...but you should pay money to play Hearthstone.
Hearthstone is a deck building online multiplayer game staring the characters from World of Warcraft. Each deck contains a hero and 30 cards that you pick from an available pool. Each hero has a class warrior, rogue, preist etc. These classes all have their own cards that include spells and effects on your gameplay and some even have exclusive minions. This gives you a lot of variables to take into concern when building your deck as well as upping the learning curve.
If you read learning curve and just had that mini gamer panic attack we all do when we realize we're getting in pretty deep pretty fast don't worry there is a cornucopia of websites and forum posts dedicated to the minutia of deck building and which cards will help which hero the most. Of course I have looked at these sites exactly no times at all because who wants to do research to play a game. I'll just fail constantly for a while and have irreparable stats as my legacy. After playing for hours and hours it is pretty obvious what type of deck i will be building. My most succesful deck uses the age old strategy of online multiplayer gaming, the cheaper and more obnoxious you play the better you will do.
In fact I built a deck with the only motivation of causing whoever played to me to suffer an anger stroke at just how obnoxiously my cards played out. If your interested, this is my Paladin build. If you don't care or haven't played the game yet skip this part it will just annoy you (mission accomplished).
blessing of might x2 (paladin card)
hand of protection x2 (paladin card)
Humility (paladin card)
redemption (paladin card) (white gem)
shieldbearer (white gem)
holy light (paladin card)
ironfur grizzly x2
raid leader
silverback patriarch x2
truesilver champion (paladin card)
blessing of kings x2 (paladin card)
consecration (paladin card)
hammer of wrath (paladin card)
sen'jin shieldmasta x2
abomination (blue gem)
booty bay bodyguard
darkscale healer
frostwolf warlord
lord of the arena x2
reckless rocketeer
sunwalker (blue gem)
guardian of kings (paladin card)
stormwind champion
The stars indicate rarity of the cards. Don't fret I got these all pretty quickly in the game. there are 5 levels or rarity for cards: basic (no gem), common (white gem), rare (blue gem), Epic (purple gem), legendary (orange gem). It's pretty easy to build competent decks with all basic cards if you want to be a purist since they are all unlocked just by leveling the different heroes up to 10.
Whether they be physical or digital there are a veritable shit tonne of deck building games out there so why should you choose the newest version of Yugi-oh? Well because this is the only deck building game made by blizzard and even though i'm not a honk i do admit that when they finally make a game once every couple of years that game ends up being pretty sweet and literally an amazing amount of fun to play. Hearthstone isn't even done yet, It's still in beta! It's already well polished but it's a fair bet Blizzard is still working away on their genius machines in addiction headquarters making this game better and better every day. The game is free there is nothing to loose so you should play for realz bro.
Yes it is a free to play game. Yes there are in game purchases available and I have heard the lamentations of gamers out there. "I would try Hearthstone but I don't want to pay money to be able to match the other players." I don't want to sound like a Blizzard PR rep but these worries are wrong and you should give blizzard your money anyway. We've all played WOW and we've all payed money to play WOW and we all felt like we got adequate returns on our investment. Unless you didn't play WOW and somehow are reading a video game blog post about a game that is a spinoff of WOW in which case you should go play WOW. Just enough for it to ruin your life and keep you from judging the rest of us who have already been there.
Lets get back to the super interesting financial part. Hearthstone rewards you with packs of cards that you buy for in game gold. 100 gold gets you one pack. You get gold by completing quests or racking up wins streaks in multiplayer. Each pack of cards contains 5 individual cards with at least one being a rare or better. So you can get even the rarest cards in the game by chance and all you have to do is play enough to get a little bit of gold which really doesn't take that long.
Real life actual money comes into the equation because you can buy the packs of cards in various bundles at different prices. They start at $1.50 and the bigger the bundle the more you save. Basically like the vast majority of free to play games you pay money just to save time but since the time investment in hearthstone before you see rewards is minimal it's not really that important. You might get a slight edge by being able to get cards faster than using in game money but it is still up to chance and ironically enough I've gotten a fat goose egg by going this route. Yes that is right I paid $10 to get seven packs of cards and I got basically nothing. All my strongest cards came out of packs that I bought with gold. I'm not urging you to pay real life dollar bills on this method of getting cards instead I urge you to pay to play in the arena.
