Posts with tag hearthstone

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Dating advice in The Queue? Seriously? Yep!

@aspectofthedork as ked:

if your significant other asks you to be "romantizzle," what is an appropriate response?

• Hearthstone will be free to play. You have the option of purchasing more cards if you like, but you can win those same cards via gameplay and don't have to spend a cent.
• The beta will begin this summer, and you can sign up to be a part of it.
• Hearthstone will be available for Windows, Mac, and iPad. Further platforms have yet to be announced.

If you've been wondering where to go to get more information about Hearthstone, there is a new official Blizzard Hearthstone forum, as well as the PlayHearthstone official twitter feed and Facebook page - all great resources for information. Below the cut I've also compiled a number of the latest and greatest blue posts about the game, for your reading convenience. Oh and don't forget to check out the official FAQ as well, it is large and comprehensive. I haven't quoted it because it's far too big to do so. Now, on to the blue posts!

Sometimes, you'd like to know that there are other MMOs out there, right? It's not all WoW, all the time! Our sister site Massively can provide you with everything you need to know about all of the other MMOs around -- past, present and future.

	Hands-on with Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft You've read WoW Insider's first impressions of Hearthstone, now check out what Massively had to say! Accessibility seems to be the name of the game for Hearthstone as it is with all Blizzard titles.
	Hands-on with The Elder Scrolls Online Massively was recently given the opportunity to tackle the upcoming MMO The Elder Scrolls Online hands-on. Check out their first impressions of the classes, gameplay, and more!
	New video explains exactly what WildStar is WildStar is an upcoming MMO, we know that, but what is it all about? Check out this fun video from Carbine Studios that provides all you need to know.
	Diablo III console video sizzles, Blizzard hints at other platforms At PAX East, Blizzard Entertainment released a new trailer for the upcoming console release of Diablo III. They've also revealed the console release may not necessarily be a Sony exclusive.
	Massively's week in review Don't let WoW Insider do all of the talking when it comes to Massively's best content of the week. The Massively staff themselves have picked out what they think is the best content their site has to offer in their own weekly roundup.

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Want to know more about Blizzard's new digital card game, Hearthstone? During PAX East 2013, we spoke with Hearthstone Lead Designer Eric Dodds and Production Director Jason Chayes to learn some additional information about the game.

During the 20-minute interview, I asked the developers several questions, some on behalf of the lore nerds, others for the collectors among us. We discussed some of the game features planned for launch, as well as the possibility of implementing e-sports capabilities later. Also touched upon were the game's visual aspects, like the art work and animated game boards.

And for those of you with a history playing other strategy card games like Magic: The Gathering, I learned a bit more about Hearthstone gameplay and how the Forge works.

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Phew, today's my first day back after my vacation last week. I didn't miss anything important, right?

... Right?

@crikit310 asked:

Any guesses on when we'll have a shot at buying BlizzCon tickets?

Yesterday at PAX East 2013, Blizzard unveiled their first free-to-play game, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. The upcoming title is a digital, collectible card game akin to Magic: The Gathering Online, but designed to be easy to learn and accessible to a larger audience. The game is currently being demonstrated on the showroom floor at PAX, and I was able to play it a couple of times yesterday afternoon.

When starting up my first game, I expected to find Hearthstone confusing because I've never played Magic: The Gathering or any other strategy card game (e.g. Pokémon TCG, Yu-Gi-Oh!) before. I am vaguely familiar with some of the terminology of MTG, having spent most of my life around hardcore players, but I don't really know the rules or how the game is played. That unfamiliarity didn't seem to get in the way of Hearthstone, though. Within two turns I understood my resource system, and also how to play and use cards. By the fifth turn I felt like I understood all the basic mechanics of combat. Then, by the time my seventh turn came around, I was cursing paladins for being overpowered and itching to play another game.

Our bonus question this week was going to be about our dark, secret gaming habits. That was the plan. And then Blizzard went and released this mindblowingly awesome sounding game... so the bonus question changed. So when you're reading this, we're telling you both our guilty pleasure of gaming... and our excite about Hearthstone.

Anne Stickney (@Shadesogrey) This weekend is going to be spent working on projects around the house and getting some writing done. As for Hearthstone, it looks pretty neat! I think I may end up jumping in the beta just to play around with it and see how it works.

Well, if you haven't been watching the blog today, you might not have heard: Hearthstone has been announced. An online, free-to-play digital card game, Hearthstone might start a whole new wave of WoW madness. TradeChat explains the game, shares the preview, and basically tells us what's up. Find out what we know so far about the new game!

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We're going to keep this post updated throughout the day with all the latest HearthStone information. Here's what we know so far.

General Information

• HearthStone is a new digital collectible card game (CCG) that takes place in the Warcraft universe.
• HearthStone is free to play.
• It's set for release this year. The beta will happen this summer.
• You can sign up for the beta now over at HearthStone's site.
• It will initially be playable on the Mac and PC. iPad version to follow soon (and not Blizzard soon, but reality soon).
• PC and iPad version are playable now at PAX East.
• Blizzard is looking at the possibility of future platforms (in response to the Android comments), but development is focused on PC, Mac, and iPad right now.

