hearthstone Archives - Page 4 of 4 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Yarn Chasing

October 25, 2013 by Belghast

Hearth Dailies

Last night I played quite a bit of Hearthstone, as I had allowed my quests to stack up on me. For those not familiar, there are daily quests you can do in hearthstone that earn you gold. The gold can then be spent on packs of cards. The quests tend to be things like “Destroy 40 Minions” or “Win 2 Games as Priest or Druid”. The first kind are easy to do and simply involve plugging at it until you have filled the requested amount of carnage, the later are more challenging since you actually have to beat players.

While I can fairly readily do this if I am playing the Warrior or Hunter decks, this is not so much the case with the other decks. Through the process of leveling each “class” to 10, you unlock various basic cards along the way that you can’t get any other way. The problem is, that while my Hunter is 15 and my Warrior 10… the rest of the classes are in the 1-5 range… which means they are missing significant weapons from their arsenal. Despite these constraints however I still managed to clear my quest log by winning 2 games as Priest, 2 as Rogue and 2 as a Shaman. The reward for what took an hour and a half to do… 2 new packs of cards and in the process a few more rares.

A New Whim

While playing Hearthstone I am still regularly suffering bouts of nostalgia, and while I am still resisting the urge to re-up World of Warcraft, I find myself craving that style of play. In a sequence of events that will not really make sense to anyone… I decided as I played Hearthstone that I would start the Allods client downloading. Allods has always felt like some weird soviet block steampunky WoW. I alpha and beta tested the game eons ago when it was rolling out, and remembered it fondly… to be truthful I likely would have played it were it not for at the time the extremely predatory cash shop.

It was an extremely fun place to run around, right up to the point that they introduced the cash shop in beta. It was then that I lost interested and moved on. However in the passing years I had heard that the cash shop was greatly relaxed, so I had filed it away as one of those games I wanted to revisit. Apparently last night was that night as I went through the process of retrieving my password on the account and rolled a brand new character on the free to play server.

Soviet Steampunk

A few weeks back I talked about the fact that I essentially make the same character in every single game I play. Since it was always the steampunk nature that appealed to me, I decided to go with the Empire faction instead of the generic fantasy “The League”. While gibberlings are seriously the coolest idea for a short race, I remember really liking the feel of the Empire better as a whole. So I attempted to create Belghast, which is always a human equivalent, always dark hair, and always a moustache and goatee. There was no racial option for black hair so I had to go dark reddish brown, and there was no option for a ponytail so I had to go with another option.

Without really meaning to I seem to have created “Lenin” with hair. While I felt the character creation options were limited, they were about as varied as WoW, so mostly viable. I ended up going with a Vanquisher, which based on the fact that it was sword and board… made me assume it was the tank. Upon playing it for a few minutes I noticed it had the standard protection warrior kit, along with an extremely long cool down charge and eventually a shield bash. The gameplay was fun but nothing really revolutionary, but then again I was not really expecting innovation.

Shocked and Amused

I have to say I was extremely pleasantly surprised by the experience. I found myself really enjoying the questing and gameplay as a whole. The world is far more intricate and beautiful than I had remembered, and filled with really great ambient music that instead of appearing out of nowhere… seems to come from in game speaker systems adding to the experience. I killed around two hours playing the game without really realizing it, and ultimately had to pull myself away from it to go to bed.

There is a lot to like in this game, and they seem to have reformed at least a bit their predatory cash shop ways. While you are leveling you get several freebie items from the cash shop in the form of chests that you can open every 5 minutes. Through these I got a number of cosmetic items and a 24 slot bag upgrade in additional to several vouchers for free cash shop items. I feel like this is a way to get you wanting the items from the cash shop, but overall I have gotten quite a bit of nifty stuff without paying a dime, and I am completely fine with that notion. If it ends up being a game I play quite often I have no problem at all supporting it, and likely will.

Yarn Chasing

The most bizarre thing of the night however was their guided waypoint system. For major quests they draw a series of massive glowing arrows along the map pointing out the path you should travel to get to your objective. However this system goes several steps past that and has put in an automated pathing system in order to get you to your destination. Out beside every quest in your quest log is a red ball icon, that invokes this giant bouncing ball of yarn. Your character begins to move of its own accord following the bouncing ball of yarn until you reach the destination. The whole experience is rather comical as your character willfully chases down this bouncing ball.