The arena costs $2 to enter or 150 gold and your deck is random. You start off by picking a random hero class and then the cards come up three at a time and you pick your favorite. The bad effect of the randomness is how hard it is to build a deck that synergizes very well within itself. On the other hand the best part of arena is all the cards are potentially available to your deck so you might get to have a taste of the most powerful cards in the game.
In the arena the more wins you rack up in your three lives the more glorious loot you get. Your drops are varying amounts of gold arcane dust and best of all just for entering you get a pack of cards.
What makes the arena the best play mode in the game is the old school arcade multiplayer feel to it. It's not unlike when you used to walk up to Street Fighter II cabinet in an arcade, drop in a quarter and start working over the computer as dhalsim because you feel quirky today and even though Ken is the best fighter in the game when you want to rack up some victories, you woke up with a case of the fuck arounds and dhalsim's arms stretch pretty effin long and the first time you went to yoga and your arms didn't stretch you got totally bummed out. That's why you should play arena mode on hearthstone because the people who designed the characters in Street Fighter II, although colorful and inventive as they might be, are fucking liars. Did you know that the three skulls around Dhalsim's neck are the remains of children from his village in inda that died during a plague. Now how the fuck do you step against a dude who has kid skulls around his neck?
You don't have to pay money to play Hearthstone
A Year in Azeroth
So crappy Blogger erased the post I made a week ago about how Shaun and I have been playing World of Warcraft for exactly a year now.
I had some handy calculations figuring out how much I have actually paid for WoW this year and how it compared to buying new 360 games. It worked out to something like the equivalent of 4 new Xbox games. Knowing how I play Xbox games, I doubt I would play each of those 4 games for 3 months (making a year) so WoW has been worth it. Plus, that is including initial purchase costs of WoW, Burning Crusade, and Wrath of the Lich King. If I play for another year and there is no new expansions it is only like 3 Xbox games, so even better value for my play time.
There is also the case of how much time played. Well, all I know is that after 4 or 5 months we moved to a different server, and my main character on the NEW server has played for something like 20 days...so like 500 hours. And that is only my main character. On the NEW server. Scary. Then again I did rack up over 400 hours on Monster Hunter for PSP which was no quests, no storylines, just slaughtering monsters...so basically what I am saying is this is a terrifying statistic and I should stop talking about it.
I am convinced that the devil works at Blizzard, because every time I was feeling a bit bored of WoW or felt the game was getting a little stale, they come out of NOWHERE and suck me back in.
"Hmm I'm a little bored of leveling right now."
"Oh here is a new patch with an entirely new dungeon and area to level in, and a major storyline swerve that changes the entire game."
"Hmm I've played all the classes and I'm bored of them."
"Hey guess what we reworked every single class and made them all more fun and exciting and added new talents to make everything new and fresh again."
"Dang, I'm still bored now even with these new talents and everything."
"Merry Christmas, here is a new class that is unbelievably fun and refreshing to play as."
And it's not just me! Shaun said he was going to quit WoW. Dale and I had our doubts and made a bet on how long he would last. We ended up both being wrong because Shaun's declaration of quitting WoW lasted LESS THAN A DAY.
How the WoW Patch is like an NHL game
There are many great things about WoW, but one of the best is how they constantly release new content to keep everything new. Granted, this balances out with paying monthly fees, but it's still pretty awesome.
Case in point, the latest patch that was released ON MY BIRTHDAY. Now, most patches for games do things like:
• fix bugs
• fix a monster that is 100x harder then it was designed to be
• fix your fireball spell that instead of shooting fireballs kills you dead
This is what most patches are. Game fixes. However WoW patches are insane. They release new areas, new monsters, new items...they release more in patches then some games do in entire expansions. Because hardly anyone I know plays WoW I will explain it in terms as if you were at a home game for your favorite NHL team.
