Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

Well, today Bliz announced a free to play Card Battle Game based in the Warcraft universe.

When we have enough info to warrant a page, it would be located here.

In all, a weird, unexpected announcement. It looks like it'll have full voice over and animations, so Jaina will taunt Garrosh before her card spams Arcane Missiles at him.

I also looks like it's borrowing a bit from their old Collectible Card Game. Your character will be one of the nine original classes from World Of Warcraft and a major lore figure.

Druid - Malfurion
Hunter - Rexxar
Mage - Jaina
Paladin - Uther?
Priest - Anduin
Rogue - Valeera, not Garona?
Shaman - Thrall
Warrior - Garrosh
Warlock - Gul'dan?

You'll collect cards including class abilities, minions, and gear.

Sounds interesting, and beta opt-in is ongoing. Any cards you purchase during the beta won't transfer to live, but you will be credited for new boosters.

Also, if this is successful, Diablo and Starcraft variants?

edited 22nd Mar '13 10:38:21 PM by Rotpar

It does actually sound pretty cool. The very concept made me think it'd be clear crap, but it's quite obviously Blizzard takes everything they do seriously instead.

edited 22nd Mar '13 10:31:36 PM by VutherA

So this is NOT the fabled Project Titan then?

They had explicitly stated that their Pax East announcement (which is this game) is not Titan.

The only thing I know about PAX East is that it was responsible for an embargo on new updates and news on Saints Row 4 so...

Given all the ballyhoo and rumours surrounding Titan, I don't think Blizzion have a hope in hell of satisfying folks who seem to have built up huge expectations for it. This game's reception may be muted in comparison to that.

BTW, I would laugh myself silly if Titan ended up being World of Starcraft after all. I know there is multiplayer at the core of both the main Starcraft games but a MMO would be a license not just to print money but a license on the concept of money itself, particularly in South Korea.

edited 23rd Mar '13 6:12:59 AM by TamH70

Here is a quick overview from MMO-Champion.com.

Also, the forum devs don't seem to have any info on whether or not it will be on systems outside of Windows, Mac, or the iPad. I would like to see it on Android, if possible.

edited 23rd Mar '13 9:09:55 AM by tclittle

The Koreans are much more into high level play and high level players than the lore and the world, unless the MMO is also built for good competitive play. A World of Starcraft would fall completely under their radar.

I am sure I have heard different down the years on that.

Plus, Starcraft Universe is being plugged by Blizzard on the Battle.Net Arcade already.

Then again, they might go the Valve way and hire the guys who made Starcraft Universe.

EDIT: I've opted in, and I'm pretty keen since it's slated to be free-to-play with microtransactions.

EDIT 2: Ooh, I like the crafting thing. It's something I've always wished to do with my real cards (without going through the trading process and actually having junk).

edited 25th Mar '13 1:04:07 AM by disruptorfe404

Nerf NOW!!! on Hearthstone.

Cards the editor's of the Daily Blink would like to see.

Wowcrendor's take.

Alright chums, let's do this...

Thanks for the that link now I can see a bunch of the shit.

wowcrendor vs Total Biscuit

Adding this thread to my watchlist and bumping it. I'm very interested in the game, although it's in closed beta. I've signed up in my account preferences, anyway, so maybe...

Penny Arcade has two comics about the game: Missive, in which Gabe threatens Blizzard with dire retribution if it makes content in Hearthstone require playing World Of Warcraft, and Harshstone in which getting beaten by his wife is Serious Business.

My, my, this thread has gathered some dust. Let's clear out the cobwebs with some (belated) patch notes. Miracle rogues are dead, druids got nerfed surprisingly hard and some of the cheesy drops are slightly weaker. Warriors saw some substantial buffs, as did priests.

I've had a great time in the arena so far. I picked a hunter and drafted a middling beast deck with some removal. While I was able to rush down most opponents, a priest with a brilliantly timed Mind Control handed me my first loss. After that, I lucked out and managed a top deck win one round before I would've been savaged by a board full of orcs. A disconnect which caused my second loss evened out the score in that regard, but a few close games later, I ended up finishing 9 - 2. The spoils of war included a pack of cards, 220 gold and a golden Commanding Shout. The deck I've crafted just now is utterly, completely, hopelessly awful. I'll count myself lucky if I squeeze a win out of it.

