Herathstone Heroes of Warcraft Beta Review

You all know Blizzard, the developers of the famous World of Warcraft, but do you know they are brining out a digital card game?

Hearthstone Heroes of Warcraft is not an unheard of concept, but it implements easier to use features and well known characters from the World of Warcraft universe. Leroy Jenkins, Mad Bomber and even Deathwing make an appearance in all their glory. The story behind this as far as I can tell is that it is essentially a table top bar game in Azeroth (Judging by what is told by what little narrating there is). Then again, this type of game rarely has much of a back story, it's about the gameplay, the balancing and the experience. You play as one of nine characters, each with their own deck and special "hero ability", this is a 2 mana cost ability, often with a small amount of power but very useful. What separates this from other digital card games I've played is the use of mana crystals, gaining one per turn, rather than having to play (and have in your deck) cards that allow you to summon minions. The advantage of this is that it is not only simpler, but less luck of the draw style play. It also gives the game a fluency that I sorely missed when playing the most recent Magic game.

  As for the graphics, they are high quality, very pleasing on the eye and, most importantly, leagues above what would be it's main competitor, Magic. Take a look above, see how nice the design looks? Each little design in the corner of the board does different animations when clicked, one is even a catapult! The golden card on my side is animated which means not only does it look badass, it is badass. The game plays essentially the same as other games in the genre, but it just feels like that little bit extra has been put into it. It really feels like a game that should be played for hours. It has 4 game modes, vs AI, normal, ranked and arena. The only one which needs explaining is Arena - you pay £1.50 or 150 gold (earned by winning or doing daily quests) to get in. You assign a deck from 30 lots of 3 cards, choosing 1 card from each lot of 3. You then play PvP games until you either win 9 games or lose 3. You are assigned a set of 5 rewards depending on how many games you won. An interesting concept.
 

  Now for the bad things. This is a beta so there is a truck load of glitches (as pictured above, this is the smallest I've seen). However this will most likely be fixed before release. Another problem is hat packs and arena is quite expensive, especially since packs are the only way to gain none deck specific cards. The only other bad thing I can think of is the incredibly tiny amount of beta keys given out. You find yourself playing against either a pro or someone who has bought every card in the game. This will also be fixed when the game is released. 

 Overall I do like this game and it shows good promise for release. 8/10