1. You're at the game and before it starts, they tell you the power will go out after the first period and it will be down for an hour. (WoW was down for a day while they updated and after we had to download a massive 2.5gb patch.)
2. The lights come back on, and the hockey game starts up again. You notice all the jerseys got overhauled and look better now. (WoW graphics got tuned up noticeably.)
3. In addition to being able to skate, shoot, pass, hit, and fight, the players are now able to turn back time. (After years of having a set number of professions such as blacksmithing, enchanting, alchemy, Blizzard introduced a new one called Inscription which is changing the entire game. It is like Diablo's gem-slotting system, but for actual abilities instead of gear.)
4. Whenever someone does a drop pass, their team gets a bonus penalty shot. (Blizzard made some of the old professions grant special bonuses, like extra health or an improved critical hit chance.)
5. You know that 4th line scrub on your favorite team that plays approximately 13 seconds a game? Yeah he got traded. For Alexander Ovechkin. And every other player on your team also skates harder and shoots faster. (Every class got huge power/enjoyment boosts, and Dale and Shaun's favorite class - the Paladin - went from being one of the weakest classes to one of the best.)
6. Speaking of players, you know the prima donna player on your team who is really good but gets in trouble off the ice, complains all the time, and causes fights in the dressing room? Well, he's had a change of heart and is now a perfect teammate, took a pay cut to help the team, donates huge amounts of money to charity, and offered to paint your house. (The Hunter class gets an animal pet/companion who fights with you, but before it was pretty flawed - you had to keep feeding the pet to increase its happiness, capture other animals to learn special pet skills, and not all pets were equally good. But now, the happiness system is gone, all pets already come with their skills, and each of the different pet types are all good. PLUS, they added more tame-able pets. PLUS!!! they gave each type of pet their own special skill tree to customize. It's insanely awesome.)
7. Earlier you bought a hot dog, but now you wish you had gotten some nachos instead. Well, turns out the arena now lets you pay like a buck to switch! And to top it off, when you're choosing your new selection, you also see new things on the menu that weren't available before, like an ice cream sundae! (There is now a barber shop where you can change the appearance choices you made when making your character, and you can also select hairstyles that are not available at the character creation screen.)
8. During the game, fans start doing the Wave. You take part, and a nearby security guard hands you a little souvenir pin. Later on, you buy a game program and receive a second pin. Curious, you ask the program seller and discover that now when you do certain things at the game, you'll receive these useless but fun pins. (WoW took a page out of the XBOX 360's book and introduced Achievements, with many of them being retroactive. At current count there are over 900 TO GET.)
9. Last week, your team announced that during the playoffs, every fan in attendance would receive a free ice cream sandwich each game. Well, it's still the regular season, but now the team has decided to start their free ice cream promotion early, and everyone gets free frozen treats! (In the WoW expansion coming mid-November, the level cap is being raised from 70 to 80, which means new higher-level skills will be available. Blizzard decided to make these higher-level skills available now, for free!)
10. If you smoke or have to leave the arena in the middle of the game for whatever reason, you used to have to keep and show your ticket stub to get back in. But now, the security guards memorize your face, and when you come back, you can just freely re-enter the building. (Riding mounts and pets used summoned from items, which meant you had to keep them in your inventory, taking up a bag space. But now they become spells, meaning no item, meaning no unnecessary bag clutter.)
waiting for wow patch
Well we're sitting around Mike's house waiting for his shitty internet to let the newest Wow patch trickle through. Besides cursing our non hakerz abilities and being outsmarted by whatever firewall is making Mike's "dial-up" make me wait to play the delicious game I am actually starting to wonder what I did before wow.
Wow is already ruining my life as you probably guessed by the fact that I am sitting around waiting for it to download. I could play xbox I guess but since it has been about 2 months since I got a new game that is very unappealing. Looking at internet dating sites (which i guess could be considered a time churner) is also out but for different reasons. It's depressing. Apparently no one wants to have sex with me. Worse yet they aren't even pretending they do. At least give me that build up with no follow through even that is better than an empty in box. It gives me the fear that my virility has withered and wasted away.