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When was the last time your max-level character needed a flightmaster? How about a boat or zeppelin? For that matter, when was the last time you breadcrumbed hearth points from inn to inn across a zone you were leveling in? Unless you've been playing WoW more than a handful of years, it's unlikely you've done any of these things with regularity. We hearth and port and click and "cloak" our way around Azeroth with an ease undreamed of in WoW's earliest days. We set our hearthstones at places (like Dalaran) that appeal to our hearts, because getting back into the action is just a few clicks away.

Perhaps you view travel as a tiresome chore, a unnecessary roadblock to the game's real content. For me, travel is an inseparable aspect of the game world. Without a need to respect distance and time, the sheer size and scope of a game world become irrelevant, making the sweeping vistas of Azeroth feel smaller, easily mastered, even trivial. To those of us who relish the feeling of "living in" a game world, the dilating effects of lengthy travel hold value. Trivializing them leaves us feeling compressed in a smaller world with foreshortened horizons.

Yet facility of movement fuels our ravenous appetite for content. We zip to our reputation bases, zoom to the city for pre-raid repairs and banking, and zap back to whatever we were doing when the group wraps up for the night. With such a variety of places and spaces, how could we truly feel constrained, anyway? It's about economy of time and cutting straight to the content, right?

In today's era of accessibility, it seems inevitable that travel must become curtailed. Even as I miss the feeling of distance and momentous journeys, I consider that what we have now might represent the most likely balance. Like me, do you mournfully salute the drooping, irrelevant flightmasters and innkeepers before turning to port jauntily home to a city in the clouds? Have we achieved a reasonable balance, or do you think we haven't come far enough, that limitations on movement and resources such as auction house locations hold back what should be completely fluid entry to any point of play?

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I like my characters to feel at home when I log out at night. After so many years playing WoW, some places just feel more comfortable than others. Certain bankers, certain auctioneers -- some faces and places just seem friendlier to me. It might seem archaic to someone else, but my solo types and lowbies prefer to curl up safely at night in the steamy, insular embrace of Ironforge. My Horde lowbies live in Undercity. It's not the most efficient place to live, but somehow it feels most like a real city to me, most like a home. (Despite the undead. No, I don't really get it, either.) Some characters even prefer to trot about in Dalaran.

Even so, I'm not immune to the demands of each expansion, even if it only manages to nudge the group-oriented, high-level characters to the new territories. But when you're trying to get on with the business of a new continent, you can't be slumming around with a bunch of dwarves, can you? Most of all, you need profession vendors and trainers, reforgers, challenge mode vendors and faction quartermasters, banking and void storage -- and an auction house. Especially an auction house.

Where are you hearthing your high-level characters in Mists of Pandaria? Does your character go to sleep in the old world or the new? What about business -- where do prefer to conduct your daily chores? Are you settling down in fresh, new quarters in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, or can we find you bustling about in your same old spot in Stormwind or Orgrimmar?

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Azeroth is big. This is readily apparent to any new player who's confined to running around on foot or anyone too cheap to shell out for a mount. Even mounted, you're going to spend a lot of time getting from point A to point B unless you can somehow shorten the journey -- and you can usually shorten it in a number of interesting ways.

We all know about the zeppelins and the boats, the workhorse transportation system of Azeroth, but due to the eccentricity of the many transport options in the game, the shortest distance between two points is not necessarily a straight line. For example, an inventive Horde player without a Hearthstone up who wants to travel from Silithus to Orgrimmar can settle in for a long flight -- or she can simply chug a Potion of Deepholm and take the Orgrimmar portal from the Temple of Earth. No potion, but you've quested through Sholazar Basin? Take the Titan Waygate from northern Un'Goro Crater to Sholazar, then fly south to the Horde's zeppelin at Warsong Hold. You'll still beat a wyvern flying from Cenarion Hold.

With even a few of the following options, a max-level player with some imagination should be able to scrape together a few methods of considerably shortening a journey.

World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players, including fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music and fan fiction. Show us how you express yourself; contact our tips line (attention: World of WarCrafts) with your not-for-profit, WoW-inspired creations.

It's catch-up day at World of WarCrafts! We have all sorts of little goodies to pass along that have been piling up in the submissions box. So tuck in and get comfy with this snuggly little fellow from Serthida of US Bloodhoof, the crafter who brought us last year's plush moonkin. Don't worry, he won't drain your mana ... or your creativity.



More from the World of WarCrafts, after the break.

The most recent patch notes answered something I've been wondering about the "summon-from-anywhere" LFG system since I first heard about it: what happens if you get summoned into an instance and then you leave? The answer, apparently, is that you go not to the instance's entry portal, but instead you get sent right back out from whence you came. That's a bummer and a benefit -- unfortunately, you won't be able to use the feature to do any cross-world teleporting (leaving Violet Hold, for example, won't work as an extra hearthstone to Dalaran), but on the other hand, you won't have to stop what you're doing wherever you are.

In fact, porting in and out of any instances you run may change your positioning in the game completely. Nibuca doesn't see any need any more to leave a hearthstone in Dalaran -- that was previously the most central location for collecting daily dungeon quests and flying out to meeting stones, but with neither of those things necessary any more, you can park your stone anywhere you want. It'll be very interesting to see how movement patterns change after the new system goes live. I doubt Dalaran will be a ghost town (if nothing else, there will be plenty of people there sitting in LFG chat), but certainly the LFG is mixing up the reasons that a lot of people are hanging around there.

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Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

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