Welcome to the Inn: Hearthstone Open Beta Begins
Hearthstone's public existence has yet to pass the one year mark, and yet in that time the collectable card game from Blizzard has surrounded itself in a massive storm of attention. That storm may finally have reached its pinnacle here in the US as the World of Warcraft inspired CCG has just been released into open beta with all other regions joining later this week. Anyone who had already signed up for the closed beta before December 16th received an invite before the open beta began.
Hearthstone drew criticism last year after it was revealed players in the closed beta would not have their accounts wiped before open beta, giving closed beta participants a massive card advantage over newly entering open beta players. Blizzard originally intended to release Hearthstone in December, but delayed the release in order to fix some pressing last minute bugs.
Hearthstone is available on both PC and Mac, with iOS and Android promised sometime in the future. Players who have yet to try out Hearthstone will need a Blizzard Battle.net account which they can sign up for here.
About the Author
Michael Dunaway has been part of the MMOBomb team for years and has covered practically every major Free-to-Play MMO title since 2009.
More Stories by Michael DunawayDiscussion (28)
Read Next
It seems as though the RTS series Command and Conquer is destined for a Free-to-Play title after-all.
You May Enjoy
It's all about the backend being a bit of a mess.
Big anniversaries but no big show is still kind of sad.
That includes weapon ranking.
You may not have to roll a d20, but there are new gadgets and agent reworks to explore.
It kinda sucks we'll have to play against players from closed beta, they've got such huge advantage now. Hopefully there's a balanced matchmaking system that wont match us against too experienced players.
20% info(knowing cards)
15% cards( what you have)
10% guessing(other player hand)
5% skill
same with most card games....
The game is quite fun hehe