Game Preview: Hearthstone [PC]

 

It’s 2:03 in the morning.

Whilst there isn’t anything irregular about me staying up late; it has been happening with increasing frequency these past few weeks. I would love to sit here and crow about the fact that it’s a girl keeping me up at night, but alas, it wouldn’t be true. It is a passionate subject that keeps me from a much needed REM sleep cycle, just one that involves you keeping your clothes on.

My eyes are sore and I’m reaching the point where I’m making stupid mistakes, but I’ll play one more game.

2:47 a.m. I’ve lost about six games in a row due to being tired and I’ve consumed about half my body weight in energy drinks. Just one more, one more game…

Blizzard Entertainment have been the cause of me losing many hours of my social life over the past eight years, the now (in)famous World of Warcraft is well known for being a time sink to many of us. Despite being in a seemingly inexorable decline, it still holds a little majesty for over 7 million subscribers worldwide.

However, it’s not WoW that I want to talk to you about. Blizzard still has their fingerprints on the gun and the characters of Azeroth are still present, but it’s not the legendary MMO that is stealing my beauty sleep. It’s a game called Hearthstone.

Take Magic: The Gathering, sprinkle on some of the most prominent WoW characters, simplify it somewhat, and you get Hearthstone: Legends of Warcraft. I’m not completely sure what it is about card based games that require such lengthy titles, possibly the need to sensationalise what is in fact, a card game. If you are new to such things, or have steered away from them in an attempt to avoid that kind of hardcore geekery, I strongly advise you to revisit that decision.

 

As you can see, it isn’t terribly complex. You can easily jump in and move through the tutorials. Any M:TG vets will have no trouble with the game’s easier mechanics. That’s not to say it doesn’t have intricacies, because it does, oh it really does.

You could quite easily just open the deck builder, pick a random 30 cards and start playing. Although if you do that, you will most likely lose in such a way, that it makes you question yourself as a sentient being. Unlike M:TG, you have classes to choose from. There are nine in all: Hunter, Priest, Shaman, Rogue, Mage, Warlock, Paladin, Warrior and Druid. They all have cards that are usable only by them and it’s at this point, that I find myself drawn in by the play style.

Arguably the most important thing in these types of games, is deck synergy. Picking cards that work well together is often the difference between winning and getting steamrolled. I freely admit that it took me a couple of weeks to get the hang of. If you follow my Twitter feed you will have seen the many tweets that revolve around me getting my heiny handed to me on a regular basis. There are many ways to play with each class, some more effective than others, but all of them can come tumbling down with a poor run of cards.

There are a couple of balance issues that I think might need sorting. Only minor things here and there, the most stand-out being some annoyingly easy ways to win with the Priest class. I won’t go in to it too much, as I have faith that Blizz are on top of it. Instead I will just nod towards the elephant in the room.

The free to play market is becoming more popular by the day. It’s not hard to see why when you realise how much people are willing to pour down a game. I’m no stranger to it by any means, I forked out for a few packs of cards on Hearthstone to get things moving, but that’s where I think people start to mistake pay to win, for free to play.

You aren’t paying for anything other than convenience here. It’s true that you will get a slight advantage over your opponent and I have been beaten near the end of my deck by a few legendary cards, but it’s nothing that can’t be overcome by knowing your class, and not to mention, theirs as well. Having the foresight to think ahead of your opponent will start to make your one or two game win streaks, into seven or eight.

I’ve no doubt that many will see it differently, and in fairness, paying for a big batch of cards will save you possibly weeks, or even months of scratching for some decent drops.

A pack of cards costs 100G (in-game gold). You can acquire gold by winning three games or finishing daily quests. The former will net you 10G whilst the latter about 40G. You can very easily get a pack per day by doing very little. Winning those games will require you to play in ranked matches, or you can choose to go for the Arena mode. This costs 150G to enter, you drop out when you’ve either lost three matches, or won nine.

The prizes you receive will depend on how many you win. Winning the full nine will guarantee you a gold card and another pack. That’s including quite a bit of gold and some dust (used to craft cards).

Arena also eliminates any advantage someone might have with bought cards by randomising the deck. You choose between three random classes, then select one of three cards, you continue this until you have your full thirty. It’s very difficult to plan what to go for in terms of play style, as you have no idea what will be dropping. It can be a little frustrating if you feel you have been given awful cards, but just remember, other people may have had similar poor luck.

It’s a good idea to get to know the classes first before entering Arena, although you do have to beat all of the classes to unlock Arena mode. You start with the Mage class and run through some simple tutorial games against an easy AI opponent. After that you will have to play the remaining eight to be able to throw down as them.

As with WoW, it has a levelling system, the first ten levels will unlock the basic pack, once you’ve done that you can start thinking about building your own deck (or before that if you prefer) and going in to Play mode against some other bipeds.

Blizzard games tend to be nicely polished, and Hearthstone is no exception, the last patch did bring a couple of weird bugs, but nothing majorly game breaking. I would like to see a lot more attention given to the ranking system. If you’ve ever played StarCraft 2, you will know how much effort Blizz put in to stats and standings for the ladder games.

A major gripe I had with M:TG 2014 (link) is that the game board was intensely dull, being that you spend a great deal of time staring at it, it would have seemed pertinent to make it interesting. No such mistake has been made here though, there are four different stages and they all have quirky interactive parts to them. It may sound small, but it’s those things that add up.

The spell effects and any animations from playing cards are superbly done. Some of the higher tier cards have some amazing graphical effects. The ‘Twisting Nether’ card from the Warlock deck is particularly impressive.  The sound is also of a high standard, voice overs from the characters seem to all have been done by the original people and even playing or using cards rewards you with little sound bites.

There is possibly some adjustments that can be made to the game before release, the ironing out of the aforementioned bugs, some balance issues, and I would argue that the gold reward for winning and daily quests might need some tweaking, just to lessen the gap between people paying and people not.

They could conceivably split up those two groups in different play modes, whether they will however, is another thing entirely. If I had one genuine worry for the game’s release, it would be that they aren’t going to wipe progress again before release. Personally I feel this is a poor move as it gives us beta players a huge advantage over any incoming newbies. I’m not really sure what the thinking is from Blizz on that one, I will update you if I do find out.

There has been no word on an official release date for Hearthstone, but with them saying there would be no more account wipes before starting, I would imagine it will be fairly soon.

You may find yourself losing some significant chunks of your life to this game, it’s extremely well put together and needs nothing more than a couple of minor changes for me to recommend without hesitation. In fact, I will do that anyway. Even if you have never been in to this style of card game, it won’t cost you anything to try it out upon its release. You may find yourself in the same position I have for the past few weeks.

3:06 a.m. I really need to go to bed. Just one more game.