http://eu.battle.net/hearthstone/en/ It's a Warcraft-themed online card game by Blizzard that, unfortunately, is still in closed beta. However, not for long, open beta should (hopefully) be starting sometime in December, according to Blizzard, but there is no exact date yet. Also, this being Blizzard, who really knows... Please note that this is NOT an online version of the WoW TCG, it's a standalone game that follows the free to play model. It plays a lot like a much simplefied version of MtG, meaning that you summon creatures onto the playing field and cast spells for various effects. The most notable difference being that creatures can attack each other directly and sustain damage. Timing rules are also much simplified, you can basically only cast spells during your own turn. But the most important difference is not having to rely on luck for mana. Each round, both players gain one additional mana crystal with which they cast spells. Mana crystals refresh each turn. Players can play ranked or unranked matches to earn card packs and also do daily quests while playing. For example "Play 20 creatures with power greater than 5" or "Deal 100 damage to enemy heroes". These daily quests earn you gold for the most interesting feature of Hearthstone: Arena Mode. Which is basically a draft mode that you have to pay to enter (either with in-game gold or real money) and offers various rewards. Finally, it's also possible to craft specific cards by disenchanting unwanted cards. To my great, great regret, I am not in the beta myself, but I have been following this game on youtube and various sites for a while now and it looks really, really cool. I can't ****ing wait for the open beta to commence, I'm sooo looking forward to playing this. By the way, if anyone is already playing this and has a spare beta key that they don't need, it would be so awesome if they could send that my way (just PM me). I would really appreciate it a lot and it would make you a truly awesome person, thanks a lot!
I'm the current eu beta. No spare keys however, only got lucky and signed up. I'll answer any questions I can however.
I'm also in the beta. This pretty much sums up my opinion of the game, though: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/11/25/gold-gambling-and-getting-the-most-out-of-hearthstone/ It's a fun CCG, but the best part (especially for long-term play) is just too expensive.
I played 2-3 hours to unlock stuff, then logged out and haven't logged back in since. That's how it is for us carebears.
Currently not very much to do (only tutorial or at play), but the pvp is very light - and doesn't differ much from playing against the ai (apart from players creating more clever decks). I myself seldom play pvp in other games, but here it's pretty comfortable. Also, it's a very slow build for free players - very much P2W.
No kidding. Just started playing (prompted by the JayIsGames review), and currently have 7 of the classes up to level 10 and finished the first part of the expansion (normal mode). Good news is that nearly everything is available to free players (except a couple silly cards and special card-backs). But earning gold is sooooo slow. One pack of cards costs 100 gold (5 cards, one rare or better), and the expansion has five parts, costing 700 gold each to unlock (first part is free for the next couple weeks). With most daily quests worth 40 gold each, that means it takes 70 days to unlock the full expansion; that's 10 weeks without opening any card packs. You also get 10 gold for every 3 MP wins (max 100 gold/day), but I still hate MP. My current plan is 6 MP wins a day (which should also clear the daily quests) and only open one pack a week. (In addition to grinding out 900 gold in CH this week.) PS. Is there any way to speed up the animation in Hearthstone? I frequently have minions start their attack animation after I click End Turn.
I don't think you can speed them up. Just googled it and 2 pages from top 4 results suggest having graphics on "high" to make animations end a little faster.
http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/77052-naxafari-midrange-hunter-legend-70-win-rate here is an example of a deck you could easily make within your first week of playing and not spending a penny that could easily get you to legend rank only 1 legendary in this deck but it is the free one from naxx and is very easy to get. on a side note i would suggest not doing the 40g quests and rerolling them to get 60/100 quests (the cross in the top corner rerolls if you didnt know) i only do the 40 gold quests when i have 2+ of them because you can only reroll once a day and if you get bored of playing for a while still pick up and do your daily quest it doesnt take long and when you come back to playing again you'll have a couple thousand gold to play with. also get good at arena and you will have all the cards you need in no time, if you can get atleast 3 wins every time i would suggest doing it over opening packs because anything over 3 wins is profit 7 wins pays for your entire entry and 12 wins is 2 packs and lots of gold.
Well, that didn't take long... Reached rank 20 yesterday and discovered that that's when you start getting matched against experienced players instead of newbies (this shouldn't have surprised me given how the ranking system works). After getting trounced a few times last night, I decided to try playing during off peak hours and got up early this morning and played for an hour. I found one opponent I could beat, one who conceded before the draw, and the rest thrashed me. "6 MP victories a day" just isn't going to be possible. How am I supposed to be able to get those specific 5 rares and 9 commons from random packs after playing only a week? After five days I own 5 rare cards total (though I have enough cash to buy 3 more packs). I rerolled the last two daily quests offered because I didn't like the classes required, but I have yet to be offered any >40 gold quest. Hahahahahaha.... I'm really, really bad against human opponents. I've been playing CH for over a year without reaching 1200 ELO (though I stopped trying a couple months ago). So getting a 70% win rate in a purely skill based tournament is just not going to happen. I think I'm about done with this game. I'm going to spend the cash I've been saving and try the difficult solo content (I play best against idiots with predictable decks). If that improves my collection enough, I may try to get 3 MP victories every three days (to maximize quest efficiency), but I've given up any hope of unlocking the rest of the expansion.
