ESCAPE FROM VIOLET HOLD
Blizzard Entertainment | Hearthstone ● Marketing, Creative & Production Live Ops Designer ● 2026
The next chapter of Hearthstone began with one of the biggest expansion launches in its history -- one where Deathwing wins and colossal cards return.
Team Lead: Julie Kimura ● Producer: Dana Nuber
MC&P Design Team: Lisa Ou, Millie Maddox, Stephanie Wang
Project Stakeholders: Sarah Gray, Hannah Goodman, Marcella Ziccarelli
MC&P Design Team: Lisa Ou, Millie Maddox, Stephanie Wang
Project Stakeholders: Sarah Gray, Hannah Goodman, Marcella Ziccarelli
With Across the Timeways drawing to a close, the next expansion would see my responsibilities as a Marketing, Creative & Production Live Ops designer shift from community oriented projects to product visuals in early 2026. This meant less of the hustle of displaying mechanics and cards for the community and creating more of the compelling product marketing graphics used to drive purchases.
36.0 Launch
The final portion of my blog work and community streams were created in the run-up to CATACLYSM. These blog posts were featured on the Hearthstone website and in the Battle.net launcher along with fan sites like Patch Bot and Hearthpwn.
Blog content included a wide range of deliverables and would often times require game capture to demonstrate new features and updates. Below are just a few of the many gifs, screenshots, and created images used to keep players informed.
Card Resizing & Layouts (Top) and Blog Dividers & Footers (Bottom)
35.0 THEORYCRAFTING
With each new expansions comes Theorycrafting, a community focused livestream event where Hearthstone provides social and stream overlays for content creators to discover and theorize the potential ways new cards can be played. The event spans several days and gives creators access to Twitch Drop giveaways, helping attract viewers to their channels.
Theorycrafting Announcements
Theorycrafting Community Social Frames
Theorycrafting Community Livestream Frames
34.6 Card Reveal Streams
To prepare for the launch of CATACLYSM, the creator card reveal season went above and beyond with six individual streams and a total of 26 influencers and 6 developers. The first five streams were split into hero classes covering 2 classes per stream, with the fifth covering 3 classes. Below are the social assets created for each stream and a breakdown of the 4-scene reveal stream.
3 Sets of Social Graphics: Tune In, Live Tomorrow and Now Live
From Top Left to Bottom Right: Druid-Rogue, Mage-Hunter, Priest-Warlock, Warrior-Paladin-Shaman
The stream consisted of three 6-camera scenes for each of the guests and one 2-camera scene. The roundtable scene was used to introduce everyone, build hype, and provide some buffer time so viewers could join in. It was followed by the center card reveal scene where a card was shown one-at-a-time for the group to discuss. The gameplay scene was used to see the card in action and the 2-cam scene was for the final discussion between the host and the developer.
Below is the entire package and the chroma key versions of each that were handed off to production.
34.6 Final Card Reveal Stream
The sixth stream was the final card reveal stream, featuring one influencer and one developer, this time focusing on the broader set of cards instead of the individual classes. The final reveal stream featured a different look from the first five, bringing Deathwing's destruction to the usual Hearthstone evergreen assets. This thematically tied the stream to the games visuals in a very organic way.
3 Social Graphics: Tune In, Live Tomorrow and Live Now
The stream consisted of looping broadcast slates (a countdown, brb, tech issues and end card), a 2-name lower thirds, and three left-thirds (parchment, gameplay and center). Below is the entire package and the chroma key versions handed off to production.
34.6 dragonflight RALLY POINT
The CATACLYSM "Rally the Dragonflights" campaign was a community-focused engagement-driven promotional campaign where every email sign up, live stream drop claim and every like, share and comment across Hearthstone's social channels brought new rewards for players when CATACLYSM launched. On the Hearthstone one-page rally point, I created the key reward images to showcase all the cool stuff players could look forward to.
Below are some alternate layouts and early versions of the reward promo images.
Product bundles
The bulk of my work during the CATACLYSM expansion was crafting alluring product bundles -- the 36.0 Tavern Pass, the 36.2 Battlegrounds Season Pass, the 36.4 Class Set bundles and the 36.6 pre-purchase Mega Bundles. Below, you can see all the places the Battlegrounds Season Pass asset lives: the Battle.net launcher, the Hearthstone blog, the Battle.net webshop and the Blizzard.com website.
Battlegrounds Season Pass
Battlegrounds Season Pass as seen in the Battle.net App & the Hearthstone Blog
Battlegrounds Season Pass seen in the Battle.net Webshop
Battlegrounds Season Pass seen on the Blizzard.com Website
Among the previously mentioned bundles, there was Darkmoon Faire Treasures (commonly known as DFTs) that are displayed through in-game messaging, as well as the some of the places shown above. Below are a handful of the many bundle graphics that I created throughout the CATACLYSM expansion.
35.6 Pre-release
In the run up to the 2nd expansion of the year, Escape from Violet Hold, I created a lot of pre-release content that may feel out of place at the end here. For the full experience, check the links below.
Below are just a small bit of the assets I crafted for Escape from Violet Hold.
