Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft [ Page 2 ]

Life on Hearthstone Is a Strange Web Cartoon About Depression

YouTuber SuperDoTheGames has an interesting 5 part video series called "Life in Hearthstone." It's hard to describe but it's something like a "hand drawn personal hearthstone poetry reading" but... stranger and more honest. At least it seems like these videos are a somewhat autobiographical process for the creator or just some really dark satire. Maybe both.

Are Some Apps And Games The New Nicotine?

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A month ago after the launch of the latest Hearthstone expansion I decided to stop playing. It seemed like the right thing to do after playing it nearly every day for four years but I wondered if it would be hard to walk away from a game I played for so long? Come to find out it wasn't hard at all. Occasionally I check the Hearthstone community for interesting developments and there are some but for the most part I am just missing out on a new meta card cycle and new bag of community salt that comes from such a high profile game.

One of the reasons why I thought it might be hard to step away from a game i've played for almost four years is because of the sunk cost and... Read All

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 05/18/2017 at 05:33am

I saw that clip of Bill Maher as he just recently posted it. I kind of agree with his analysis, but I don't know that it's quite comparable to nicotine. I do play Words With Friends daily and I have other games I play. Gaming takes up a majority of my time, but I don't dare call it an addiction. I also watch stuff on YouTube, Amazon, and Netflix.

I'm surprised you decided to stop playing Hearthstone. You're the most enthusiastic Hearthstone gamer I know. I can compare my own relevant experience though. I've played Ark quite a lot in the last two years, in single player mode, on a server, and with mods. I took some breaks, sure, but there's always more to come back to since development is still on-going. I haven't played it much lately, which means there's plenty of "new" stuff for me. It seems like with two more patches all the creatures will be released. They're almost done with this stage of development, which has gotten extended.

I used to spend more time on Facebook and even played more apps, but I stopped. I got unhappy with my newsfeed and decided to ignore it and that's worked out for me. I'd be fine without it, but it provides and easy way to be in touch with many.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 05/19/2017 at 03:13am

> I saw that clip of Bill Maher as he just recently posted it. I kind of agree with his analysis, but I don't know that it's quite comparable to nicotine.

It's not a perfect analogy but I think for some people it's a good one. If you look at the habits of people now lots of us are buried in our phones and less responsive to people. I'm not saying smartphones are bad, I think they are one of the coolest inventions of all time but they allow us the ability to be connected 24/7 and I think that comes with a real world cost. For instance, I put my phone down when i'm with my son and am spending time watching him because I find that if I have my phone I spend more time doing that than playing with him. He is 11 months old now and I don't want to miss much as he is so sweet and if I was really hooked on Hearthstone or something else that would really take away from time with him.

> I'm surprised you decided to stop playing Hearthstone. You're the most enthusiastic Hearthstone gamer I know.

Yeah, it's a great game and if I had to make a top 50 list it would be on it! I love gaming but I think it's a good thing to see what other games are out there and see if I could play something else for a time. I still plan on coming back to Hearthstone at some point but it's good to just step away for no other reason than I can and it's been a nice change.

> I used to spend more time on Facebook and even played more apps, but I stopped. I got unhappy with my newsfeed and decided to ignore it and that's worked out for me. I'd be fine without it, but it provides and easy way to be in touch with many.

I used to check Facebook more times a day than I could count. Hundreds maybe. In the end I found the discussions to largely be toxic, the information I was taking in to not be useful and I didn't find the time I spent there to be something I was happy with. I now just go there to share baby pictures (because people asked me to) and that's about it. Funny thing is I thought that not logging in for a week would mean I wouldn't know what was happening in the world but I still read news sites so I still understand current events. I just miss people telling me what they think about it because i'm not reading that anymore.

I think in the end I like being able to focus my time in ways I think is useful and so far it's worked out pretty well. I also like talking about this kind of thing because I like thinking about it. Is the time we spend most of our lives on really how we want to live? Maybe for everyone it is, but i've found that thinking about it and figuring out where you want to be can inform the choices you make and that can have a useful outcome on your life.

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 05/19/2017 at 03:46am

>It's not a perfect analogy but I think for some people it's a good one. If you look at the habits of people now lots of us are buried in our phones and less responsive to people. I'm not saying smartphones are bad, I think they are one of the coolest inventions of all time but they allow us the ability to be connected 24/7 and I think that comes with a real world cost. For instance, I put my phone down when i'm with my son and am spending time watching him because I find that if I have my phone I spend more time doing that than playing with him. He is 11 months old now and I don't want to miss much as he is so sweet and if I was really hooked on Hearthstone or something else that would really take away from time with him.

