As soon as I saw the card back from the April season, I wanted cupcakes. If Hearthstone was going to inspire me to make cupcakes, I might as well make Hearthstone cupcakes.
I obviously took a little liberty with them. I enjoyed the sprinkles on the card, but I didn’t really have a “background” to the real cupcakes. I opted to put the sprinkles right on the cupcakes. The colors don’t match perfectly and blah blah blah, close enough.
At least I have cupcakes.
I wrote this to post on Game Boyz, where I’m the iPhone editor (and only active poster for over the last year). However, the site appears to be down. Because it was already written, I decided to post it here, even though it’s not the type of writing I usually do here. Note that Game Boyz reviews are required to have sections for introduction, graphics, sound, gameplay, and conclusion.
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is Blizzard’s online collectible card game based in the Warcraft universe. Fans of Warcraft should be familiar with a lot of characters and themes in the game, while fans of earlier CCGs should be familiar with the game mechanics. It reminds me of a simplified and more fun Magic: The Gathering set in the Warcraft universe.
Hearthstone was first released on PCs in March of 2014 and before that time was in an extensive beta. The iPhone and Android phone version of Hearthstone is very similar to the PC version but uses smaller graphics and a condensed interface. It’s very playable, and I have no problem switching between the two versions.
Graphics
The graphics are still great even on the smaller screen. In both the PC and the phone versions, you can select cards to get a closer view of them. Because of this, you don’t really lose much graphically. The game boards on PC have interactive parts in each corner. For example, clicking the hanging sign on the house on one board enough times causes it to break. On the phone, two of these have been removed to make room for the interface. I miss clicking on them mindlessly, but they’re not vital.
Sound
The audio is still excellent in this version of Hearthstone. There are a ton of sound effects in the game. As far as I can tell, each card has a unique sound, and they’ve all made the jump to phones. If you play enough, you might know what card’s being played just based on the sound. It’s a high level of polish.
Gameplay
Hearthstone is Hearthstone, regardless of platform. You’re still using the same account with the same people playing because it’s completely cross-platform. Hearthstone is free-to-play, but you can spend real money as well. Everyday you get a quest. It might ask you to win three games as a mage, deal 100 damage, etc. Completing a quest earns you gold that you can spend to purchase adventures or card packs. You can also spend real money in place of gold.
To save space in the mobile version, your hand is tucked into the corner in the bottom-right. When you tap on it, it pops up into the center on the bottom so you can select one to read it in full. It’s a good way to save screen real estate and is very smooth once you start using it.
Card packs contain additional cards with a chance at rarer cards, similar to buying cards in traditional CCGs. Expansions add many new cards. So far, one expansion has been released – Goblins vs Gnomes. Adventures on the other hand are single-player challenges. You fight against NPCs using decks that might not be completely balanced for every class. You’ll usually need to make custom decks to beat them. In addition to a normal mode, they also contain a harder, heroic mode as well as class challenges. Adventures follow stories from WoW and contain voice-acted introductions. They reward cards as well, although adventures introduce less cards than expansions.
Curse of Naxxramas released in July, but Hearthstone just got something new. Blackrock Mountain was released April 2 of this year, making this the perfect time to get into (or back into) Hearthstone. It has five wings – Blackrock Depths, which contains the Grim Guzzler, Dark Iron Arena, and Emperor Thaurissan; Molten Core, which contains Garr, Baron Geddon, and Ragnaros the Firelord; Blackrock Spire (releasing April 16), which contains Highlord Omokk, General Drakkisath, and Rend Blackhand; Blackwing Lair (releasing April 23), which contains Razorgore the Untamed, Vaelastrasz the Corrupt, Chromaggus, and Lord Victor Nefarius; and the Hidden Laboratory (releasing April 30), which contains Omnotron Defense System, Maloriak, Atramedes, and Nefarian.
Conclusion
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft has always been an excellent card game, and now it can finally be played on phones as well. I’ve never spent money in the game and have still had a blast with it. Whether you’ve played the PC version or not, I highly recommend you download Hearthstone on your iPhone or Android phone. Getting in a quick match in bed before going to sleep is a new perk that I really enjoy. For the Horde!
As was hinted by the cards sent to various news outlets, Blizzard announced an expansion to Hearthstone – Goblins vs Gnomes, full of mechanical mayhem. It functions a lot expansions for traditional CCGs; it’ll introduce a large amount of new cards along with some new mechanics on some of those cards. They’ll be obtainable through new card packs that are earned the same way they’re earned currently. There’s something kind of comforting about the familiarity of the process.
