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BlizzCon 2013 in photographs
BlizzCon might be over, but pictures last forever, or at least until something happens to our data center. Don't get any ideas. Hey, where are you going with that tornado?! Enjoy our view of the con! Massively's on the ground in Anaheim during the weekend of November 8th, bringing you all the best news from BlizzCon 2013. Whether you're anticipating World of Warcraft's and Diablo III's next expansions or reveals from Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm, we aim to have it covered!
Hearthstone coming to iOS, Android in 2014, PC/Mac beta launching next month
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is stocking up on card protectors in preparation for taking its deck on the go for ports to iOS and Android devices, Massively reports. A North American open beta for the initially planned PC and Mac versions is also scheduled for next month, but as Blizzard CEO Rob Pardo jokingly reminded us, "in Blizzard-speak, that might be January." Those interested in the game's beta can sign up for consideration right now. Update: For the sake of clarity, this article has been updated to specify that the planned open beta is for the PC and Mac versions of Hearthstone.
Massively's BlizzCon 2013 liveblog: Opening ceremony and WoW presentation
BlizzCon 2013 is now underway, and we're expecting big news from the folks at Blizzard, like more details on the Diablo III Reaper of Souls expansion. There's also the first ever Innkeeper's Invitational for Hearthstone, the white-knuckle gameplay of the StarCraft 2 tournaments, and the Hollywood insanity of the upcoming World of Warcraft movie. Most MMO gamers, however, are anxiously waiting to hear about World of Warcraft's fifth expansion. Is it happening? Whom are we fighting? Where are we going? Are there any new classes and races? If you want to be among the first to know but didn't snag a ticket, real or virtual, then join us in the comments below as we blog about all the juiciest news -- live! And don't forget that the opening ceremonies are being streamed for free!
Hearthstone brain teasers teach you about the game
If you've been keeping up with the official Hearthstone blog, you may be familiar with their puzzle series. They present a few game set-ups and then give you an objective to complete that turn -- usually it's to win the game! Many of the set-ups seem impossible or near-impossible, but that's what makes the puzzles so intriguing. What a great method for teaching players how to approach even seemingly dire situations. So far there have been three Hearthstone puzzle posts: Puzzles and Hearthstone Puzzles and Hearthstone 2 Puzzles and Hearthstone 3 The first post contains two puzzles, and the next two each contain three. The puzzles are ranked in order of difficulty on a scale of mana crystals; 5/5 being the most difficult, 1/5 being the simplest. So far the puzzles have definitely skewed toward the quite difficult, so make sure you bring your A game. Head on over to the official Hearthstone site to test your knowledge of the game with these set-ups, and let us know how you do!
Innkeeper's Invitational player highlights continue
Last week we covered Blizzard's highlight of the first four of the eight participants in this year's inagural Inkeeper's Invitational BlizzCon Hearthstone tournament. This week Blizzard released their mini-interviews with the second four competitors: Day[9], Trump, Artosis, and Kripparrian. As expected, the Q&As cover the same questions as before, and as before, many of the answers are delightful and entertaining. This group of competitors seems lively and fun, and I'm sure they are all looking forward to their chance to square off against each other at BlizzCon next week. Oh my goodness, BlizzCon is next week! For those Hearthstone devotees among our reader base, these interviews are likely to be interesting and perhaps even educational, as each of the four competitors discusses their five must-have Arena card picks and why, as well as their most feared and respected opponents. We look forward to watching the tournament as it unfolds and to see who takes first prize!
Want to play Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft before its official release? We have 500 beta keys to give away!
If you've checked out our preview of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft (and you better have, or I'm going to be very disappointed in you), you're probably frantically searching for how you can obtain an early access beta key. Fear not, dear reader, because instead of signing up on the Blizzard website and waiting for your name to be drawn (whenever that might be), you can score your very own invitation to the world of Hearthstone in our beta key giveaway! We have a whopping 500 keys to share with you, and the entry period ends on Friday, November 1 at 11:59PM ET. Winners will be drawn at random and keys will be distributed the week following the end of the giveaway. Be sure to use a valid email address, or you won't be able to receive your key! Click here to tweet the giveaway to your friends -- and follow @TUAW while you're at it -- because Hearthstone is best played with a pal! Here are the rules for the giveaway: To enter, fill out the form below completely and click or tap the Submit button. The entry must be made before November 1, 2013 11:59PM Eastern Daylight Time. You may enter only once. 500 winners will be selected and each will receive a beta key for Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. Click Here for complete Official Rules. Entries are closed, we will be notifying the winners via email. Thanks for participating!
