Hearthstone Golden Hero Screenshots And Video Released By Blizzard

Blizzard will soon be adding Golden Heroes to Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft as a reward for dedicated players. Today they gave us a detailed look at all nine cards while also clarifying some details on them.

A Golden Hero is unlocked when you win 500 ranked matches with a specific hero. The Golden version of a Hero has the same stats. However, they have a gilded border as well as exclusive animations. For example, fire ripples around Garrosh Hellscream while the elemental energy between Thrall's hands sparkles:

You can check your progress toward a Golden Hero on the deck selection screen in Ranked Play mode. Don't bother racking up Ranked victories in anticipation, though. The Golden Heroes won't be rewarded retroactively.

"The 500 wins that are needed will not start counting until the Golden Heroes are implemented," community manager Aratil said on the Battle.net forums.

Fellow community manager Zeriyah, meanwhile, chimed in on the discussion to say that there are no plans to offer the Golden Heroes to players who rack up 500 Casual wins. While that's an admittedly large amount of wins no matter what mode you're playing in, Blizzard intends for the Golden Heroes to be an incentive to jump into Ranked Play.

Aratil said today that Golden Heroes will be included in the next Hearthstone patch. That may be the patch accompanying the official launch of the game, said to be weeks away. That patch is also said to bring a number of bug fixes. Full patch notes for the update will be released in the near future.

Blizzard will soon add other incentives for dedicated Hearthstone players as well. Players will be able to earn alternate back art for their cards by hitting Legendary rank, participating in special events, or other actions. The first five alternate card backs were revealed last week.