Beta Key Giveaway
We're going to be giving away fifty Hearthstone Beta Keys. Read through our panel recap below and let us know in the comments what part you loved the most! We will randomly decide the winners based on people who have put in a legitimate effort into their comment. If you've got a one word reply or a meaningless sentence, your post is not eligible.
Winners will be drawn on Sunday at 1 PM EST. Winners will be notified via private message on HearthPwn and will be given 48 hours to respond before their prize is forfeited. Reminders will be posted on Facebook and Twitter!
Fireside Chat - BlizzCon Panel
Presented by Lead Designer Eric Dodds and Technical Designer Ben Brode!
Originally posted by BlizzardDevelopment Team
- The Hearthstone development team is the smallest team at Blizzard!
- The smaller team has helped them pursue their dreams for Hearthstone and allowed them to focus on the important things.
- Everyone on the team, and more importantly, Blizzard, has always loved card games.
Goals for Hearthstone
- Hearthstone is a game for everyone. A game for everyone has to be accessible.
- Although they kept things simple, it still has plenty of depth. No one likes a game you're done playing after a week.
- Keep the game physical. Make it feel like the players are actually holding and playing their cards.
- Accomplished through animations!
- It was important to keep the game flavorful.
- As Hearthstone is based on Warcraft, and more importantly, World of Warcraft, the team aimed to keep that Warcraft feel, but adding some more silliness to it.
- The gameplay had to be fast paced.
- Games that will be played on mobile need to be finished quicker for those on the go.
- Having mana crystals as a resource you gained per turn kept the speed up because you aren't waiting for resource cards each turn.
- The game had to be fun.
- Getting rid of things like resource destruction and milling really helped keep people from feeling like they were doomed.
Making the Game
- There was a lot of iteration and prototyping with Hearthstone.
- One of the physical prototypes hey tried as to cut text out of the cards. Cards were created with only art and attack/health values and they found they could play it well. This is why you only see portraits on the battlefield.
- Hearthstone was put onto a web interface after their physical testing. Much was learned about designing the interface here.
- Combat Tricks! It's a trap! If you attacked your opponent and you had a combat trick up, it would allow you to play a card on your opponents turn to mess a round with their attack.
- They found out when they removed Combat Tricks, it was actually a lot more fun and it increased the pace as well.
- The interface moved onto being more comical, and then they thought "hey, what if this game was played in a tavern?".
- The next version of the gameboard involved setting the player inside of a virtual gameboard on the table in a tavern.
- Being a virtual card game, it let the developers do stuff that would be very hard, or impossible to accomplish in the real world.
- Examples include Thoughtsteal, Nozdorumu, and King Mukla.
- There were also plenty of cards that did not work out though as well.
- Devouring Ooze: Battlecry: Gain +1/+1 for each game you've lost in a row.
- Auto-Pecker 4000: Deal 1 damage to any player who mouses-over this minion.
- Worldflipper X-50: Flip your opponent's screen upside down.
- Although they wanted to keep the game feeling physical, having a pile of cards on your screen to form your decks was frustrating.
- This lead to the current version of the Deck Builder!
- A lot of the developers really love draft mode. They knew something had to be done for Hearthstone.
- In a normal draft, you buy in with a set number of packs, and pass packs around a circle of friends and each pick one card out of each pack until all the cards are gone.
- Normal drafing wouldn't work with Hearthstone though. What if people didn't have enough friends to play draft, or their friends went offline?
- Asynchronous drafting was created to fix this!
Making a Card
- What makes a card awesome in Hearthstone?
- Cards must be easy to understand. You should be able to look at a card that you just got out of a pack and can think about how you'd be able to integrate it into your deck.
- The original version of Whirlwind was too complicated and required too much thought to process the card.
The Beta Test
- Over one million beta invites have been sent out so far!
Future Patches
- Some really amazing stuff coming up.
- Card changes!
- Mind Control cost is being increased to 10.
- Starving Buzzard health is being decreased to 1.
- Unleash the Hounds is going to be changed, but they aren't sure yet.
- Ranked playmode changes!
- There are going to 25 new ranks in ranked playmode.
- Each month, all players restart at Rank 25: “Angry Chicken”
- Players will be matched against players of similar rank.
- Win a game, acquire a star!
- Acquire enough stars and you’ll rank up!
- Each rank has its own icon and medal.
- Win streaks may give additional stars.
- At higher ranks, you'll lose a star if you lose a game.
- Each rank will have 5 star levels.
- Ranks will reset every month at the start of the next season.
- At the end of each season, if you participate in that season, you will be given new artwork for your card backs!
- The Arena changes!