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft Preview: Welcome to your new addiction
When it comes to creating addictive gaming experiences, Blizzard -- the diabolical geniuses behind the most popular MMO on the planet, World of Warcraft, among other titles -- are certainly masters. Its latest digital drug, which also happens to carry the Warcraft brand, is a virtual strategy card game called Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, and it's currently in closed beta testing. But despite not being officially "finished," the game is an utter treat to play, and it just might be your new addiction. Collectable card games are seldom easy to understand, with hundreds of different cards, each with their own powers, offensive and defensive effects, etc., but Hearthstone makes the system so easy to grasp that it's impossible to get lost. The simplicity starts with the main battle screen, which features just the decks of both players, a central area where your cards face off and an image of each player's "hero" character. It's instantly accessible, even if you've never touched a card game in your life. Each of the nine hero characters specialize in a specific play style, be it the Warrior's reliance on weapons or the Hunter's ability to command beasts and fight from a distance. Once you've given each class a try in the tutorial mode, you'll likely have a favorite that you can begin to focus on. Each card costs a specific amount of mana to be played, and your mana bar goes up with each successive turn. You draw a single card (or more, if you play a card that prompts you to draw again) at the beginning of each round. This means that battles start out tamely, but quickly become massive shows of force on both sides. In the first, second or third rounds, you may only play one card, but by the 10th round, you can drop several at once. This battle style gives even novice players a chance to slowly wade into each skirmish without feeling immediately outmatched. Of course, as easy as it is for newbies to feel comfortable, besting your opponent often takes a great deal of strategy. Playing specific cards at the right time is crucial, and as with all card games of this type, good players can make a little luck go a long way. If you win -- which is accomplished by taking down the opposing player's hero -- it's extremely gratifying, but if you lose, you'll likely know exactly where you went wrong. Hearthstone is free to play, but just like a physical card game, it makes its money by selling booster packs. You are given the base set of cards for free when you start the game for the first time and, to be fair, you could conceivably play the game forever with just these cards, but temptation will soon get the better of you. When it does, you'll find yourself buying booster packs containing new and exciting cards, with the (small) chance to score super rare, game-changing cards that can turn the tide of a battle. Again, buying cards is entirely optional, and I personally played the game for weeks without ever dropping a single cent. Eventually though, your curiosity will likely get the better of you and you'll want to further customize your deck with additional cards. The good news is that the card packs aren't very expensive, and you are guaranteed to score at least one mildly rare card in each pack. Right now you can play Hearthstone on OS X and Windows, but the company has confirmed that an iPad version is on the way as well, which spells bad news for tablet owners with weak wills and fat bank accounts. If you get a chance to play it (and if you're a TUAW fan, you have a really good chance right now), don't pass it up.
Hearthstone highlights Innkeeper's Invitational players
The Innkeeper's Invitational will be BlizzCon's inagural Hearthstone tournament, featuring eight Hearthstone players hand-picked by Blizzard. For those who may not be familiar with the competitors, Blizzard is releasing a set of small interviews to be published in two parts profiling each of the players taking a shot at the tournament title. The first four can be found here and are, as the header image implies, Noxious, Hafu, Husky, and Reckful. I really enjoyed reading these quick get-to-know-you style Q&As. Each player is given the same set of questions to answer and their responses are pretty interesting, especially their individual takes on who their most feared opponents are. In fact -- interestingly enough -- the most commonly mentioned "most feared an hated" were the four players who will be featured in the second interview: Trump, Kripparian, Day[9], and Artosis. No love/hate for each other, guys? Check out the interviews for more information from each of these competitors, including their own personal favorite Arena picks as well as why their personal tournament shield logos are what they are. The answers are not entirely what you might expect!
Beginner's guide to card picks in Hearthstone Arena
If, like me, you're relatively new to the CCG world, Hearthstone's Arena can be both a fun and a frustrating experience. The key to the Arena is not just how you play, but how you pick your cards, how you build your deck. There are important decisions to be made on card synergy, strategies, mana costs and curves, and there's almost no information in the actual game to help guide the novice player. But Reddit user pulandit has posted an incredibly helpful guide to picking cards in Hearthstone's arena. He's created a chart of every card in the game, grouped by neutrals, and then the ones specific to each hero, using a font classification to rank them from the most useful to the least. If you take a glance at the image to the right, which I've pulled from his guide, you can see that the Azure Drake is a great choice, the Argent Commander less so, the Archmage is fair, while the Arcane Golem and Argent Squire are considered below par or situational, and the Angry Chicken is not recommended. While you may not agree with everything in the guide, it's not for advanced players, but for struggling noobs like me. But even so, check it out, you might just learn something!