Back to more important matters--namely why I am waiting for the wow patch. I guess I am officially one of "those weirdo gamers" we all pretend we aren't. I am pretty stoked for the patch because they made the Paladin a way better class. Apparently everyone in the world hates the paladin besides me so Blizzard decided to juice that particular class a bit by making even more badass. They increased the healing spells a bit but most importantly they made the Judgment spell so that it doesn't break your seal which is a pretty fucking big deal in baseball town. Also the seals last 2 min instead of 20 seconds so its actually worth your time to use them besides the fact you can throw as many hammers as your little hearts content.
On a side note the other day mike glitched on the deep way tram or whatever its called between the human and dwarf cities and he got booted. When he tried to sign in again he kept getting booted. I decided to do what anyone in my position would feel compelled to do.... Kill rats.
I killed 35 with my cleaver but then got bored and switched to punching them and when i got bored of that i switched back to the cleaver by the time mike got back i had killed 63 rats.
so i started playing wow
Yeah its ruining my life. Its true when you hear about people talking about wow and you look sideways at them with disdain. I'm not going to tell you to stop doing that because really i am not trying to defend or condemn wow. Were all sick of that anywaw. I mean the game has been out for about 5 years and that has given everyone enough chance to fully cement their opinion of it and feel the need to share that opinion.
My opinion of the game is it is just like other action rpg games. Its all the regular stuff you would expect from one of those its just really really really really fucking long.I've been playing for about a week now roughly 18 hours and my highest level guy is 15. Yeah my highest level because as if the game isn't long enough you feel compelled to go through it with multiple characters. So you can try out all the stuff you can do in the game.
What this turns into basically is fetch quests... go here kill this bring me that. Its pretty annoying and if i hear "bring me so and so's head" I might have a redundancy stroke.
But the game does have its fun factors. It is an action rpg and to me thats really all it needs to be and if I get bored of running around going to a lake and killing murlocs to gather crystal pond frons well then i can just go fuck around.
Like making a macro to say this because my weapon is a shovel.
Blizzard's Brilliant Bot Ban Bonanza
In WoW, the average player will probably be disrupted about once a day with a message from a gold seller. This will be a message offering to sell gold, items, leveling, even cheating programs and hacks, for real-life money. Apparently gold selling is an actual industry in China, according to whispers on the WoW forums telling of sweatshop-condition warehouses where starving children labour over hot LCD screens gathering gold pieces and desperately whoring their illicit goods to whoever will listen.
That bizarre and depressing thought aside, many gold sellers instead use botting programs, which are software programs that will automatically play the game for you. These programs can be very basic, such as telling your character to attack the nearest monster, collect the loot, then attack the nearest monster, etc. Others can be much more complex, essentially becoming basic programming. A moderately advanced botting program could have a slew of conditional reactions set up, like log out if someone whispers you more than once, wave at people who come near, fight back if someone attacks you - in other words, act more like a real person. One can clearly see why such programs would be helpful to people who are trying to get massive amounts of gold to resell for cash.
Blizzard has made it very clear that botting or other third-person software programs that play the game for you or automate the game are against their terms of service and are not allowed. However, people still do it. BUT NOT ANYMORE.
This week, Blizzard banned over 350,000 accounts for botting.
Coincidentally, the much-hyped Age of Conan MMO game was also released this week.
The forums are ablaze with people who used botting programs whining and complaining that the bans are unfair. "I only used it once" or "I just used it because leveling was getting boring" are some of the common excuses. Many are also resorting to angry retorts that WoW sucks and WoW players are losers, followed by vows to switch over to Age of Conan in retribution. I love these ones, where they're trying to convince themselves that they decided to leave the game instead of being kicked out. It's like the kid who gets fired for stealing from the cash register, only to angrily yell at his now-former boss "You can't fire me! Because I QUIT!!"
Not only are these complaints hilarious, but it's actually a brilliant move by Blizzard. They have a) purged hundreds of thousands of cheaters from their game, which makes for a better gaming experience for the legitimate players, and b) royally screwed over an upcoming competitor by sending said cheaters over to their door. If I was starting Age of Conan and immediately upon starting the game was pestered by hundreds of spammers trying to sell me gold and items, I would be extremely irritated.