I agree with you. I always see people on their phones, driving, walking, standing, sitting, etc. The Internet is hype. LOL I don't spend much time on my phone unless I'm not at home. Then it still depends. If I'm out of Pokeballs and not near a Pokestop, then there's not much reason for me to play Pokemon Go. Haha.

>I used to check Facebook more times a day than I could count. Hundreds maybe. In the end I found the discussions to largely be toxic, the information I was taking in to not be useful and I didn't find the time I spent there to be something I was happy with. I now just go there to share baby pictures (because people asked me to) and that's about it. Funny thing is I thought that not logging in for a week would mean I wouldn't know what was happening in the world but I still read news sites so I still understand current events. I just miss people telling me what they think about it because i'm not reading that anymore

Yes, my experience is similar, it's too toxic and negative. I also "get my news" from a wide variety of other sources, much of which I read or watch on YouTube.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 05/20/2017 at 03:48am

> The Internet is hype.

Truest statement ever.

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When Is It Time To Take a Hearthbreak?

In March 2013 I wrote a post about a upcoming new digital card game Blizzard was developing called Hearthstone. I got access to the beta and thought it was wicked fun and when it later launched on mobile I was absolutely hooked. Like the kind of hooked where you play it every day to grind your quest dailies for gold, follow every expansion closely, read up on strategies online as well as new deck recipes and then create your own web show hooked. You know.... hooked. And I have no regrets about that because Hearthstone has been a nearly free hobby that has simply cost me time and has been an immense amount of fun. It feels like I win more than my fair share of the time... Read All In March 2013 I wrote a post about a upcoming new digital card game Blizzard was developing called Hearthstone. I got access to the beta and thought it was wicked fun and when it later launched on mobile I was absolutely hooked. Like the kind of hooked where you play it every day to grind your quest dailies for gold, follow every expansion closely, read up on strategies online as well as new deck recipes and then create your own web show hooked. You know.... hooked. And I have no regrets about that because Hearthstone has been a nearly free hobby that has simply cost me time and has been an immense amount of fun. It feels like I win more than my fair share of the time and I haven't historically had any huge objection to the game or it's direction. Lately Blizzard has made some changes to the game I think aren't great but those don't really contribute too much to where I am right now. All that said, i've been playing Hearthstone for nearly every day for 4 years(honestly I think i've missed only a handful of days in that time) and i'm thinking about stepping away for a while. At least, I really want to and am trying to figure out how.

I don't think i'm hooked to the point of having a problem. I'm pretty sure I'm not so crazy about Hearthstone that I can't actually bring myself to stop playing it but when you do something so much(like playing a game every day for four years) not doing it feels weird. Or at least thinking about not doing it feels weird. But I think that may be a good reason to stop playing. That and the game is starting to feel like a chore. Gaming is a fun hobby I have, it shouldn't feel like work and when it does I think it's time to think about stepping away for a time. But it's hard to step away from some kinds of games, especially Hearthstone because of it's free to play reality.

To win at standard Hearthstone you need to have good decks. The way to get good decks is to open packs. To open packs you need in game gold or money. If you want to not spend money in Hearthstone and open packs you need to win quests. Winning quests means you need to grind your daily quests. To open the most amount of packs you need to clear your daily quests and not have them stack up which means you, mostly, need to grind quests daily. Doing this and rerolling lower gold quests for higher value ones means you can open about 78-ish packs per expansion which means that if you do that you can have a good shot to get a fair amount of good cards to keep playing the game and repeat this cycle. So far, it's been a really fun cycle but it's starting to feel more grindy and WAY less appealing to me. I don't think it's anything to do with the game design but just something i'm less interested in doing after doing it this long.

Hearthstone did just launch the new Un'Goro expansion that just blew the door open on the amount of legendaries it added to an expansion set. What I mean by that is that they increased the amount of legendaries you can get which means it is no longer reasonable for a free to play player to be able to play with even a modest amount of the power cards in a set. Before, the amount of legendaries in a set that were good was limited therefore it was easier to acquire the good ones. Now that each class has two legendaries (one being a very cool class specific quest) it is harder to get all the fun cards if you play for free. It's even harder(if you can imagine) if you pay $50 for 50 packs for each expansion. Because of the increased legendary count and the fact that the fun class quests are legendaries many people felt the pinch and honestly the only way to get all the legendary class quests is to spend a lot of money on packs.

As a free to play player I never cared about owning all the cards. I really still don't, it's just something you have to live with. But it's sad to see the free to play aspect of the game seem to slip further away. I get that Blizzard might want to make a bit more money with Hearthstone but annoying me and annoying someone that spends $50 each expansion is really different and the latter pays to keep the lights on for the game. I've always enjoyed that Hearthstone has other players that spend lots of money in the game because I never did and wanted to keep playing it so I was happy other people could fund it's development. But I wonder at what people will people feel like it's no longer worth it?