- Three new keys being added for a total of 12 possible wins!
- Molten Key
- Frostborn Key
- Lightforged Key
- If you go past 9 wins, there will be even better rewards!
The Future of Hearthstone
- Going Mobile!
- There is work on the Android version of Hearthstone. No time frame currently, but likely the second half of 2014.
- iPhone will be getting its own version of Hearthstone in addition to the iPad.
- No matter where you play Hearthstone, you will always have access to the same cards and the same opponents.
- Expansions!
- New cards, new features!
- Reconnecting. The developers are working on a way to let you reconnect to games in progress after you've crashed or disconnected.
Hearthstone at BlizzCon – Fireside Chat Panel Highlights
Originally posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)Hearthstone is out in full force at BlizzCon! Lead Designer Eric Dodds and Technical Designer Ben Brode brought you the latest in news for Hearthstone including card changes, balance analysis, and upcoming features. Interested in learning about what’s in store for the future of Hearthstone? Read on to get an overview of what we covered at the panel!
Hearthstone: A Look at Today
- Going first is still only slightly better than going second.
- Top-level class balance looks pretty good, looking at 3 different days in October shows a different #1 class each day.
- 44% of our current 3-Star Master players have spent no money on Hearthstone.
- Over one million players have been invited to the closed beta for Hearthstone.
Next Patch or Two
Card Changes
- Mind Control’s cost is changing to 10, up from 8. Mind Control can be frustrating to play against, and is dominating play at the lower ranks. This should allow opponents playing versus a Priest to have a couple more rounds to make use of their high cost minions before they have a sudden change of mind.
- Starving Buzzard’s Health is changing to 1, down from 2. Hunters were very strong against Druid, Mage, and Rogue in Copper through Platinum leagues, and this change should help those match-ups.
- Unleash the Hounds can blow you out in a single turn, without any minions on the table. We’re going to take a look at this card to see if there are some changes we’d like to make for the next patch. We haven’t decided on a direction yet.
Ranked Play Changes
Exciting changes are coming to Ranked Play in Hearthstone! Our new system makes your path to move up in the rankings more transparent, and gives top-level players more ways to differentiate themselves from each other.
- Each month, all players restart at Rank 25: “Angry Chicken”
- Players will be matched against players of similar rank.
- Win a game, acquire a star!
- Acquire enough stars and you’ll rank up!
- Each rank has its own icon and medal.
- Win streaks may give additional stars.
- At higher ranks, you'll lose a star if you lose a game.
Beyond Rank 1 is a special rank: Legend.
- Once you hit the Legend rank, it cannot be lost until the season ends.
- Legend rank will have a big number in the middle of the icon – this tells you your exact rank in your region!
This won’t be ready at the launch of our new ranked system, but eventually, if you participate in ranked play during a season, there’s a reward awaiting you: Special card backs!
- Card backs are acquired through participating in a ranked play season.
- Each month holds a new card back for your collection!
One of the most exciting reasons to try Ranked Play is the epic Golden Heroes. After you’ve played 500 Ranked games with a specific class, you unlock the animated golden hero for that class. Whenever you play that class, it’ll automatically be the golden version of the class rather than the regular one. Each Golden hero has its own special animations, just like the other Golden cards!
Additional Features on the Horizon
- Reconnecting to a game in progress
- Even more spell effects and animations!
A Bit Further Out
Hearthstone on the Go!
- Hearthstone for Android, iPhone and Windows 8 Touch
Expansions!
- Hearthstone will have expansion sets, each featuring packs full of exciting new cards!
Single-player Adventures!
- To supplement expansions, we plan to release Adventures! These will come with a smaller set of cards that can be unlocked and will provide new strategies to explore.
Watch the full event, which includes exciting Blizzard developer panels and other featurettes, by purchasing a Virtual Ticket today. We hope to see you at BlizzCon!
We’re always interested in what you have to say and what you’re looking for in Hearthstone! Whether it’s more features or particular themes you’d like to see, we’re closely monitoring your feedback in the beta and into release. Give us your feedback on the Hearthstone forums here!
I love this game and want to see where this is going in the future expansions. I just wish they made the game for windows 8 mobile, because my tablet is windows 8.
The current game balance is crap! Control is just too powerful. With taunt and removal you can win any game. Priest, mage and shaman are too strrong classes.
Auto-pecker 4000: Bahahaha!! LOVE this card! I wish it were around, I'd include it in every deck of mine. Granted, I'd probably end up killing myself half the time just from looking at it, but it would still be hilarious! lol
The development of each individual card, and the focus on its impact on the meta and the game as a whole, is outstanding. Gotta love a company that is devoted to making a game good for the sake of the community and not just making a shell to collect money (goodbye Sony's Planetside 2, hello Blizzard's Hearthstone)!