I can just imagine the Age of Conan team upon learning of these bans.
"Okay guys, the game is launched, this is it! We're going to have the best game ever! It's going to have a solid fanbase, loyal players, quality fun, we'll be able to compete with World of Warcraft...what's that, what are you looking at?"
"Blizzard just banned 350,000 botters."
"Oh."
"The botters are mad."
"Okay..."
"They're saying they're going to switch over to Age of Conan."
"Oh. Oh no. OH SHIT. Quick, close the registration page!"
"Too late. 100,000 people just signed up."
"Well, fuck."
BEARS
Yesterday my brother and I decided to level up one of my lower-level characters in WOW, so he could get the next rank of the Enchanting profession which would help us all. We figured that my brother's higher level character (level 47 or something like that) could just accompany my level 22 mage into a low-level area, slaughter everything around, and my mage could finish a billion quests in 10 minutes. Well things didn't work out quite so smoothly.
We went to an area called Tarren Mill and I picked up about ten quests, which were all "go kill X of this thing" or "get X of this item" which you could only get by killing certain things. So we headed into the field looking to kill gray bears, mountain lions, farmers, peasants, spiders, councilmen, a blacksmith, blacksmith's assistants, a sheriff, and a miner. Basically everything that moved. Since we are in the same house we didn't have to text chat or voice chat to communicate, we just yelled back and forth from adjacent rooms.
Well what we quickly discovered is that since my brother's paladin was so much higher level than the area is meant for, the enemies would ignore him as he ran by. However, since I was low level they had no trouble seeing me and would start chewing my face off as I tried to follow him.
What this meant was about every thirty seconds it was like:
"Bear!"
"Spider!
"Bear!! Help!"
"BEAR!"
"GRAY BEAR!"
"VICIOUS GRAY BEAR!!"
I died about a dozen times, but eventually we finished up and headed back to town with a pile of bear claws, spider venom, HUMAN SKULLS FROM FARMERS/PEASANTS, and a shipment of iron.
Then my brother went up to get a drink and our dad says "Tell him to shut up about those stupid bears!"
FOUND: Lost Vikings
The Warcraft series is unquestionably Blizzard's most well-known franchise, though the Starcraft and Diablo names are certainly no slouches. But not many would remember some of their older titles, like The Lost Vikings. (Hell, they weren't even called Blizzard back in 1992 when it was released.) It was a great game, there were three vikings (possibly brothers, I don't remember) who were somehow lost in time and had to navigate these puzzle-based levels to find their way home. What made the game fun was that you controlled all three, but only one at a time, and each had their own skills that you had to use to get around the levels.
• Olaf the Stout had a shield that could block everything from arrows to laser beams, and could use it to slowly float down when falling. Also, I think he could hold the shield up so others could walk on it.
• Erik the Swift was fast and was the only Viking who could run and jump, and he could also headbutt enemies or walls
• Baleog the Fierce had a bow and sword and could kill enemies or use the bow to hit faraway switches.
It was a fun game and a nice twist on traditional puzzle/platform games. Blizzard actually has a playable demo on their site of the Game Boy Advance version. This should be checked out, if for nothing else than the awesome guitar riff at the title screen.
Fast forward to 2008. I'm playing World of Warcraft and poking around these ancient dwarven ruins killing cavemen and giant bats. Tucked away in a corner of the dungeon I find...you guessed it...Olaf, Erik and Baleog.
I play a Horde character, who is enemies with humans and dwarves, so they were enemies to me. I'm not sure if they would be friendly for the human side. But anyways, I fought them and it was true to the old game - Erik had some kind of speed ability where he'd zip around everywhere, Baleog shot arrows, and Olaf had a giant shield and would shield bash you. The dropped suitable treasure as well, such as a shield that would slow your fall and a helmet that let you charge at people and stun them. Definitely one of the best moments in WoW that I've encountered.