I get the impression that large blocks of the player base are playing this game as click to move… since that functionality is defaulted to on. It was rather shocking the first time I clicked a quest NPC and my character started running towards it. I turned that feature off since I have never been able to stack click to move control schemes, but it appears that the yarn ball movement system is still in place. While I don’t use it that often, I am finding it extremely helpful since the quest objective direction are usually unclear as is the mapping system as to where you are actually supposed to go to find things. Usually I can click the ball of yarn, to get it to show me the vague direction I should travel and them I am good to go. As a whole I was really surprised by just how much I enjoyed the game, and I look forward to playing again.

Failing Resolve

October 21, 2013October 21, 2013 by Belghast

Perfect Drug

This morning I am having a bit of a slow start getting going… so as a result I spent the last 30 minutes or so crawling through my news reader looking for something to inspire me. At which point I landed on this post from Liore talking about her feeling the need to apologize for playing World of Warcraft and the overall negative reaction she has gotten from other gamers. I think in part… the negative attitude is due to the fact that there is really no such thing as a former WoW player. I don’t really intend hyperbole with, but much like an alcoholic you are never really fully over World of Warcraft.

I was so damned pumped the day I got into the Hearthstone beta, and while I am presently having a blast playing it despite how many times I get beat… it has awoken some things that I was not quite ready for. I cannot count how many times after a game of Hearthstone this weekend that I considered reactivating my account and “playing some wow”. I am still resisting, and my little interaction a week or so ago with a trial account is keeping me in part from doing it. World of Warcraft this is wonderful marzipan world that is awesome so long as you are willing not to think about it too much.

Can’t Not Think

The problem is… each time I go back to the game I just end up frustrated about the decisions they didn’t make. World of Warcraft is like that friend you know with so much potential, but they keep making horrible life choices. So when I go back I get frustrated by the Transmog system, and the piss poor community support, and the fact that every single social channel that used to be my lifeblood in the game is dead… since most of the folks I care about have long since moved on. For me World of Warcraft is this magical thing that will never again be, because we have all fundamentally changed from the days when it was our nightly obsession.

We reject WoW so harshly because we know it is basically an empty promise. All it takes is a little bit of nostalgia and reminiscing about the “good ole days” and we are ready to re-up for another ride. Hearthstone has been horrible for me in this aspect, because seeing the cards and the artwork… makes me want to go play Belghast and actually get him to level 90. However my allergy to pugging, or more so TANKING for pugs will end up in tears as I would be going back with no real support structure. House Stalwart still exists, but it is a shell of what it once was, and going back and seeing that is hard on me as well.

Failing Resolve

All of this said… I fully expect over the next few weeks this nostalgia trip that is Hearthstone will eventually end up in me reactivating my World of Warcraft account. I figure I will only last a week or so if I do, and even knowing this going into it… I full expect to do it anyways. I spent most of the weekend trying to play various things without really having much success. I played a little rift, patched up gw2, played a lot of pokemon and hearthstone… and even considered patching up SWTOR. All the while trying to avoid the fact that the rush of nostalgia is demanding me playing some WoW. But all of this is why we push back so hard when we see a friend slip back into playing the game. We know deep down inside that we are likely next to follow.

Hearthstone

October 18, 2013 by Belghast

Battle of Cards

I am getting around super late this morning to make a blog post. On a whim I decided to take Friday off, since for my wife it was her fall break. I figured the two of us could hang out around the house or do whatever. Then over night I noticed a rather frantic message from my boss. It seems like after 5 his boss had requested something by noon today… that would involve a lot of feedback and information from us worker bees. So as a result I got up around 8 am, got dressed, went out and grabbed breakfast and have been remote into work for the last hour working on the list of information. As a result… my normal early morning post is delayed.

Yesterday I was extremely pumped to get home, because over night I seemed to have received an email from Blizzard saying that my account had finally been flagged for the Hearthstone beta process. Since everyone and their brother is live streaming this on Twitch… I am assuming there is no actual NDA going on… or at least not one currently enforced. So as a result I snapped multiple pictures last night as I played and will be weaving them in here and there. I have to admit I went into this a bit skeptical… not really sure if I would like it or not. From the video I had seen, everything about the game feels rushed much like a LFG dungeon group. Even though you rarely think more than one round ahead… there is still a lot of strategy going on.

