the opportunity to experiment and figure it out.

Place: Totally, I can't wait to see how people try to solve the different quests. Is Call In The Finishers good enough now, with the new Shaman quest? These cards that we've had for a while, do we start seeing them get played?

Quests are so good at giving people direction for their deck. So you talked about, is it going to be, "This is the one way to play it." Maybe eventually it plays out that, here's the right way to play this quest.

But at the beginning it's going to be exploring it, like, "Hey, is the quest even worth running? Can I combine the quest deck with [Elementals]?" I can't wait to see people explore all the different additives and have fun on ladder.

In the past, there have been active attempts to show players a way forward when they finish the tutorial, like the deck recipes that were added. Is this a continuation of the recipe philosophy of trying to give new players a path?

Donais: I think this is more of... if you make cards that are just always good, like say Dr. Boom, you learn lessons like, "Hey, maybe we should make cards that aren't just generally always good."

We should make them good some of the time, but not other times. Good in some situations, but not every situation. And the quests are a perfect example of that. The quests are good if you're playing Shaman Murloc, you'll play the quest. If you're playing Shaman Elemental, you might not play the quest.

The Priest is a really nice balance. If you want to play the no-duplicate, Reno Jackson and Kazakus Priest, and play the quest ... some people might try that. There's actually enough Deathrattle minions that you could pull that off. At the same time, maybe you want to play two of each of those Deathrattle minions and complete the quest sooner. So there's still some options for the players to build it how they want, but you pay prices to do it, you don't just put them in every deck.

Place: Yeah, and I think it's really healthy too to have these quests giving new, powerful ways ... a lot of these rewards are just totally insane. So to give people new deck direction is really healthy, because we've got all the things that might have existed without the quest mixing with the things that are in the quests. And that's when I think Hearthstone is the most fun: you join the ladder, I'm building my decks and there's a lot of variety.

So I'm really excited about Un'Goro doing that, both because the quests are going to help that — do I play my old Shaman deck or do I try this new Murloc version — well some people are going to pick one way, and some people are going to pick the other, so we'll see both of those on ladder.

Also, cards that help keep the meta fresh, like Tar Creeper. So if everybody starts running Tar Creeper, or using their [Golakka Crawler], well maybe the pirates become less of the ladder. And then maybe you stop running Tar Creeper, and Control gets better. Cards like that, that help the meta shift, is when Hearthstone is the most fun. So I think Un'Goro's going to do a lot of good stuff.

Given that the shift in Standard will leave us with a lot fewer cards than before, will the Un'Goro set feature a lot of staple cards to fill in some of the gaps left by departing cards that are core to many classes, like Tunnel Trogg in Shaman?

Place: I think this shift will actually have the other effect. Like, instead of having Sylvanas in every deck and Brann in every deck ... I think it will have the opposite effect, in terms of seeing lots of new stuff. There's still plenty of cards, much more than you need in any class to build a 30-card deck, because there's hundreds of cards. I think it's going to be very healthily divergent, and not feel like, "Oh, I've just got to run this stuff that's a staple." It's been a lot of a push, like Mike was saying, to make sure — like we were talking about with Dr. Boom — that we don't have the staples be what defines Hearthstone. And with that design philosophy I think it will be the other end.

The inclusion of Quests means that there will be two Class legendaries per class in this set. Is there any discussion about that potentially making it harder for newer players to access these cards, since they can only be played in that class, whereas some other Neutral legendaries could be played in a lot of decks? Is there any consideration to lowering the barriers to entry for new players in the face of this?

Place: I think for new players, it's about what their path is as a new player. Sometimes it's different, right? If you have a pro player friend who is getting you into it, you're going to be aware of these high-tier decks. But a lot of new players are having a ton playing for free and exploring, like. "I've got enough to craft a new card, what card am I going to get ... oh, my deck's better now. I got a free booster, what am I going to add to my deck?"

