This is from Massively.
Click through for the full read. With any luck Hearthstone's beta will be less-closed when our SolForge tournament is over.The first thing that hit me when I logged into Hearthstone after begging a beta invite off a friend was an overwhelming tsunami of nostalgia for World of Warcraft. It wasn't surprising, of course; this is the card battling spin-off of WoW by the folks who make WoW. But for a player who hasn't set foot in Azeroth for some time now, the audio and visual cues were like the hit of a powerful drug that opened the pathways to all sorts of memories.
The chunky, goofy exterior that Blizzard slathers across the Warcraft franchise often belays a serious depth that number-crunchers and elite strategists attempt to plumb. Both are perfectly at home in Hearthstone, which is affable on the surface but, like many CCGs, has no end to the possibilities in builds and play sessions.
So what's it like to sit down to an evening with Hearthstone? I'm glad you asked.
Welcome to my inn!
At first glance, Hearthstone is a lot less busy than both World of Warcraft and, say, Magic Online (an online card battling title I spent well over a year playing). It boasts a simple interface that creates the impression that you're in one of the game's fantasy inns, throwing down a few cards while a nearby fire crackles. The clean-cut look of the game will undoubtedly serve its upcoming tablet version well.
In fact, Blizzard has gone to great lengths to pare down the CCG to its basics, dress it up in the franchise's outfit, and polish it within an inch of its life. There are only a few options available when you get into the game. You can check out your collection and build a deck, you can buy new decks from the store, you can craft new cards from old ones, you can check out quests and your progress, and you can play in one of three game modes: practice (versus the computer), play (versus a similarly matched opponent), and arena (draft play-for-pay).
Before I could get to any of that, the game put me through a mandatory tutorial in which I learned the mechanics of Hearthstone over the course of several matches. It's a good tutorial that takes about half an hour, and by the end of it I felt pretty confident that I knew how to play without completely embarrassing myself.