I
have no standing by which to talk about World of Warcraft.
I’ll be forthright and admit that from the jump: I was too busy dealing with the Stockholm
Syndrome of more than a decade of playing Final Fantasy XI.
Which was unfortunate, since unless you only read Real Life and VG Cats, every media outlet
that needed to talk MMORPG did so in terms of World of Warcraft.
Hey, when you’ve got that big of a playerbase, such is your prerogative.
I did, however, play a heck of a lot of Warcraft II growing up.
That’s where I’m coming from when it comes to the Warcraft element of Hearthstone.
But, truth be told, that’s the least aspect of it.
What’s really going to come into play is my having played Magic: the Gathering since
4th Edition and Ice Age ruled the block, and my frequent ponderings of what that game would
look like if it were, y’know, optimized for internet play and didn’t have decades
of mechanical baggage.
That’s what we’re looking at here.
Yes, Hearthstone and Magic seem quite similar, right down to their shared language.
Both games are about collecting cards, building decks, facing off against opponents in head-to-head
matchups, and using spells and subservient creatures to beat up on each other.
The two games are so similar, you can speak of the newer in terms of the older, and folks
can understand almost exactly what you’re on about.
If a Hearthstone player describes Harvest Golem as “A ? that leaves a 2/1 token when
it dies,” anyone who’s played Magic for twelve seconds can understand what’s going
on.
That’s what they have in common.
The differences, though, demonstrate that Hearthstone is a game designed specifically
for online competition.
Each of the game’s nine classes has a specialized card pool (augmented by a wide range of neutral
cards) as well as a Hero Power that can always be played if you’ve got the mana to cast
it.
Heroes start at 30 health rather than 20, attacks and spells can be played in any order
during a turn (rather than all attacks happening in one phase), you have the option of attacking
your opponent’s minions directly, and minion health doesn’t return between turns as it
would in Magic.
This last part is crucial, as even an insurmountable foe can be brought low by enough small hits,
even if they’re spread out.
Attrition is everyone’s friend.
But I’d like to touch on something that really stood out to me: the use of the word
Random.
Random is a touchy space when it comes to competitive games.
Heck, part of the reason Pokémon’s card game isn’t nearly as well received as it
could be is the inherent difficulty in playing around coin flips.
Hearthstone, on the other hand, has completely random effects that go above and beyond a
simple 50/50, and eventually become the kinds of things that would be utterly impossible
or impractical in physical space - like a Priest spell that randomly copies two cards
out of your opponent’s deck and drops them in your hand.
Other games have done this, too, in digital spaces where such effects were feasible, like
the Pokémon Card Game for the Game Boy Color, or the 1997 MicroProse release of Magic: the
Gathering featuring the never-actually-printed Astral cards.
Hands up, all you folks who remember that the Goblin Polka Band was actually a thing.
But despite this, folks are, indeed, playing Hearthstone with the kind of crazed devotion
that would befit League of Legends, Starcraft, or any other game considered legitimate in
the eyes of the e-sports types.
To that end, there’s a deep ranked-play ladder - with quick matchmaking times in all
of my experiences.
And here’s the freaky part: It’s free-to-play.
Relatively speaking.
Yes, you can be impatient and just throw down hard-earned cash for packs, or you can spend
the in-game gold you generate by playing online matches and completing the quests issued to
you daily.
You won’t be competitive right off the bat, but in the space of a week I was able to go
from never having played before to climbing almost a dozen rank levels, without spending
a dime.
And most of that gold went to the draft-tastic Arena mode, which can yield better payouts
for the price of a pack and a half… if you can keep your win streak going.
Even if you don’t like the cards you get, you can pound them into aetherial shmutz to
build the cards you do want… but be warned, this path can get real expensive, real fast.
The very words “Free to play” carry a stigma… but here, it’s completely unfounded.
Just appreciate the art, the various battlefields, the shiny effects of each attack that have
just a hint of lag on occasion but aren’t that bad, the twangy, fantasy-appropriate
pub music, and the delightfully deranged battle cries of each of your heroes and minions.
Put this apple on your head, indeed.
While Pokémon and Magic might have their online platforms, neither are nearly as full-bodied
as Hearthstone; they are, at best, either stripped-down versions or require the purchase
of real packs to play online.
Here we have a concept, designed for online, designed for balance, and designed to be so
enticing that, yeah, maybe you will plop down some real cash if you absolutely positively
need to play one more Arena before bedtime, just to take the edge off.
Trust me, the temptation is there in a way it’s never been for me before, and I don’t
know how I feel about that.
Obviously I need to watch a bunch more streams, get the rest of my decks golden, redeem that
free World of Warcraft mount I now apparently have...