I haven’t even purchased all the wings of the Curse of Naxxramas yet, but I’m still excited for this too. I play Hearthstone very casually, and even though I’ve yet to unlock all Basic cards, I still find myself excited for this release. I suppose it’s partly the novelty of seeing new cards in play even if I don’t have them. The new game board (and spectator mode) are nice touches as well. Unfortunately, no mention of the next adventure!
If you don’t find Ben Brode’s laughter infectious, there’s something wrong with you.
As soon as I heard him start speaking on the panel, I was reminded what a great presenter he is. It’s not just skill at presenting either. It’s obvious how much he loves the game, which is really important both for creating a game and for talking about it. Seeing it through his eyes helps me to appreciate the game more. Not that Ben reads this, but thanks for your contributions to both Hearthstone and BlizzCon!
This is the card back you can earn during the October season in Hearthstone. I got the image from Blizzard’s announcement. I think it looks pretty cool. I can’t way to use it when it unlocked on November 1st, the same day I put up my Halloween decorations and bust out a costume. Oh, you usually do those things in October? Apparently Blizzard doesn’t. I feel like they didn’t think this through. Thanks for the pirate card back on October 1st also – 12 days too late for the day celebrating pirates.
Source: Hearthstone October 2014 Ranked Play Season – Hallow’s End!, Zeriyah, Hearthstone News, 10/1/14.
Having never played a MOBA, ARTS, hero brawler, or whatever you want to call the genre, I knew that with the release of Heroes of the Storm, my time to enter the genre had come. I heard they had a steep learning curve, but by the time I really had the itch to try, I knew about Blizzard’s entry and just decided to wait. I wanted to play as these Blizzard heroes!
As someone without experience in genre but with a lot of love for Warcraft and Diablo, I’m having a lot of fun with the game. There are lots of characters progression choices I might not have tried yet, but it’s not difficult to get a general understanding of the game. Every Tuesday, Blizzard changes what heroes are available to play for free. You can purchase heroes to unlock them permanently. By the end of the week last week, I had a good understanding of what heroes I could play well and what heroes I played terribly. We’ll see about this week.
Haunted Mines is my favorite battleground so far. Periodically two mines open leading to an underground cavern infested with undead. As the undead are killed, they drop skulls that can be picked up by heroes. When all the undead are vanquished, golems are summoned on the surface, one for each side. Their strength is proportional to the number of skulls acquired be heroes on their side.
From what I can tell, these battleground-specific mechanics are incredibly important. It’s rather disappointing when people forget about them.
Another battleground, Blackheart’s Bay, is pretty fun. Chests spawn periodically that drop gold doubloons when attacked. In addition, certain enemies can be killed for doubloons. The doubloons can be given to Blackheart, a pirate, to purchase his services in blasting the enemy team with cannon fire.
The third battleground, Cursed Hollow, doesn’t really excite me. Tributes to the Raven Lords spawn periodically, and when three are collected by a single side, the other side is cursed, causing their minions to have less health and their towers to stop firing. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it, but I don’t enjoy it as much as the previous two.
The final battleground is Dragon Shire, and I don’t care for it. There’s an obelisk at the top of the map and one at the bottom. When both are held by the same side, a player on that side can interact with the Dragon Altar in the center of the map to turn into the Dragon Knight, a powerful unit. Maybe I just need to try turning into the Dragon Knight a few more times for the battleground to grow on me, but right now, I always hope I don’t get this battleground.
At the time of writing this, I’d played seven heroes. I certainly have opinions on them, but I’ll admit that because I was quickly learning the game and getting better, maybe I’d enjoy some heroes more if I tried them again.
I was terrible with Illidan, a melee assassin hero. I guess I’m not good at the whole get in and get out thing.
Similar to his brother, Malfurion, a ranged support hero, let me down. Or maybe he was just boring. I’m more inclined to try Illidan more than Malfurion.
Valla the demon hunter, a ranged assassin, was fun, but I still seemed to die a lot. I probably need more practice.
I enjoyed Raynor, another ranged assassin, but he also seemed very bland. That’s probably why he was chosen for the tutorial as well. I doubt I’ll be playing him much in the future.
Sonya the barbarian, a melee warrior, is pretty fun, but that’s probably because I can be a little more reckless. I felt like I got stuck a lot with previous heroes and couldn’t get away. At least Sonya can take a few hits!
Sgt. Hammer, a ranged specialist, is a Siege Tank operator. She’s a really cool hero. There are definitely some different ways to play her, but she was best at taking out enemy buildings.
Lastly there’s Li Li, a ranged support hero and the last hero I tried. I wasn’t expecting to like her, but I enjoyed her quite a bit. Oh, man. My favorite so far has been a healer. I guess I know that it really is my true calling.