At this point i'm trying to figure out about how much gold I should bank in my account before turning off the lights and taking a long Hearthbreak. The thought is that at some point I might want to come back to play it and having some amount of gold to spend on whatever new expansion is out would help get fresh with the game again. Not to say I couldn't come back and play the game in a month or so but I'm thinking of just stopping for a long period because it just feels like the right thing to do.

And I do want to thank Blizzard for making Hearthstone and up to now it's been one of the best games i've played. It's just time to take a break for a while and see what else is out there.

Hearthstone Nightlies For Ghosts Ep. 14 - Un'Goro Pack Opening & Maiev Shadowsong Quest

Hearthstones latest expansion Journey to Un'Goro is out and I was able to open 78 packs! Watch to see what I open and stick around to see some absolutely incredible matches. I play with a fun Shaman Elemental deck and take down a Warlock in what could only be described best as a 3 tier boss fight. Plus Dinomancer. Always Dinomancer.

Hearthstone's Upcoming Expansion Journey To Un'Goro Is a Dinosaur Party Coming April 6th!

The Journey To Un'Gogo is the upcoming Hearthstone expansion that set to launch on April 6th. Featuring Elementals, Dinosaurs, class quests and some other fun new cards Un'Goro looks to be a solid expansion. Make sure to log in for daily rewards every day until the launch of the game to get packs, gold and a special golden Volcanosaur(oooh!).

As with every Hearthstone expansion i'll be recording my pack opening and dropping it on YouTube so stay tuned and let me know if you are planning to jump back in to check out Un'Goro! I've been saving up in game gold and i'll have enough to open around 75 packs, woooooooo!

Check out all the new Un'Goro cards below:

... Read All

Celebrate The Year Of The Mammoth Tomorrow With Free Hearthstone Daily Rewards!

Hearthstone will be running special rewards for simply logging in March 29th through April 5th. This is a pretty special thing in Hearthstone as most CCGs have gold rewards for coming back every day and to date Hearthstone has been one of the biggest hold outs. That said for the next 8 days that changes so you should log in each day to get the 4 packs, 100 gold, 100 dust and a special Golden Volcanosaur card from the upcoming Ungoro expansion.

http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/20567513/

Journey to Un'Goro Is The All New Hearthstone Expansion To Launch In April

I am woefully late to the reporting party to let you know that the upcoming Hearthstone expansion Journey to Un'Goro has been announced and will launch in April. The announcement video by Ben Brode is well worth watching even if you're not a Hearthstone super fan. Un'Gogo will feature a couple awesome things including Dinosaurs, the new Elemental type and card quests. Card Quests cost one mana and will always show up in your opening hand and if you complete them will award you a crazy legendary like the Priest legendary Amara that's an 8/8 for 5 that sets your players health to 40! Blizzard will start the trickle of new card reveals on March 15th and continue the pace... Read All

Blizzard Dropping XP and Vista Support

In a move that shouldn't be too shocking to anyone Blizzard will drop support for Windows XP and Vista in World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Diablo III, Hearthstone, and Heroes of the Storm. Windows XP was a staple of Desktop computing for years but has been very unsupported by Microsoft since 2014. If you are on XP or Vista I seriously recommend you upgrade to 7, 8 or 10 as those offer you security updates and a more streamlined experience. With that, I imagine many people own old hardware that a modern OS just won't run on and if that's the case then i'd consider those machines a sort of retro game PC. Lots of older Blizzard games on CD will still work on XP as well... Read All

Travis Admin wrote on 02/19/2017 at 03:48am

I imagine any PC without at least Windows 7 isn't getting much gaming love these days.

It's possible those old machines could still have a life in modern times, though. XP is one thing, but even crappy PCs that came with Vista run better with 7, 8, and 10. They haven't changed a ton of the functional system requirements. I upgraded a crappy Vista pc through 7, 8, and 10 and it runs better now than ever. I use it for things I want to watch on TV but can't do so in any other way than through a browser.

That said, OS upgrades from Microsoft didn't always come with a free upgrade window like they did for 10, so you may not have a cheap/free upgrade path. If you have spare licenses and you don't mind potentially wasting one on a PC that might not have much of a life left, give it a shot.

If you have a Vista PC and this is causing you headaches I don't recommend paying for an upgrade to your OS; put that money toward a new computer.

But as for Blizzard's statement that "the games will not run on them," I bet an enterprising XP holdout could figure out how to make it work. I highly doubt there's a major audience for it, though.

Will_Ball Game Mod Super Member wrote on 02/19/2017 at 02:55pm

Noooooo!

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 02/19/2017 at 05:21pm

Noooooo!

