OnGameNet to Broadcast Competitive Hearthstone in Korea
Announced today on the StarCraft II Blog, OnGameNet, longtime producers of StarCraft and StarCraft II competitive content will be entering the world of Hearthstone next year. The blog was vague in what exactly OGN has planned for Hearthstone, but the post mentions that they will produce entertainment shows and tournaments for the game. Let's hope that we see a spectator client from the Hearthstone team sooner rather than later! #ESPORTS!
OGN has been a dedicated partner for WCS Korea 2013. In addition to hosting a season of WCS Korea and a Season Final, OGN also broadcasted the WCS Global Finals live from BlizzCon on November 8-9. With the goal to provide a more streamlined experience for both the players and the audience, OGN will not be hosting WCS Korea 2014. OGN has rights to run both StarCraft and StarCraft II tournaments alongside WCS and will be able to run WCS global events that offer WCS points. Additionally, OGN will remain our partner outside of the WCS and will produce entertainment shows and tournaments for Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft.
ManaCast #13 - The Hearthstone Show
The thirteenth episode of ManaCast aired yesterday, and now the VoD is up! Trump was invited as a guest host on this week's ManaCast where the hosts discussed the latest weekend tournament results, incoming card changes announced at BlizzCon, and the decks that we saw in play during the Hearthstone Innkeeper's Invitational.
ManaCast is a Hearthstone Show which features high level discussion about various aspects of Hearthstone while staying not too serious. ManaCast airs live on Tuesdays, usually in the afternoon, over on the ManaGrind Twitch channel. The crew are working on getting a solid time every Tuesday to do the show, but we will post the VoD on Wednesday nights, so don't worry if you can't watch it live.
Update: Battle.net Desktop Closed Beta Participants Not Receiving Beta Keys
A number of players that were invited to beta test the Battle.net Desktop Application were told they would receive a gift in the future. This gift was announced last week to be a Hearthstone beta key! Blizzard originally stated that everyone received their keys, but have since retracted that statement after discovering an error. Those who did not receive their gift for being in the Closed Beta test of the Battle.net Desktop Application, will be receiving it in the next week.
Just remember, these keys are only for people who installed and logged in to the Battle.net Desktop Application during its own Closed Beta. If you did not get into the closed beta for the BDA, you will have to wait for an opt-in invite, winning a beta key giveaway, or the open beta.
Recently, we rewarded players that were invited to and participated in our Battle.net desktop app closed beta test with a Hearthstone closed beta test key as per this announcement. We have since discovered that a number of these participants were not properly sent a Hearthstone beta key; the impacted players have now been identified and their beta key reward should be sent out within the next week.
I would also like to take this moment to remind everyone to always remember to check your spam folders and Promotions tabs when checking for the Hearthstone closed beta invite, as our emails have a tendency to get caught there.
Hearthstone Beta Waves in NA
Blizzard sent out a wave of beta invites in the NA region after a week of no opt-in invites. No news for all the patient EU beta testers. To help get more of you access to the closed beta, we're reaching into our mysterious stash and holding another giveaway of our own. See below!
We are sending out a wave of Hearthstone beta opt-in invites for the North American region right now, which should conclude within an hour.
Hearthstone Beta Key Giveaway
There wasn't any news last night, but we're back with another beta key giveaway! With the news of OGN hosting Hearthstone content in the future, what kind of competitive content would you like to see more of out of the Hearthstone community? Let us know in the comments of this news post for a chance to win a Hearthstone beta key!
How To Enter
- Reply to this news post with your answer to the following question: What kind of competitive content would you like to see more of out of the Hearthstone community?
How To Win
- Contest closes on November 21st at 10 PM EST.
- Winners will be chosen randomly and sent private messages on HearthPwn.
- You are allowed one entry into this contest. If you are found to have entered more than once, you will be disqualified and your accounts will be banned.
- Winners will have 48 hours to respond to their private messages before their keys will be given out to someone else.
Need a draft tournament sooo freaking badly.
An Arena style bracket tournament would be quite interesting like best 2 out of 3 and each one would get a different arena draw, it would be more about the skill of the players and not their preconstructed deck.
I was going to say more open community tournaments however, I think I'm going to jump on this 2v2 bandwagon. May be tough to balance but it could lead to something really interesting.
A wider social spectrum allowing for spectators in games.
Tournaments, maybe with a more balanced arena style mode. A spectator mode would be nice as well.
More weekly tournaments like king of the hill and casted streams on those tournaments if possible :)
Random decks
From the community, not something being added to the game itself? Honestly, I'm really impressed by the "King of the Hill" and other style tournaments coming out of the community. I think that the suggestion I saw for "blind" tournaments, where players play decks that have been either randomly generated, or else built by another player, so they don't know what they have. Some friends and I have done "arena-ish" games where you use the "Suggest a Card" feature to build the whole deck, and "random" games, where you create an empty deck, choose "done" and let the deck finish automatically. Both are fun to play and would be entertaining to watch the pros play against each other.
Blind matches! :)
Arena tournaments!
Factions would be sweet!
Definitely random deck tourneys
2v2 and more live tournaments
two player competitive deck drafting: you play an opponent, but you both draft from the same pool of cards, so you get to see what your opponent is drafting, and can mess with their strategy, but the same is true for them
definitely spectator mode !
I'd like to see more blind matches, where players have no idea what's in their decks until they pull the card.
I would like to see a 2v2 game mode. I can only imagine all the crazy combinations of inter-class play people could come up with.
Draft mode outside of arenas
I'd like to see Arena tournaments, but if those are a little too random, then a tournament where the players get a while in between their matches, so the players can modify their deck to accommodate for what they believe their opponent will bring out. Would be fun to see the players trying to mind game each other into picking a certain deck.
random deck tournaments