So, who else here won the beta lottery, now that Blizzard has gotten a bit more generous with keys?

I'm guessing you may be the only one here with a beta key. There hasn't been a ton of news for the game outside of the beta.

Only thing I've heard of any real interest is an unrevealed Hearthstone card as part of the Blizzcon goodie bag. People suspect it's probably related to the new WoW expansion.

That's a shame. However, if the Hearthstone subreddit is to be believed, the waves are getting larger. They should also be a little more frequent now that we're past the wipe and the servers can cope with the influx of players. Best of luck to everybody and be nice to your poor F5 keys!

In the meantime, there are a couple of streamers who are a veritable fount of information, regarding both drafting and actual ingame strategy. My personal favourites are Ellohime, who interacts a great deal with his viewers, Guardsman Bob, who unfortunately primarily streams League of Legends and Trump, who has probably the deepest understanding of the game at this point. For pure fun, I recommend this. The rarest cards must be the best ones, right?

The ending of that video is utterly hilarious.

And just to let you know, Crendor also streams, but he typically notifies his viewers on Facebook or Twitter when he's gonna do it. Not sure of his channel location.

Got a Beta invite over the weekend.

It's fun to kick back and smash people with my Knife Juggler deck, but Arena/Draft is my favourite mode by far. Especially when you're a tool like me and pick Blessing of Wisdom five times.

Hmmm...beta invite.

Got the beta invite. Seems to me that it's way too hard to earn new cards, but maybe that's the point (to make you spend money). The game design is solid, but the "free-to-play" model errs on the side of sadistic. Also I've noticed a lot of visual bugs, including the minions being placed incorrectly relative to each other which can screw up targeting.

That said, Arena is quite fun. If you're good at it anyway. It gives you access to the whole collection of cards right from the very beginning and feels a lot more complicated and interesting than the basic deck that you'd otherwise be stuck with for a long time. Unfortunately it costs gold to enter, and gold is basically impossible to earn. Unless you win a lot in the Arena. Catch 22.

Luckily I've watched far too many streams of this or something because apparently I have a decent chance of getting over 7 wins and therefore paying back my entry fee. Just statistically speaking though, only a third of the players will be able to achieve this (since whenever you win you create losses in other players). So the game sucks for everyone else.

edited 20th Oct '13 10:04:49 PM by Clarste

Congratulations to everybody who got a key. If you're still waiting, best of luck.

Don't you think you're exaggerating a little bit? Gold income might seem low to you, but "basically impossible to earn" would've been overly pessimistic even before the adjustment. Just look at how much gold and/or packs you get from completing the one-time achievements. Heck, simply unlocking every hero could be enough for your first arena run, if your first arena run wasn't free to begin with. I get that everybody wants gold and fast rewards, but rewards have to be earned or they feel meaningless. Personally, I wouldn't mind if ranked mode offered a little more than unranked, especially if you're higher up the ladder, but that's about it.

Two more misconceptions that I've heard and read a bunch concern basic cards and arena payoff. Let's start with basic cards: First of all, these aren't worse than rarer stuff, per se. They're simpler, for the most part, but there are basic cards with tremendous value. Take Ooze, Sen'jin, Yeti or Cleric, for instance.

Some of the preconstructed decks are a little weak, but even those are a force to be reckoned with if the player wielding them is decent. Trump mentioned on Valuetown that he'd climbed to Diamond with a basic deck after the wipe. I'm nowhere near as good and I had no trouble at all reproducing that with the hunter deck. What I mean to say is that you can't buy wins. If a bad player spends a lot of money, he still won't beat a good player reliably.

The thing about arena is that it does double duty as Hearthstone's draft mode and an efficient way to acquire packs. Arena is cost-efficient as soon as you get 50g because packs are worth 100g. This is with dust valued at 0g; if you value it higher, the required wins to go even can be very low. Both times I went 2/3, I got 35g back. That's not bad for a sub-50% win rate, all things considered.

