As December is right at the doorstep, more and more people who haven’t had the chance to experience the Hearthstone universe firsthand are getting psyched about the open beta.
If you haven’t yet heard and are wondering what exactly is Hearthstone, don’t be discouraged – there is still a little time left for you to get prepared and join in the early battlegrounds of this amazing game.
A child of Blizzard, Hearthstone is concentrated around the WarCraft universe, but this time the big company is taking a whole new road right into the Trading Card Game world. An interesting take on Magic the Gathering, a bit like the good old childhood memory – Yu-Gi-Oh, Hearthstone is a fast-paced, quite easy to learn card game, which baffles with a simple concept, but a gameplay of a complex variety.
Everything starts with a simple deck of cards. As in every collectable card game, every card has its own meaning and purpose, which you will learn through the process of playing. However, there are some basic things you can do, if you don’t already have access to the Closed Beta, but want to prepare for the game.
For starters, a huge load of duels and gameplay videos are available in both the official channel of Hearthstone in youtube and some fan-based channels. There is also a fan-based game wikipedia you can visit to get familiar with the more advanced concepts of the game.
Once you do that, you will be ready to start the countdown to the open beta.
The game as a whole will be free-to-play and even though the game focuses around gold, which you can both acquire through the game process and buy, it is pretty well balanced. During the closed beta it has been calculated that around 44% of the top-tier players have become such, without having to pay anything with real money.
This is one of the amazing factors in the game and if Blizzard manages to keep up with that balance, the game may prove to be able to create an equal ground between hardcore free-to-play players versus those who love spending money and not time.
That being said, if you don’t want to be spending big, but you have wits and skills in the game, you may just be able to become one of the greatest players there is. And as the game progressively changes through the beta and is constantly experiencing resets, you don’t have to worry about getting in too-late in the hype. You will be able to learn everything in no time; however, be warned – once you start playing Hearthstone: Heroes of WarCraft, there is hardly a stop button. This game may just prove to be the next near-World-of-WarCraft-craze and may lock many people in front of their computers with no real exit.
Do not worry, if you get easily addicted, because this trading card game is quite different than the WoW universe. Even the people who hate MMOs will agree, that this game is far from what Blizzard has tried before and that they may yet again manage to change the gaming world in one way, or another.
The game is already featured in the Major League Gaming website and unofficial tournaments are already taking place. That being said, a pure passion about the game may one day change the life of a person the way Star Craft did for so many Korean players.
It may sound far-fetched, but if things turn out for the best, Hearthstone could just be able to turn into a gaming craze. Blizzard have already proven to be strong when it comes to worldwide gaming changes. Will this game be a success story though? Only time will tell.
If we look at the gaming world as a whole we can see how big it has become. Gaming has already entered the lives of so many and the world’s opinion for the gamers has changed a lot over the years. Will gaming events one day be as big as the SuperBowl? Only time will tell. Till then, we can only hope the seemingly simple addictive game by Blizzard – Hearthstone: Heroes of WarCraft proves to be a step for the better.