Hearthstone: State of the Beta
Blizzard Community Manager Zeriyah has been doing some serious blogging lately, writing up the huge reveal of the Forge system, which allows players to create pre-made decks and battle others for keys and glory, and now she's returned to fill us all in on the big, burning question that's got us shuffling our decks at night. What's going on with the beta?
As ever, Zeriyah's full post is after the break in all its glory, but I've pulled out some key points here for your perusal. First up, Zeriyah reassures the world that Blizzard aren't planning to break their promise to the community: there will be a beta before summer is done. In fact she documents at great length how the development team are pulling out all the stops to fix bugs and eat doughnuts at the greatest possible speed.
While she also clarifies that the US beta will be the first to roll out, Zeriyah informs us that betas for other regions will appear shortly thereafter with fully localized versions of the game. So, is smart money still on a Gamescom beta announcement? I'm not so sure... Hit the break for Zeriyah's full post.
Here's a quick snapshot of some important scientifically derived metrics from the last week alone: A lot of our discussion so far has been centered on the North American beta, so we just wanted to mention to players in Europe, Korea, and Taiwan: your feedback on the game is equally important to us! We are thus planning a dedicated beta in these regions with fully localized builds. These will follow the start of the North American beta test as closely as possible and we're looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
We've mentioned previously that you'll be able to spend real money in the beta to purchase card packs and Arena entry. Now, it is a beta, so we don't expect everything to be in tip-top shape quite yet. With that in mind, we previously noted that as a thank-you for helping us test the in-game store, we'd be offering a special token of appreciation to beta testers who make a real-money in-game purchase during the beta test. We're pleased to reveal that that gift will be a golden version of Gelbin Mekkatorque, which will be available throughout the closed and open beta tests. When you purchase card packs or an Arena ticket in any phase of the beta test, you will be granted the golden Gelbin Mekkatorque; he won't be available through crafting or getting a lucky hit inside a card pack. Once the game has released, you can still craft a regular Mekkatorque if you save up enough arcane dust.
One last point on the beta test: while we're going to kick it off with a relatively small number of invites, we're going to gradually roll in more and more players over time. If you don't get in initially, don't worry too much, as new players will be brought in frequently. In fact, everyone who's interested in playing Hearthstone during the beta period will be able to get in when we transition to an open beta test a bit later in the testing cycle. All you'll need to do is create a Battle.net account if you don't already have one, and download the client, and you'll be set to go! No invitation necessary! Although our top priority is getting the beta out for Windows and Mac, we haven't taken our sights off the iPad. In fact, the team hit an awesome milestone with our iPad development not too long ago with our first end-to-end test of cross-platform play. One of our team members jumped into the Hearthstone App on his iPad, saw his Battle.net buddy who happened to be playing on the PC, chatted with him and then went head-to-head in a vicious cross-platform duel. For the record: iPad 1: PC 0.
As we're getting closer to the beta launch, one thing we want to reiterate is that Hearthstone started out as an experiment for a different approach to game development at Blizzard. While the game has grown a lot since then, it's important to us that we continue to test out new ideas as the game makes its way towards release. That means working with our community team to try a bunch of different approaches for blog posts, news updates, and content we'd like to share with you all. Some of these updates may provide just the information you wanted. If so, awesome . . . tell us about it.
Others may not hit the mark or speak to what interests you most. Tell us about that too. You definitely have a part to play as we move into the final phases of Hearthstone development, and we're probably going to have some misses along the way, so share your thoughts and help us make Hearthstone awesome!
We're listening!
A revamp of the Arena, including a new rewards system
Lots of quest tuning, particularly for new players
UI updates to make it clear what the next basic card you're destined to unlock will be
Bugs marked "fixed": 187
Golden cards added to the build: 30
Boxes of donuts eaten: 2