Hearthstone, finally!

I finally managed to get into the Hearthstone beta.  I've been in for about a month and could have been in longed IF I HAD CHECKED MY TABS IN GMAIL!  Ugh.  Apparently this was a promotion, according to Gmail.  At least that is what it decided to file it as.  LAME!

I haven't had a lot of time to play it because I have been working a lot of overtime.  SOOOOOO... I gave it as much time as I could.  Unfortunately, there was an impending wipe (which just happened) and none of the progress I had was saved.  No big deal, it's beta.  I got the general idea behind gameplay and got to play around with some deck building.  Generally, I'm not great at this stuff.  I have an idea and concept, but the RNG always fucks me.  Always.  Over the first month before the wipe I was able to get a grasp on what Blizzard is trying to do... and I really like it.  The look, the feel, the flow.  It's great.  It is a lot of fun.  I feel like there is a lot more they can do with it and a lot more that can be added, especially if they pull from the TCG.  I've got an absurd amount of TCG material (okay, well maybe not absurb... but a lot) and it's excellent.

The way that the game plays is really great.  The ease at which you can get a match or your ability to create a deck and go directly to different difficulty levels of practice mode to try it out before hitting a game.  OH MAN!  It's a breeze.  The original UI was kind of lacking, but they have cleaned it up pretty well.  Going from one screen to another is fairly seamless and the entire design of the game is very basic.  Yes, basic.  You know, Blizzard's version.  That means that it is stripped down to essential working parts, but they are all very stylized.

The look of the game isn't anything super amazing.  Yes, there are some cards that have sweet animations.  Yes, the game doesn't look like dog shit.  This however is not a game that needs striking visuals to pull it off.  The menus look fine and at 1920x1080 I have no complaints about how it looks or performance.  I was actually kind of shocked that my machine didn't chug a little more, especially based on early reports of laggy interface on nicer machines.  The feel, like I said, is very stylized.  You can tell you are playing a Warcraft game from the moment you start it up.  It does a great job borrowing from the cards in TCG, as well as adding it's own flair with a lot of cool cards.  The flavor text is still there and it is still a lot of fun.

The game, obviously, has a lot of variation.  You are going to be going up against other players with different decks as well as RNG.  I had a lot of success with a low-drop Mage deck prior to the wipe.  That same concept is not working after the wipe.  I did rather poorly with a crappy Hunter beast buffing deck, but have found that it has been a lot better in practice than before.  My next goal is to go for a Shaman Murloc deck and be a low-drop dickhead and swarm people to death.  It's gonna happen.  I'm still trying to figure out AOE and board control against some classes, so I've still got some work to do.

The game will be "pay-to-win".  You can buy packs of cards and then fill your class and neutral needs with them.  Your extra cards can be "disenchanted" and you can use that dust to either create new cards of your choice or to make your current cards "gold".  Gold cards are basically foiled versions of the original with a cool animation, like I mentioned above.  While you can buy more and more cards,
you can't buy the dust.  That being said, you can open packs to get gold cards AND you can disenchant those cards, too (they give more dust, too).  The more you invest the better your odds at being successful will be.  This is with anything like this, though.  It happens.  The game is fun even without a huge investment.  I spent 3 bucks to get two packs and ended up getting several packs for completing quests and then a few more by doing MORE quests.  Sure, the gold didn't come super quick, but the more I played the more I got.

Overall, the game is very fun.  It is something that I hope my friends pick up and something that I hope I get to play with them.  I haven't had a chance to test the features of playing with your buds, because I don't have any buds who have this game.  Hopefully I will see a couple of people trickle in soon.  Until then, I've gotta keep working on my deckbuilding and finish unlocking all of the basic cards for each class.