Hearthstone

Agonizing the Bait Master_sl said:

Hrmm furor was playing a lot of freaking rage of bahamut. He is behind this

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The question is, which was he playing it on, MAC OR PC???

Why would I play a TCG game on the computer when I could play so many other great games? Stupid move on their part not going for mobile first.

Koushirou_sl said:

Just burn it and pretend it never happened.

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This.

If it was integratedintoWorld of Warcraft, I could see people playing it while waiting for group/spawns/raids/whatever. But I am not sure what there intent is to try and compete with their physical card game by introducing a seemingly unrelated version.

Game is worth it purely for the vast amounts of buttfrustration it has generated.

Rime_sl said:

If it was integratedintoWorld of Warcraft, I could see people playing it while waiting for group/spawns/raids/whatever. But I am not sure what there intent is to try and compete with their physical card game by introducing a seemingly unrelated version.

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Didnt the physical card game fade away after a publisher switch or something? Friend of mine was pretty active until then. Iirc it didnt stack up to the big card game IPs anyway (Pokemon, MTG; Yugi). Seems they are re-using at least some artwork from it though, so this is essentially a 15 people project that could probably be done with 5 people in half the time if it wasnt Blizzard.

Nope, it is still out there. They just had a change between the companies that made the card sets.

More info:Source (Polygon)

Highlights:
(*) Could be playable inside WoW
(*) No trading
(*) DE cards to recombine for new cards
(*) Could include eSport support if interest
(*) No cross platform play

Neph_sl said:

Highlights:
(*) No trading
(*) No cross platform play

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No thanks.

No trading? What the fuck are they thinking? What a waste of an announcement.. it's like they had nothing a month ago and were like.. shit, we gotta roll something out! Lets repurpose MTGOL! Aaaaaand go!

Wow. Oh Blizzard, how far you've fallen.

They probably have to nix trading for money reasons. Why trade other people for what you want when you could pull the random pack slot machine for $5 and have a chance at it!!

It sucks, but I kind of get it. If the core game is strong enough, then you hook people's wallets by randomizing the upgrade path. Sure you could probably get the same cards through grinding some low drop rate, but it's probably not time efficient.

I mean, it's worked for Puzzle and Dragons. I know I'm not the only one on this forum who've tossed them a few bucks for a chance at a better than average card.

First time I've seen Activision just throw money away when it was staring them in the face. I mean, not x-platform and not for mobile devices... wtf? Seriously?

This isn't actually that surprising. There are fucking untold piles of cash being made by shitty mobile CCGs all over right now. People have mentioned Rage of Bahamut already, but I don't think anyone has really realized the scope of that thing. Mobbage (who publishes in the US markets) recently bought a 20% stake in CyGames (the jpn devs) for 92 MILLION fucking dollars. It's just unreal the amount of money those types of games are raking in right now, so ActiBlizz wanting in on it smells about right to me.

Ronne_sl said:

This isn't actually that surprising.

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It is surprising that they're not actually making it for mobile platforms though. Really fucking surprising.

joeboo_sl said:

Dumb

I miss the good ol' days when I actually cared about Blizzard :/

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Exactly this.

I was underwhelmed at the launch of this, but I did decide to reserve judgement until playing it.

I have now played it and... its not too shabby. It most certainly is a trading card game and if anything I would have to say it felt like the Everquest card game that you can play from inside EQ and EQ2, but with more class-specific flavor and humor.

For what it is I found it to be quite entertaining and would probably play this from inside WoW while waiting on a LFD/LFR queue rather than do pet battles. I can also see it being an amusing diversion on the ipad while chilling out or waiting around for something. The game play was not nearly as immediately intuitive as the canned demo and shoutcase would have you believe, but at the same time if you have ever played any sort of trading card game before you will pick up on it quickly.

The class specific elements made it have a certain "Mage Wars" feel and I have to wonder if that successful card game from last year wasn't at least a partial influence on the design.

Overall verdict is that while it is certainly underwhelming, it IS fun and does seem to have Blizzard flair to it. I'm looking forward to trying it out more later.