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