I’m a little nervous about playing too much. By the time Hearthstone was officially released, I was bored of it. On my current account, I haven’t even unlocked all the heroes. It felt like playing the same content again. Am I going to play Heroes of the Storm a lot now during the technical alpha and not feel like playing more it releases? We’ll see. Even if I do, I bet they can pull me back into the game. I’m sure Hearthstone will get me playing again when Curse of Naxxramas releases!
The Hearthstone panel at BlizzCon really reinvigorated my interest in the game. I really enjoyed it when I first got into the beta, but I hadn’t even played it since the reset. Without having friends playing it, and with all the PVE content finished, I just lost interest. After seeing all the thought that went into the design and hearing about some new features coming, I started playing it again almost immediately. I can’t wait for some of that content, too!
BlizzCon attendees and virtual ticket holders get a Golden Elite Tauren Chieftain card. The coolest part of the card is what it looks like when you play it. Of course, it plays some cool music too! It looks like a fun card. In addition, it wasn’t the only card shown that made a big entrance.
I really enjoyed hearing about the evolution of some of the aspects of the game. For example, they discussed how standard drafting became the arena mode that’s currently in the game. My summary here misses a few intermediate versions, but here’s the idea. At first, they had normal drafting. You take one card from a pack of how ever many cards. (Let’s say eight.) You pass the remaining seven to the next player and get seven from another. You keep doing that until you’re down to just one card, and then you keep it. This works in physical games, but it would mean possibly waiting for a long time in a computer game.
They came up with an asynchronous way of doing something similar. You get seven cards and choose one to keep. You swap your six cards with the cards in the envelope with the “6” label. You keep doing this until you have just one card, and you keep it. After trying this, they realized that it was still most fun when you had a few cards from which to choose that were all applicable to your deck. However, sometimes you’d have only a couple choices and none would be right. They eventually decided that three choices was the most fun. They gave players three cards that were all applicable to that player’s deck, and that’s the version that made it into Hearthstone.
Because it was so different from the idea of a draft, they renamed it “Arena.” They felt it was no longer recognizable as drafting. Honestly, when I first tried that mode, I immediately saw it as a type of draft. Yes, the way you did it was different, but it very clearly accomplished the goals of drafting. I really like it.
I particularly liked the ideas of adventures. These are single-player, PVE matches. They could be a single boss or a series of bosses, and they’ll unlock cards as you play through them. It seems like a similar idea as raid decks from the World of Warcraft: Trading Card Game possibly (although single-player). I suppose the current tutorial series of matches is basically an adventure. I wish they would have teased some ideas for the adventures will be, but it might be too early for that. Regardless, I’m excited.
There were two people on the Hearthstone panel – Lead Designer Eric Dodds and Technical Designer Ben Brode. As soon as Ben Brodes began presenting, it was immediately apparent that he was excited for the game and truly loved it. He had so much enthusiasm and energy and was a great presenter. I decided to talk to him on Twitter.
@bdbrode I loved your energy and excitement at BlizzCon. What a great presenter! Got me more pumped to play the game.
— Peter Anargirou (@TheUser) November 11, 2013
@TheUser thanks!! Glad to hear it :)
— Ben Brode (@bdbrode) November 11, 2013
And then I realized something about his name and the fact that I currently live in Irvine, I went to school in Irvine, and Blizzard is in Irvine.
@bdbrode Also, are you related to Will who went to UCI a few years ago? (Not sure how common your last name is, heh.)
— Peter Anargirou (@TheUser) November 11, 2013
@TheUser haha yes he’s my brother!!
— Ben Brode (@bdbrode) November 11, 2013
It’s a small world.
BlizzCon was this weekend, and I found the announcements pretty exciting. Despite living just twenty to thirty minutes from the convention center, I didn’t go. I think it feels less special as a convention because it’s so close, but I do watch the stream. I’ll be posting about some of the announcements and my feelings about them later. I have something more important to mention first!
What would World of Warcraft be without people with whom to play? Some of my guildies came down, and got to hang out this weekend. I’m second from the right, in the red shirt. I stole the pic from my guild leader, so hopefully she doesn’t mind. I went to dinner with three out-of-towners and Mooglegem on Friday night, and Saturday night the group of us above went to dinner. That includes four people I met (in person) this weekend, which was great.