Razer signs first pro Hearthstone player
It seems a little bit like jumping the gun, considering the game hasn't even officially made it out of closed beta yet, but the world's first professional Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft player has been signed by that mecca of elite gaming: Razer. That player is Jeffrey "Trump" Shih, whose TwitchTV channel can be found under the moniker TrumpSC. According to the FAQ on his channel, he's been playing card games at a high level since 2000, and started with the Invasion block in Magic: The Gathering. In Razer's official announcement of the partnership, they stress that Shih is well-known for keeping an informative and engaging Twitch stream, explaining his choices as he's making them and offering commentary on the match at hand. Shih will be working with Razer to offer competitions and giveaways on his live stream, and will be competing in the Innkeeper's Invitational at BlizzCon next month. Congratulations are in order for Mr. Shih; and his signing may very well help open the professional doors for other avid and skilled Hearthstone players.
Innkeeper's Invitational announced for BlizzCon
For many BlizzCon attendees, one of the big draws is the chance to see some of the top players from Blizzard's franchises square off in matches and tournaments. We've come to expect competitions in WoW PvP and Starcraft in particular, and this year there will be another game added to the mix: Hearthstone. Blizzard has invited eight of the most dedicated Hearthstone players to compete live in a small tournament at BlizzCon this year called the Innkeeper's Invitational. Each player will bring three decks -- they must all be different classes -- and compete against each other in a series of matches. If your deck loses, it's out for good, and that player has to select a different deck. Once all three decks have been eliminated, that player is out of the competition and resigned to watching from the sidelines. If you're interested in seeing how hardcore card game players go about their games, this is a great opportunity to do so! And it might give us all some ideas for how to modify our own Hearthstone decks in the future. If you won't be attending BlizzCon you can tune in using a Virtual Ticket or check out the matches on the World of Warcraft Twitch channel.
Brace Yourselves: Hearthstone opt-ins are coming
We all know that the Hearthstone beta wipe is just around the proverbial corner, but as of this forum post by Zeriyah, we now know a little bit more about why. In addition to the expected reasons such as rebalancing cards and heroes, it turns out that Hearthstone is also being migrated to more robust hardware that can handle a larger player pool. Yes, one of the reasons you may have not yet received a beta invite is because the servers couldn't handle it. All that should change post-migration, and there should be more closed beta invites on the way. Thus, as Zeriyah said: brace yourselves! The opt-ins are coming.
Hearthstone account wipe is coming
In an update posted today on the Hearthstone website, Zeriyah has let it be known that soon all Hearthstone players' accounts will be cleared an reset. This goes for all Hearthstone players, in both the Americas and Europe. Before you ask, the wipe does mean a complete wipe. All the cards you have unlocked, or bought, or earned, all the rankings you have achieved, the levels of your heroes -- everything will be reset. This does mean that you will have to go through the tutorial again, once you log into Hearthstone after the wipe. The wipe is set to correspond with the release of a major patch to Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. What that patch may entail is currently unknown, but I think it's safe to assume it will contain some rebalancing of certain known, imbalanced cards. Beyond that, it's anybody's guess. If you have purchased cards in the Hearthstone beta, or entered the arena, you will be reimbursed your purchase with in-game gold. Each pack is worth 100 gold, and each arena entry is worth 150 gold. Thus, if you bought the two-pack option for $2.99, you will receive 200 gold for that purchase, and if you bought, say, three arena entries, you will receive 450 gold for those entries. If you earned the Gelbin Mekkatorque legendary, you will receive him again after clearing the tutorials. There's something I'm forgetting. What is it? Oh, yes. Any cards or rankings you earn after the closed beta wipe, you get to keep. Forever. Into the actual game's release. Don't believe me? Check out the official post for more information!
Requiem for the Defias Ringleader
If you've been playing a lot of competitive Hearthstone, you might have a few opinions about some of the decks. One of those decks might be the rogue deck, and you wouldn't be wrong for thinking it's at least a tad overpowered. The Hearthstone podcast Turn2 recently interviewed Hearthstone developer Eric Dodds, and he confirms that the team feels that the rogue deck is incredibly strong right now. In particular, the Defias Ringleader card is a noted culprit. If you play the Defias Ringleader in combination with another card in your deck, the Ringleader summons another minion: the Defias Bandit. Seeing as the Defias Ringleader costs only two mana to play, and playing it in conjunction with "The Coin" counts as a combo, it is possible to get both the Ringleader and its Bandit minion on your first turn of play, if you happen to be going second. This is a devastating opener and has been singled out as one of the reasons the rogue deck needs to be reined in. On the other end of the scale, Dodds also stated that the team recognizes that priests and warriors feel a little underpowered at the moment, and they are looking into ways to improve their performance in the game. Most of it seems to come down to finding the right balance in numbers, which will hopefully be a relatively easy fix. You can listen to the entire interview on Turn2, and save a moment of silence for the Defias Ringleader whenever the updated Hearthstone build is released.