The Education

Day[9] has a really good series of videos walking through his first experience with the game, and I highly suggest you watch it if you are curious about how you get into the game. Basically Blizzard has done an amazing job of user education, in that to get started in the game you HAVE to play through a tutorial. Fortunately it does a really good job of slowly introducing you into the various mechanics, and as a result you can pick up the strategy of the game extremely quickly. You play through a series of NPC card fights…starting with Hogger and finishing with an Azerothian Super Villain that I won’t spoil for now.

Once you have finished with the tutorial it has taught you basically everything there is to know about the Mage deck. Essentially the decks are all themed after one of the World of Warcraft classes. I notice that Deathknight is conspicuously absent… so they must be intending to add that in as an expansion opportunity. For those who are familiar with the Duel of the Planeswalkers series of MTG games for consoles and steam… you will be used to the way you progress from here. Now you can take your mage deck and challenge the other classes, by defeating them you unlock the ability to play as that class.

The Sticky-ness

The biggest surprise for me is just how sticky this game was. I got home around 5 pm and started playing around 5:30. I ended up playing this game without pause until around 9:30.. and only then because some guild members needed me to tank a FFXIV dungeon run. I have to say that is fairly unheard of for me, when it comes to card games. I have copies of all of the Duel of the Planeswalker games that have been released, but have maybe logged 50 hours total among ALL of them. There was just something about the physical card game experience that never quite translated to the online version.

Last night over the course of the evening, I managed to unlock all of the different class decks. At various points through the evening I was rewarded with either gold or actual packs of cards. The game uses a quest like system to give you little goals to work towards. If you look above you can see that in the screenshot I have 2 of the 3 wins needed to earn 10 gold. There was another quest I had to level one of the classes to 10, and in doing so I unlocked a pack of cards. Essentially it seems like there are two kinds of cards you can get… Basic cards that are unlocked through completing quests and scenarios and leveling… and Expert cards that are unlocked through either purchasing or winning packs of cards.

The Money

Since this game is free to play, you have to be asking yourself… where do they make money. Well like always with any card game it is in the packs. I took a screenshot of the current store interface. You will notice that the packs that be bought with either in game gold currency that you earn by completing achievements or be purchased with real world currency. You can purchase a single pack with 100 gold, 2 packs for $2.99 ($1.49 each), 7 packs for $9.99 ($1.42 each), 15 packs for $19.99 ($1.32 each) or 40 packs for $49.99 ($1.24 each). So as you can see in buying in bulk like you would expect you keep getting more and more of a discount on the per pack price.

Through the course of play last night I earned 5 packs of cards either through a combination of gold or actually winning the packs outright. I have to say the sound design and animation are amazing… and really capture the same excitement of opening a real pack of cards. You can double click the pack to open it… or for a more tactile experience drag it open. Similarly all five cards in a pack come flying out onto the screen… but do so face down. This allows you to flip them over one by one similar to sifting through a physical pack of cards. They know their audience well and have put in a number of tactile hooks to increase the sense of suspense to see if you have something good or not.

Versus Players

Currently you have the option of playing progressively harder NPC decks, or setting out and playing some physical players. Quite honestly I have found playing players a bit easier than playing the expert decks. There are two PVP modes of play… the first of which is simply building a custom deck and then taking it on the road to fight against other players. The second of which is the Arena, which serves as this games “draft” mode, giving both a more random experience but also potentially a more balanced one.

I am not sure if this regenerates but you get at least one free Arena token, after that it appears to either cost 150 in game gold or $1.99 to unlock additional tokens. In the Arena you choose a class and then are presented with a series of three cards. The card you keep goes into your arena deck, and the other two are discarded. This continues on until you have chosen 30 cards for your deck. An Arena deck lasts until you have lost three times. At the end of the match you are rewarded based on how well you did. For me I got 2 sacks of gold 2 packs of cards and a rare paladin card for playing. I won three times and lost three times.

The interesting thing about the Arena is the fact that you don’t have to play it all in one sitting. So long as you have not lost your three matches you can continue playing arena. There is some bar of gems that fills up each time you win, but I am not 100% certain how that works. You might get punted out of the Arena if you win too often as well. Last night I played through a single arena match and then was off playing custom games with players. My little hunter deck seems to be doing pretty well, so I will likely return to doing some of that today. I have to say I am very pleasantly surprised in just how good of a game Hearthstone is.

Party Like it’s 1995

August 7, 2015October 16, 2013 by Belghast

Flashbacks

I have been fairly oblivious to the world for the last few days, and as a result I had fallen behind on my news reader. The thing that I found most interesting was this article on Massively talking about a potential League of Legends Universe online TCG. I feel like I would love any game set in the League universe that is not League. The world they have built up around the MOBA has some pretty awesome lore, and in part that is why I continue to play the game in spite of my problems with the control scheme. My friends and I have talked about how successful we thought a single player game would be set in that world, but I could see an online TCG working as well.