Is that path still fun for the new player? I think it absolutely is. If you're someone who is going to netdeck as a new player, and kind of skip some of that, I think it's very similar to what it was before. There's a decklist that has a number of legendaries that I want to craft, so you're sort of working towards that, and that's also a lot of fun. I don't think that this impacts the new player directly in a negative way. Having rotation is a good thing for new players. So I think on par, it's healthy for new players to be doing new things to keep the game fresh.

[New player winrates] have gone from 30 percent when they joined casual, to now 50-50. I think it's a big deal. We're very conscious of, "What is that new player experience?" I think one of the things that's fun is finding out how fun the game is, and going 50-50 makes it feel like the game is good and challenging.

Another big deal is that we've announced that we're doing free missions with future sets, which is great for all of us

In a perfect world, what is the team's desired win rate for a dominant competitive Hearthstone player?

Donais: A lot of games think about this a lot. We put a lot of time into our matchmaking, as do most competitive games. We have a really big pool of players, especially on legend. We have all these excellent players.

If your matchmaking in a PvP game is really good, and you have a large pool of players, then that win rate should be really close. Like if Thijs, Pavel and Kolento are all queuing up at the same time and playing against each other with powerful decks, and playing perfectly, they're going to be 50-50, right? So ideally it gets close to that.

Obviously Pavel is so good that he doesn't always find an even match. He's fantastic, and he might play against someone that is slightly worse than him. And then he'll win more often.

But it's really about having good matchmaking to have that number as close to 50 as possible.

Place: Because that's where it's the most fun. If [hypothetically] we did have a goal of 65 percent, who is this guy who's got a 35 percent winrate getting matched against Pavel. I think the goal beyond win percentage, because matchmaking kind of naturally makes things 50-50 ... and certainly here at the tournament, who knows, right? Maybe [Pavel] is a little bit of a favorite, maybe he's the best, but the guy is certainly very good, he made it to the Winter Championship.

I think it's important to have the goal be, [that] there's a lot of fun, interesting, skill-testing moments. Seeing all the pros disagree on a lot of the plays provides great evidence of how hard the game is, and how much skill does matter. Because one of these plays, in hindsight, might have been the best. But before we knew that, before we got to see it play out, what was the right play?

When I'm watching, I could see three different plays, and then they make one that I didn't think was good, or one that I didn't see. But it turned out to be very good. So that's fun for me as a fan, to watch them play and say, "maybe that's a play that I should start doing in the future."

Is the game challenging for people and does it have tough plays? I think that's just evident, turn after turn, as you see these guys play?

Is that a conception that you guys have had to battle — that the game doesn't have those kinds of decisions? I've heard sometimes from pros, "Whatever, this is the optimal line, and I always play it."

Donais: You certainly hear that, especially if they've just lost a game to something. There's so much emotion in this game, they care so much about winning and they put their whole heart into the game and they play so many hours of it.

But over and over again, you see people at these tournaments making plays that other pros disagree with. At this specific one, I was sitting with a bunch of pros, and they were like, "Aw, he didn't do the right thing!" while others are like "Nah, he did the right thing," and then, "No, you're both wrong, this was the right thing."

Place: Have you ever been in that situation where you're like, "Ah, I think the play's obvious here"? And somebody over your shoulder is like, "Well, actually, I think it's this other thing." It's like, "Oh, I said it was obvious but actually there were more lines than I saw, and I'm a little embarrassed right now. I was dismissing the strategy..."

I've been in that situation a lot. And it just feels like it might be a difficult notion to dispel, that the game is simple to play.

Place: Well, I think that's also a strength of the game, is to have both that top level: "Hey, my 4/5 should attack his 4/4, right? Yeah, that's obvious, let me do that ... Oh wait, there was more depth there?" So I can see it as a new player, for someone who's not thinking as deeply as the pros, I can go, "Yeah, the game's pretty easy and I'm having fun."

But then I can have someone talk to me about it afterwards go, "Hey, here's why." And there's actually a discussion to have where I didn't see it. It's great that someone can play surface level and have a good time, and for someone who wants to talk about it and get to that pro level, there's all that depth there underneath that you don't have to pay attention to.

That's great, right? It's good for both types of players.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Josh "Gauntlet" Bury is a news editor for theScore esports. You can find him on Twitter.