All in the Cards

Ace in the Hole

The CCG will also take WoW's first expansion, The Burning Crusade, into account in future installments. "We don't want to forget about everything that came before [the expansion]," Kibler said. "Set Two is our bridge set between the existing and new content. We work pretty closely with Blizzard. A couple of Blizzard guys come to the office every few weeks to tell us what's going on. "

And the game will also pay off in the MMOG, with special cards known as Loop cards. Mandell elaborated, "The Loop rares are cards in the set that are alternative versions of cards in the set with codes redeemable for cosmetic upgrades in the [MMOG]. Stuff that looks cool, akin to the Murloc pet from BlizzCon. There are three in the first set, and there will be additional ones in future sets through our online redemption program."

When the CCG releases on October 25th, players will have a chance to take a crack at the game themselves. Who knows, maybe some of that secret sauce Blizzard is cooking made its way over to the folks at Upper Deck. If Kibler and Mandell's take on WoW kindles the same fire in the player base that the original game did, maybe they'll take over the card game industry like WoW did the MMOG field. I'll have my eyes on my local hobby shop to find out.

Dan Dormer is a videogame freelancer who keeps a poorly updated blog
at his personal
site. He's also afraid of seeing scary movies. True story.