World of Warcraft Trading Card Game

The World of Warcraft Trading Card Game (WoW TCG), commonly referred to as "the TCG", is a physical collectible card game based on World of Warcraft, first released in 2006.

On August 23, 2013, a week after the closed beta for Hearthstone started, it was announced that no further sets would be produced for the TCG. Hearthstone is widely considered the spiritual successor to the WoW TCG.

Relationship to Hearthstone
The TCG was influential in the development of Hearthstone, with much of the latter game's card art originally created for the TCG. However, with the planned release of Hearthstone, the developers chose to discontinue the TCG, in order to avoid potential conflict and focus exclusively on the new game.

While serving as a spiritual successor to the TCG, Hearthstone also reflected a significant departure in approach. A complex card game in the vein of , the TCG includes cards for allies (minions), spells, equipment, locations and quests, and features the elaborate rules and playing order common to games of its kind. More unusually, it also features multi-player battlegrounds and raids, the latter coming with their own Raid Decks, and requiring an additional player to serve as "Raid Master", battling against the 3-5 players forming the raid party. In contrast, Hearthstone was intended from the start to be extremely accessible, with a specific design goal of reaching players who were turned off by the complexity and long setup time of physical card games like the TCG and Magic.

Hearthstone cards from the TCG
While many Hearthstone cards reflect characters, abilities or weapons specifically found in World of Warcraft or its predecessors, some were first innovated by the TCG. Some are almost identical to their TCG counterparts, while others are changed but still clearly the same card. For a list of cards original to Hearthstone, see Original cards in Hearthstone.

Minions

 * Murloc Tinyfin - TCG - Baby Murloc
 * Argent Protector - TCG - Graccus
 * King Bagurgle - TCG - King Bagurgle, Terror of the Tides
 * Nadina the Red - TCG - Nadina the Red

Spells

 * Flame Lance - TCG
 * Bear Trap - TCG (different effect)
 * Living Roots - TCG (different effect)
 * Snipe - TCG
 * Light of the Naaru - TCG (different effect)
 * Tinker's Sharpsword Oil - TCG - Superior Mana Oil (different effect)
 * Forked Lightning - TCG - Fork Lightning
 * Lightning Storm - TCG (using art from Call of Lightning)
 * Upgrade! - TCG - Gear Upgrade (different effect)
 * Tail Swipe - TCG