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Game Preview: Hearthstone

Posted by Soulskill on from the stay-awhile-and-play-cards dept.

Collectible card games have been a prominent part of nerd gaming culture since the early '90s. Magic: the Gathering forged a compelling genre and dozens of games have followed in its footsteps. But the past two decades have been a time of technology, and Magic is a decidedly low-tech game. Like chess, it's been moved online in only the strictest emulation of real-world play. The game itself hasn't actually evolved to make use of technology. Enter Blizzard. Many of the developers at Blizzard grew up playing Magic and other CCGs, and it seemed natural that they'd want to design one of their own. But Blizzard is video game company; managing cardboard print runs and scheduling tournaments isn't exactly in their wheelhouse. Thus, we get Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, an entirely digital CCG. It's currently in closed beta test, but open beta is supposedly just around the corner. In this video (with transcript) we take a look at how the game is shaping up.

4 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. Slashvertisements at their best... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    This game was boring as heck. Two misses in a row for a company which used to be the best in the industry.

    1. Re:Slashvertisements at their best... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      CCG are boring compared to even simple games on smartphones.

      If you like CCGs, then this is just another one with a little bit of animation and graphics sprinkled on top. It does look better than the several MTG ports to the PC I have seen in the past.

      The game mechanics are simple when compared with MTG. I have heard that this was on purpose to attract a more casual player.

      Another thing is that it is almost Pay2Win. You can grind out points to purchase more random card packs OR you can just pay real money.

    2. Re:Slashvertisements at their best... by cbuskirk · · Score: 4, Informative

      At Blizzcon this year they revealed that 46% of players with a 3 star master rating (Highest at the time) had spend $0 on the game.

  2. hearthstone is *addictive* by dknight · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm a pretty hardcore RTS gamer (StarCraft II) but holy cow HearthStone is so fun that I've mostly abandoned SC2 in favor of racking up time there instead.

    I definitely want the iOS release to hurry up so I can play on my iPad.

    The thing that is surprising is, even with only a handful of emotes for communication, people still find ways to BM you :D But seriously, this is a REALLY REALLY fun game, and is going to make Blizzard some ungodly sum of money.