In the photo, you might notice a cookie jar between a glass of water and a beer. Moogle baked cookies and brought them with her in that jar. While we in line at a restaurant, she handed them out to us. A girl behind us got excited, asking where we got the cookies. Moogle explained that she baked them and brought them with her. She seemed sad, and Moogle offered her a cookie. She got really excited, accepted, tried it, and then told Moogle how good it was! Later, when we were seated, Moogle offered cookies to our waiter and waitress. The waiter took one fairly early and thought it was great. It was later in the meal when the waitress accepted, and she also told Moogle how good she thought it was. A few minutes later, a different waitress came over to us, telling us that she didn’t know who baked the cookies but that her coworker shared a piece with her and she thought they were amazing. Moogle gave one to her too. Everyone loves cookies!
As for the content from BlizzCon itself, I was pretty impressed. I think Warlords of Draenor sounds very exciting and the changes are, generally, good ones. I’m also pleased with what I saw of Reaper of Souls. I’ve never played a MOBA, but I’m optimistic about Heroes of the Storm (and the trailer was fantastic). I’d actually not played Hearthstone in a while, but the convention made me excited to play once more. Adventures sound particularly cool! And I guess StarCraft was there. I don’t play it. I’ll post more in-depth about the announcements in the future!
We may be in debt, but the chips on our shoulders are chocolate, Sarah Pine, WoW Insider, 9/18/13.
When Greg Street and Brian Holinka traded tweets about exciting changes to PVP, Olivia Grace replied to them, saying that she’d bake them each 1,000,000 cookies if the changes were cross-realm arenas. Well, they’re in patch 5.4 now, and in the Alliance PVP room in the Valley of the Four Winds, there’s an IOU note for “1,000,000 Chocolate Chip Cookies” signed “- O.D.G.” She better get on that.
WoW Trivial Pursuit now available, Sarah Pine, WoW Insider, 9/25/13.
Sweet.
Know Your Lore: This Was All Necessary, Matthew Rossi, WoW Insider, 9/25/13.
Pandaria grew stagnant under the Sha of Pride. Garrosh was right that “such power cannot be contained.”
Hearthstone account wipe is coming, Sarah Pine, WoW Insider, 9/26/13.
Good to know if you’re still playing Hearthstone. You’ll be reimbursed with gold for your purchases, and they don’t believe there will be any additional wipes.
Queue for all the LFRs at once in patch 5.4, Olivia Grace, WoW Insider, 9/24/13.
This is a welcome change.
WoW Archivist: A rolled-back history of realms, Scott Andrews, WoW Insider, 9/13/13.
I remember roll-backs. Dark days, they were.
Know Your Lore: The future of the Horde, Anne Stickney, WoW Insider, 9/15/13.
What will happen to the Horde after the Siege of Orgrimmar?
Know Your Lore: Delenda est Orgrimmar, Matthew Rossi, WoW Insider, 9/18/13.
This is a satirical piece from the Alliance perspective on why Orgrimmar should be destroyed.
Escape from Orgrimmar, Matthew Rossi, WoW Insider, 9/19/13.
And this is the follow-up Rossi wrote after realizing that people didn’t realize the first was satirical. It lists the reasons why Orgrimmar shouldn’t be destroyed.
When the big squish happens, you’ll still be able to kill the mobs, Adam Holisky, WoW Insider, 9/19/13.
Some clarification for people who are still confused.
As you’ve probably heard, Blizzard is cancelling the World of Warcraft: Trading Card Game. Most likely this stems from their focus on Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. While I hadn’t played it in years, saying goodbye to a good game makes me a bit sad.
I’m not sure that I ever played a 1v1 match against another player; it was the raid decks that fascinated me. WoW: TCG features raid decks modelled after their World of Warcraft counterparts. In the photo above (taken years ago), one player is controlling the Onyxia raid deck. We had five players banded together to defeat Onyxia. It was a new concept (at least to me) in TCGs, and I enjoyed it immensely. Besides defeating Onyxia, I also defeated Molten Core in normal (it had different difficulties) with five other players.
There were seven raid decks released – Onyxia’s Lair, Molten Core, Magtheridon’s Lair, Black Temple, Naxxramas, Assault on Icecrown Citadel, and Battle of the Aspects. Maybe it’s a waste of money, but I suddenly have the strong urge to purchase every raid deck. They’re fun, and I can’t stand the idea of them going away! I’ll pick up Assault on Icecrown Citadel at the very least.
This weekend, I played a lot of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. My friend gave me a beta key, which was really nice of him. Hearthstone is a lot of fun. It’s very similar to other collectible card games, but at the same time, it’s a bit different. I feel like Blizzard must have put significant thought into what makes CCGs fun and makes them annoying. Having too much mana is annoying. Having too little mana in annoying. In Hearthstone, you use mana crystals, but they don’t come from cards. Like other games, your available mana is reset every turn. Your maximum is one on the first turn. On every subsequent turn, your maximum increases until it caps at ten.
