http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21900869 Complete with Micro-transactions! Oh well, they can't make a PC version as bad as Planewalkers surely.... Official Site ... http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/
My first thoughts were the same as mentioned at the end of the article: they already have a trading card game, will this use the same cards? It's hard not to be cynical and assume it won't.
I very much doubt it will use the same cards. LCGs and CCGs these days are just a license to print money and there are so many of them. I go to a Board Game group on a Saturday and they also host 'card wars' - the amount of people there playing Magic and the like shows that there is market for it. You are right to be cynical!
As a previous player of WoW and owner of a few other Blizzard games, I got an invite via an email - this was a long time ago now though. Perhaps you can still register on the Heathstone web site? There's a link in the top two posts. After an hour or so of playing it, it is pretty average. I think I would rather play it with physical cards, but at least this is good if you can't find an opponent. Some of the card effects are quite groovy, but nothing that I haven't seen in a lot of other battle card games.
I just signed up to the beta on the battle.net website a few months ago, and also entered one of the competitions that were running on facebook/twitter/hearthstone blog and got emailed a code on the 25th. It seems a little broken at the moment (unless that's just my internet connection) where it will hang on the start screen or between matches.
I haven't experienced it hanging yet. From an implementation point of view I found it pretty slick but unfortunately also pretty dull. I play quite a lot of card games (Sentinels of the Multiverse, Legendary, Thunderstone Advance, Pathfinder, Race for the Galaxy etc) and I think I prefer playing with physical cards - even playing solo.
Currently it looks like people with HS access are more likely to get a key sent to them. So if anyone does get a spare please consider me.
I got through 4 of the tutorial matches before it froze on me. A quick check of the forums shows it seems to be a known problem. As to the game itself, I think the fact you only get dealt 2 cards at the start (unless this is only for the tutorials) limits how much choice you have in strategy (basically seems to be wait long enough to generate mana to summon your monster/spell decide whether to attack opponents monster or life points directly)
I expect that this will vary per character as they develop the game. Otherwise, as you said there's not much of a choice about what to do. I would at least like to see some combo effects where cards have different effects on other cards, or perhaps cards that generate mana. At the moment it is pretty obvious what cards to play. A agree though, the tutorial may not be indicative of actual gameplay!
Upon playing the beta, the game either really sucks or im either rather unskilled brb my turn, brb ai has 5 turns -.0
I played it briefly but didn't find it all that special. I play a lot of board and card games and this one just didn't really have anything special to make it stand out. It seems to me more of a design thrown up around a marketing idea rather than a game design born of years of development.
I play it during queue times on league the game is good for quick bursts games take less than 10mins and its free also helps.
I've played it occasionally (when I've remembered about it). It's okay, found it slightly frustrating that you need to beat the characters in training sessions before you're allowed to play as that character type though.