I have to say that the most exciting thing for me is the introduction of Hearhstone onto mobile platforms. I'm out and about a lot and it would be amazing to be able to play a game in between classes or during my lunch break. Beyond that, I'm happy that they're paying attention to balance. One of the easiest ways for a game like this to die out is the domination of one deck/strategy.
I'm very grateful for the arena (draft mode) - it's my favorite way to play card games, and it keeps the game more interesting that just using some combo that everyone else is using. Thanks Blizzard :)
I just love how they've already got 1 million people playing the game, and it's just a card game (a fun one at that :D ). I mean, such hype over a card game... LOVE IT!
Balance patches are great - nice to see the dev team is on their game and already focused on keeping the game balanced so as to keep the game interesting and the meta shifting. Love the attention on the community, Blizzard! :)
I love how they are keeping the game easily understandable - I can share the game with my younger siblings and they are able to get the gist of the game without needing to understand too much (key words on cards, strategy of TCG/CCGs, etc.). Great way for me to spend time with them while doing something I enjoy; thanks Blizzard!
The new ranking system is AWESOME! Having something more in line with LoL or SC2 is great, since it will show who is really a good player and who just plays a lot (and has a lot of wins under their belt).
I think that a million invitations to beta test it is very cool! They will be able to polish the game before the release of the ideal in the MBT. I wish the developers inspiration and more cool ideas!
I love how the dev team already has expansions in the works - constantly having new content pushed out that switches up the meta is important so we don't run out of stuff to do with our decks.
Don't even know where to start! Think the absolute best (and most necessary) feature is the ability to reconnect. After watching a lot of streamers I think it would be soooo infuriating to be doing arena (after paying for it) and losing a game because of the server/your internet!!
Second best news was the cardbacks! I think that will help keep the game visually fresh in a very easy way for the developers and a rewarding one for players.
This game is still in beta and I just can't wait for the full release. The game is just easy to jump in and the game feels fast and addicting. The mobile release is going to win the jackpot. I think everyone with tablets will be playing this game (me including).
The game is well balanced and the coin feels great. I think the statistics tell everything of how well balanced the first players advantage is.
Hi all,
During my diploma program, my team mates and i created a card game for the module "Art of War" and it certainly wasn't easy as we had to so call "moderate" after test plays so that no teams will be too "gay". I certainly gained quite a bit to my arsenal of card playing strategy knowledge as from young, i've been playing a lot of card games like WWE, citadel, poker and many others.
Many of the card games are quite limited and if overpowered, additional rules may be given which causes many to quit. Hearthstone is special with its marketing around warcraft characters, its fast paced game which offline card playing may have varying speeds and its a whole new level of strategy that can be brought to the card playing industry with lots of potential. With just beta and it has garnered 355,000 likes on facebook is definately a game that many looks forward to, with a lot of potential.
I hope to be able to gain access as one of the priviledged ones to be involved in the beta test. Being a strategy game for all will entice even more players as the young and old challenge with different forms of strategy. It will be very interesting how this game will evolve. I will just shut up now before this entry gets too long to read :P Just give me the beta key pretty pleaseeee...
Best regards,
Tan
The biggest thing I think is going to be the mobile release. As they said, they want to make the game feel tactile and physical, and this is the best way to do that: there is currently probably no good mobile card game available, except for Magic:DotP which is iPad only. The only problem I see with this is the fact that the game will still need an internet connection... UNLESS they make it possible to play offline with decklists pre-downloaded from the server. Or something. If this is made possible, the game will truly feel like a real CCG, being able to just sit down and play with your friends, since there is no better way to play a game than just face-to-face.
Also, it will be available on WP8. Which is great, because there aren't really many games on that and I think that it's a pretty good OS. Sure, it has bugs, but Blizzard supporting it is huge.
The open beta announcement is great news. Making the game was very interesting to read. I'm very excited for the Adventures release.
Dying to know how how ranked play changes will affect the gameplay, it sounds really nice. The nerf on Mind Control was kind of expected.
Really interesting how they talked about the making of Hearthstones. And as most people have said, hearthstones for mobile devices is awesome news.
Ranked Play Changes sound really nice. Also, the card changes were really necessary, especially Mind Control.
Love the changes to the cards. Mind control was getting a little too OP. Overload may have been a better choice in my opinion.
Curious about the future of the game. Aside from card packs, hopeful for 2v2 games, situational challenges, etc.
Would love to see a Ladder to track progress,
Keep up the good work blizz.