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First impressions of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft
Yesterday at PAX East 2013, Blizzard unveiled their first free-to-play game, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. The upcoming title is a digital, collectible card game akin to Magic: The Gathering Online, but designed to be easy to learn and accessible to a larger audience. The game is currently being demonstrated on the showroom floor at PAX, and I was able to play it a couple of times. When starting my first game, I expected to find Hearthstone confusing because I've never played Magic: The Gathering or any other strategy card game (e.g. Pokémon TCG, Yu-Gi-Oh!) before. I am familiar with some of the terminology of MTG, having spent most of my life around hardcore players, but I don't really know the rules or how the game is played. This unfamiliarity didn't seem to get in the way of Hearthstone, though. Within two turns I understood my resource system, and how to play and use cards. By the fifth turn I felt like I understood all the basic mechanics of combat. Then, by the time my seventh turn came around, I was cursing paladins for being overpowered and itching to play another game.
Blizzard reveals Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, coming to iPad and PC
Blizzard Entertainment has revealed a brand-new game coming to the iPad and PC at PAX East this weekend, and all I can say is that it's about time. Blizzard is by far my favorite game developer, and I've been disappointed that as great as their games are, the company has never once made a solid entry into the iOS space: they've released an app to support World of Warcraft, but not once a real game meant for iOS directly. Until now. Hearthstone is a collectible card game based on various Warcraft characters and abilities, and as you can see in the screenshot above, it looks pretty darn gorgeous. Blizzard already has a very popular paper CCG, but this seems different even from that game, though you still collect cards and use them in play to cast spells, summon characters and use weapons all brought directly from the Warcraft universe. The game will be free to play, with extra card packs and cards available via in-app purchase. Blizzard says the game is coming first in a beta for PC and Mac later on this year, but the iPad version is what we'll really be waiting for. It's long past time that this legendary game developer made a mark on the iOS platform, and I have an inkling that if this game is as successful as you might expect, we'll see some more iOS development from Blizzard in the future. First things first, though -- hopefully we'll get our hands on Hearthstone soon.
Blizzard registers Project Blackstone domain, no clue what it is
An interesting little bit of domain activity has been detected from Blizzard the last few days. Recently they have registered the projectblackstone.com domain -- which sounds like a great name for a new game. They've also registered warcraftbattles.com and heroesofwarcraft.com. While it's a bit much to say anything definitive about domain registering activity, it does raise an eyebrow. We know that there is a large team, filled with some amazing people, working hard on Titan. Could Project Blackstone be Titan? Speculation is interesting here; although we really have no idea. What we do know is that we'll be keeping a close eye out on these domains, and you should too... Something might pop up suddenly one day that we all will want to know a whole lot more about. We've reached out to Blizzard to see if they have any comment on these domains, but we're not expecting anything noteworthy.