Blizzcon virtual tickets on sale
Don't fret if you missed out on tickets for Blizzcon 2013, because it's the future(!) and you can still attend virtually. A virtual ticket, going for $40, grants access to streams of all the panels and events taking place at Anaheim on November 8 and 9, meaning you can watch every Diablo, Warcraft, and StarCraft announcement as they're made. You can watch replays of the streams too, just in case two days straight of convention footage isn't your cup of grog. When you finally make the virtual trek home, you'll be able to happily swing your virtual swag bag around, full of in-game goodies for StarCraft 2, World of Warcraft, Diablo 3, and Hearthstone.
Apocoplay unveils new digital CCG, Alteil: Horizons
Seems like everyone's getting into the digital card game business, with Blizzard's Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft and Cryptozoic's HEX leading a pack of big-budget, flashy releases due sooner rather than later. As of today, there's one more contender in the ring. Boston-based indie startup Apocoplay has just launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund Alteil: Horizons, a digital collectible card game that relies on "turn-based RPG-style tactics" and the introduction of a day and night cycle that changes the behavior of specific cards. Apocoplay is reaching out to notable artists for card designs; according to the studio, interest has been "secured" from the likes of Ctrl+Alt+Del's Tim Buckley and Saturday Morning Breakfast's Zach Weinersmith, along with artists who have worked on things like Pacific Rim and The Legend of Zelda. Here's head producer Sean Molyneaux (no relation to Peter Molyneux) on the announcement: I've been in this industry long enough to see collectible card games grow from a niche interest here in the US to a hugely popular mainstream genre. Fast growth like this means that new CCGs have to be very high-quality to get attention, and with the caliber of artists we've signed and our focus on deeper, tactical gameplay, Horizons can be the best out there. Apocoplay is seeking $100,000 for Alteil: Horizons' development and is offering decks and other bonuses to funders. [Source: Apocoplay press release]
Mage deck mayhem in Hearthstone
Fair warning to all: I am not an experienced card game player. I did pick up Magic: the Gathering from time to time in grade school and college, but the sheer amount of cards plus the expense of purchasing booster packs and such always put me off in the end. This is one of the things that's been a relief to me when it comes to Hearthstone -- I find deck sizes much more manageable and the game sorts my cards for me so I don't get overwhelmed with choice. Plus I have non-monetary options to more cards if I want. Total money I've spent on Hearthstone so far? $2.99, baby. Aw yeah. As a result I don't have any of the best cards for my deck. I'm okay with that! This article has been written in the spirit of the complete noob to mostly beginner player, because I get the impression that there are a good number of other folks like myself, who are interested in Hearthstone but don't have much of a background in card games. If you're an advanced card-game player you probably aren't going to find much in what's going on here, and that's okay! However, if you're a hesitant beginner, like myself, then please read on!
Breakfast Topic: What's your favorite Hearthstone class?
With the Hearthstone beta in full swing, you've probably at least seen some info about the classes on offer, even if you aren't in the beta yourself. And, while classes in this Warcraft-themed card game bear a lot of resemblance to their World of Warcraft counterparts, the drastically different gameplay means that they can't be quite the same thing. So today we're wondering what your favorite Hearthstone class is. A lot of the WoW Insider team is playing their favored WoW class in Hearthstone, but the transition from MMO class to CCG class won't appeal to every gamer. Tell us, readers: what Hearthstone class do you favor? And is it the same as your main in World of Warcraft?
Blizzard ending World of Warcraft trading card game
Blizzard Entertainment has announced that the World of Warcraft trading card game's recently released Timewalkers: Reign of Fire expansion will be the final new set brought to the series. Timewalkers has the distinction of including every previously released rare loot card, but will mark the end of new production for the World of Warcraft TCG. Blizzard thanked its players in the announcement, noting: You made ripping open booster packs, discovering the wonders they held, and then building decks and taking them into battle a truly awesome experience. Fans of card games and Blizzard can take solace in the fact that Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, is currently cruising through closed beta and should launch later this year.
What we love and what we hate about the Hearthstone beta
It's no secret that your friendly neighborhood WoW Insider writers have been playing Hearthstone lately -- and, for the most part, enjoying it. Like all of our favorite games, it's the sort of game you can enjoy playing so much that you lose track of time... sometimes dangerously. (And the addictive, clicky, "one more fight" nature of the game is definitely something we both love and hate about Hearthstone's gameplay.) But despite our enthusiasm, the game is definitely in beta -- which is to say it's not without its flaws. So Team WoW Insider got together to discuss what we liked most and what we liked least in the Hearthstone beta so far, and after a lot of excited chatter that primarily consisted of babbling about our favorite cards (Flamestrike with +spell power minions, Equality with Consecration, anything with taunt), we had a pretty good discussion about Hearthstone's mechanics. So without further ado, read on for our greatest likes and dislikes about the world of Hearthstone.