In this video, I’m playing a practice round against Malfurion. Hearthstone has three modes that I see – Play, Practice, and Arena. The play mode pits you against a similarly skilled player online with one of your constructed decks. I only tried one match of this, and I beat my opponent.
Practice mode allows you to pick one of the classes for your hero and then pick your opponent. When you beat a class / character, you unlock it for your own use. I’ve unlocked all nine. As you play, you also gain experience and can level your heroes. When they level, you unlock additional basic cards. After unlocking all the heroes, you also unlock expert mode practice, but I haven’t tried it yet.
The arena mode is particularly interesting. It’s a sort of draf. First, you pick one of three heroes. After that, you get to choose one of three cards thirty times to build your deck. You then play online with the deck, but after three losses the deck is retired. It’s pretty cool!
I’m having a great time with Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. I expect I’ll have more to say on it in the coming weeks as I keep playing.
F2P and Crafting, Rohan, Blessing of Kings, 3/21/13.
Rohan explains why crafting conflicts with monetization in F2P games.
Hearthstone Gameplay, Rohan, Blessing of Kings, 3/24/13.
Another look at Hearthstone.
The beauty of classic WoW’s Molten Core, Sarah Pine, WoW Insider, 3/19/13.
If you joined late and have ever wondered what the big deal with Molten Core was, Sarah will tell you.
Oondasta in China is full of… tombstones, Adam Holisky, WoW Insider, 3/20/13.
This is my wallpaper at work now.
The quest of a lifetime, Olivia Grace, WoW Insider, 3/21/13.
A very cute marriage proposal.
Star Wars: The Old Republic’s first expansion is BioWare’s hope to win back lapsed players, Griffin McElroy, Polygon, 3/25/13.
I’d give it a look, but we have too much content in WoW now!
Know Your Lore, Tinfoil Hat Edition: Azeroth, Anne Stickney, WoW Insider, 3/24/13.
What’s so special about Azeroth?
The OverAchiever: The game’s 13 vanished titles, Allison Robert, WoW Insider, 3/21/13.
Scarab Lord, Champiuon of the Naaru, Hand of A’dal, Argent Defender, Celestial Defender, Champion of Ulduar, Conqueror of Ulduar, Conqueror of Naxxramas, Death’s Demise, Grand Crusader, The Immortal, The Undying, The Magic Seeker, and Obsidian Slayer. And none of me.
Mantid Archaeology, Cymre, Bubbles of Mischief, 3/22/13.
Check out the sweet gun!
World of Warcraft Patch 5.3 PTR Patch Notes, Adam Holisky, WoW Insider, 3/22/13.
Heroic scenarios, loot specialization, bonus rolls with progressively better bonuses, removal of most resilience, gear scaling in PVP, and new BGs and scenarios.
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft seems like it might be a cash grab at the casual market, but I’m optimistic that it’s going to be fun. I enjoy collectible card games, and I enjoy Warcraft, so what could go wrong? It seems a little odd to me that there will now be two Warcraft card games, but they seem pretty different.
Hearthstone makes me think of the card games inside the Final Fantasy series, Triple Triad in Final Fantasy VIII and Tetra Master from Final Fantasy IX. They weren’t required to completely their games’ story, they were very simple, and they were very fun. I keep thinking of them when I think of Hearthstone, although honestly, that’s probably not a very apt comparison. Triple Triad and Tetra Master existed within other games. Now if Blizzard put Hearthstone into World of Warcraft as an addon, that would be pretty amazing.
You can see some gameplay above courtesy of MMO-Champion. It appears to be similar to many other collectible card games such as Magic: The Gathering. The big differences I see are that there’s only one energy source, your total amount of energy increases automatically without the need for playing lands, and effects are resolved immediately. These seem like good changes to streamline playing. The energy system, I’d say, is better. Resolving effects immediately takes out some of the complexity and strategy that Magic: The Gathering has. This is probably good for Blizzard given that it’s a free-to-play game that’s going to be marketed to a wide variety of people. It’s probably not so good for gamers who appreciate a complex game, but I think the game still looks very enjoyable.
I’ll need to wait to try it to really form an opinion, but right now, I’m looking forward to it. It’s been a while since Blizzard has a created a relatively simple game. Their usual games are high quality (besides some problems with D3), so hopefully they keep it up with Hearthstone.
More information:
Hearthstone – WoW TCG Game Announced, Boubouille, MMO-Champion, 3/22/13
What we know so far about HearthStone: Heroes of Warcraft, Adam Holisky, WoW Insider, 3/22/13
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