Two Arena runs aren't worth much if you don't win. You finish those and then... that's it. You're back at zero except with nothing to work towards. I wasn't aware of the rewards for 300 wins and beating all expert A.I.s and whatnot, but the fact that I wasn't aware of them is extremely relevant for new players. A reward that you don't know about literally cannot motivate you to do anything. I played all weekends and got like 60 wins. That's nowhere near 300. Assuming I only have time to play on weekends, you expect me to wait 4 more weeks to get another hundred gold? Which is only 2/3 of an Arena?

The standard gold earning rate is 10 for 3 wins. That's like... an hour for 10 gold (assuming you lose half your games and each game is ~10 minutes). 10 gold is, in technical terms, jack squat. You say you need struggle to make the rewards worthwhile, but even the reward for finally earning 100 gold after 10 hours of playtime is practically worthless. 5 cards, which have about a 75% or more of being useless to your deck. The disenchanting system seems like it's supposed to solve this, except for the fact that you're ridiculously unlikely to get extra duplicates early in your career. So you just spent 10 hours getting nothing. Congrats? Didn't that Angry Chicken make it all worth it?

Frankly, it's daunting and disheartening. And all the while you're doing this, you're stuck with a deck composed mostly of basic cards while playing against people with gold plated Mekkatorques and Yseras and whatnot. You don't want to be them, you hate them for having stuff that you don't, for paying-to-win. You think "I could have won if I had all those cards" and that's demoralizing. Or heck, maybe you do win anyway, but you're still having less fun because you have less tools to play with.

Now, to be fair, I'm only arguing that this is a matter of degree. Tweak the numbers around more. Shift some of the expert cards into the basic decks (earned from 10-20 for example). There are plenty of options. All I'm saying is that new players who are reluctant to spend money will be driven away. This isn't hypothetical: my brother has been complaining to me about this constantly. The game disproportionately rewards Arena winners, who as mentioned are mathematically always going to be a minority. When 2/3 of your playerbase are basically completely unable to progress without spending cash, you know you've failed as a FTP game.

edited 21st Oct '13 6:50:04 AM by Clarste

Yeah, I hopelessly suck at Hearthstone already.

You make a good point about the achievements. Knowing about them would not only allow players to plan ahead, it would also incentivise them to get familiar with cards and game mechanics before jumping into either arena or ranked play. An achievement tab should do the trick.

I don't mean to step on your toes, Clarste, but I take issue with your numbers. First of all, two arena runs yield at the very, very least 200g in packs. It's actually highly unlikely not to get more, but let's work with this bleak scenario. You now have 2 packs and the information that you're not all that good at drafting. Now, assuming you persist and want to play another arena, you need 150g.

You'll get that considerably faster than the 10g per hour you put forward, because you neglected to take quests into account. 40g every day is not to be sneezed at, especially when you can do it while playing the deck you wanted to try anyway. Again, we're being modest here - there are quests with 60g rewards and one that yields a whopping 100g. I think fitting only six matches in an hour is a little on the low side as well, but I haven't timed my matches. My gut says that number ought to be higher, but that's neither here nor there. You could of course always play fast decks in constructed, which would allow you to finish more games. In fact, most gold grinding guides recommend precisely that.

I'm not going to argue how many cards out of a pack are worthless, because that's largely a matter of opinion. If you're trying to build one specific deck, you need to get lucky. If you're just trying to collect, every card is fair game. And if you have multiple decks in the works, which is likely considering the number of heroes, most cards will be useful in some fashion. I like that even a completely dead card is still worth dust.

I'm a little surprised that you mentioned Ysera and Mekkatorque, honestly. While Ysera is certainly powerful, a considerable number of matches is already decided before she comes into play. She might be one of the best legendaries around, but I can't remember that I actually thought "I would've won if it weren't for that dragon". Mekkatorque, on the other hand, is not exactly a great card. You're more likely to lose to one of the 6 mana charge or taunt minions, half of which are basic.

Mind you, I wouldn't complain if rewards were larger. But I can't help feeling that a lot of players severely misjudge the value of big, shiny, rare cards. As a matter of fact, you don't need to spend anything. Hearthstone offers you a lot of freebies just for playing the game. If you manage those resources smartly, you'll reliably earn more gold and more packs, which, again, you don't desperately need since most successful decks only splash non-basics.