Party Like It’s 1995

A friend and I were talking about this news, and he made the comment that it is 1995 all over again. In a way that is exactly what it seems like to me as well. For those who were not part of that scene during the TCG boom during the mid 90s… suffice to say every potentially marketable property got made into a card game. I like a sucker probably played most of them out of sheer love and nostalgia for Magic the Gathering the one that started it all. Some of them stuck around and gained a life of their own like Pokémon or Yugioh because they were driven by external motivators… and some were really amazing and died on the vine like Rage and Vampire: The Eternal Struggle.

However during the 90s… you could find a card game for any property you wanted to play, and I think among my friends we at least bought a starter deck of most of them. Magic the Gathering has had an online component for years, but for the most part it has never gained traction because it was arcane to get into, and Wizards of the Coast still very much favored the physical market. In essence it was a cheap copy of a physical property and the company seemed fine with that. What we are seeing now is a new crop of games conceived for online play, and that offer rule sets that would never really work in a physical card game.

The Next Boom

Much like we have seen for MMOs and MOBA… we are going to see a lot of companies entering this marketplace, trying to TCG-ize their existing intellectual property. Even though neither has released, it seems like the two leaders going into the marketplace are Hearthstone by Blizzard and Hex by their TCG business partner Cryptozoic. While they will be competing in the same space, and have quite a bit of overlap… I feel like each of these games is going after a slightly different player. Hearthstone is going after the “easy to learn, hard to master” demographic, with a deceptively simple mechanic that leads to extremely fast paced duels.

While I have not actually played it (hey Blizz flag my account already), I have watched more than a handful of youtube videos and live streams. Essentially it seems like a really straight forward rage style duel mechanic. The thing that I initially am not a huge fan of is the way that combat works. It seems like there is no real defense mechanic, or at least not one in the way I have come to expect from Magic: The Gathering. As a result the gameplay is extremely in your face and aggressive, but does not feel terribly nuanced.

Cryptic Gameplay

On the other side of things you have Hex: Shards of Fate by Cryptozoic… which is a oddly fitting company name for their approach. It feels like they are trying to be Magic: The Gathering 2.0 with an evolved rule set and extremely cryptic and nuanced gameplay. This is the type of game you go into already at a massive debt of knowledge, but as you learn the rules and uncover strategies you are rewarded for your ability to assimilate the information. It looks like it will support some extremely long running duels, much in the same way Magic did, with players coming back from the brink to snatch victory out of defeat.

Personally while I really want to play Hearthstone, Hex seems more my style. It is less Pokémon and Yugioh and more Magic: The Gathering… the game that started the craze and still has a honored spot in my heart. Currently I think there is more than enough market share for both of these games. However all of the late comers that are creating online TCGs… are likely going to get left out in the cold the same way all the other boom economies have worked. Mainly I don’t see anyone else bringing something truly unique to the table. During the physical card game boom, we saw lots of different themed versions of M:TG, and to a lesser extent I figure we will see this again.

Been There Done That

Currently both games are very fantasy oriented, so I expect the other genres to get on the act shortly. Since DC is working on a MOBA… I fully expect to be seeing a DC themed online card game. To be honest… the VS system that incorporated both DC and Marvel had a decent amount of success during the physical card game wars… so it might be a property worthy of resurrection in an online form. Additionally I fully expect there to be a Star Wars themed product offering with the upcoming 7th movie entering production. Then I am sure there will be other properties that jump on the bandwagon that we can’t even fathom being a card game… just like last time. The problem is… all of this has a feeling of “been there done that” for me.

I experienced this rush of excitement and crushing disappointment several times before during the 90s, as a property I cared about was turned into a truly un-inspired card game amalgam. To some extent we are still living through this each time an MMO spins up only to sputter out a year or so later. Another tidbit from my news feed yesterday was that Mummy Online was shutting down… I literally did not even know it existed in the first place. So MMOs are currently coming and going without me even realizing it. Basically I am bracing myself for a lot of shoddy card games to be released in a short period of time, trying to cash in on the “new” craze of digital collectible card games. So as much as I look forward to Hearthstone and Hex… I am entering what I feel will be a new trend with quite a bit of trepidation.