It might be a smaller percentage but some people in that thread were upset about this. When we shipped Starship Rubicon XP was a target OS and I do remember a few people submitting bug reports on it(If memory serves). I respect people getting as much life out of a computer as they can. I love for things to last forever too and I have a machine or two with XP on it kicking around. I don't use it as a daily driver though.

Travis Admin wrote on 02/19/2017 at 09:27pm

> I have a machine or two with XP on it kicking around

I hope by "kicking around" you mean "disconnected from the internet unless absolutely necessary," because there are some serious security issues with XP that will never get patched. One big reason Microsoft tries to get people to upgrade for really amazingly cheap (Windows 8) or free (Windows 10) is because of "vaccination" in a sense. Unsupported operating systems get infected more easily leading to more crap spreading around and more botnets. Don't be part of a botnet, Jon! :D

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 02/20/2017 at 04:49pm

Thanks Travis.

Connecting a insecure device to your personal network doesn't get it compromised in seconds but if I connected it direct to the Ineternet it might. That might be a fun thing to try too. Connect a Windows XP box to the net and wait to see how long it would take till it gets owned. Since I can turn it off easily enough that might be a fun experiment.

Travis Admin wrote on 02/20/2017 at 08:35pm

Haha, yeah. I've seen that done for a laugh and it really takes next to no time at all. It's nuts!

And that was even when it was still a supported OS!

But I wasn't even talking about using it directly connected, and I wasn't saying just having it there would get it infected in seconds. Just sitting there doing nothing on your network, it's fine for the most part (not entirely), but it has a nutty amount of security holes just waiting for a malware download. Even using what you'd think is secure software. Since there's no UAC like there is in Windows Vista and above, even a responsible user with a trusty install of Firefox (not including Chrome since you can't run a secure Chrome on XP anymore) can get screwed if an ad network gets compromised, which happens. Even the most trusted ones. Microsoft was handing out malware once because the ad network they used got compromised.

If you disable the hell out of unneeded services and install an outgoing firewall (your router has you covered on incoming, for the most part but again not entirely) and only use it for old games that don't work on Vista and above, and you do no web browsing, you'll heavily mitigate the risk.

And just to be clear, it's a matter of percentages. I'm not saying XP is 100% guaranteed to get malware, not by a long shot. But it's an entirely static target now since it will never change, and it's facing dynamic threats now, and anything can happen.

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Hearthstone's Year of The Mammoth Standard Shakeup Coming!

When the Whispers of the Old Gods expansion launched the new Standard and wild formats became permanent in Hearthstone creating a yearly migration of older cards to the wild set. The details of the upcoming standard rotation hit today and Blizzard repeated which card sets were rotating out and also a bunch of new information that should shake things up even further.

Firstly the Blackrock Mountain, The Grand Tournament, and League of Explorers cards are rotating to the wild set. This isn't new news but if you've stepped away from Hearthstone for a time you might not know what cards are going to rotate out of standard. On top of that Blizzard is also moving 6 classic... Read All When the Whispers of the Old Gods expansion launched the new Standard and wild formats became permanent in Hearthstone creating a yearly migration of older cards to the wild set. The details of the upcoming standard rotation hit today and Blizzard repeated which card sets were rotating out and also a bunch of new information that should shake things up even further.

Firstly the Blackrock Mountain, The Grand Tournament, and League of Explorers cards are rotating to the wild set. This isn't new news but if you've stepped away from Hearthstone for a time you might not know what cards are going to rotate out of standard. On top of that Blizzard is also moving 6 classic cards to a new set they are calling the "Hall of Fame." The Hall of Fame aims to rotate out certain classic cards Blizzard deems to powerful to stay in the standard set because they seem to limit the design space. Whereas I like each card in The Hall of Fame rotating them to wild does make sense. Nearly each of the 6 cards have no equal and it would be really hard to make cards that are better in some way. The cards rotating to the Hall of Fame are Azure Drake, Sylvanas Windrunner, Ragnaros the Firelord, Power Overwhelming, Ice Lance & Conceal. Again, I get why Blizzard is doing this but the top 3 cards rotating to wild is a bit sad to see. That said they are going to refund us the full dust cost of the cards while allowing us to keep them in our wild set collections. Not a bad deal but i'll miss Rag and Sylvanas in standard anyway!

"We wanted to allow players to disenchant Classic cards that are being added to the Hall of Fame set for full dust refunds, but then felt that incentivizing players to dust their cool Wild cards was counter to our goal of making Wild awesome.

So instead, we're just going to give you the dust, and you can keep the cards!

Up to the maximum number of cards you could put in a deck, we will give you the full dust value of any cards you have that are being added to the Hall of Fame set. (Yes, that means if you have at least one Golden Ragnaros, you'll get 3200 dust!) The dust will be automatically awarded upon log-in once the Year of the Mammoth begins."

Originally Blizzard planned on releasing a full expansion, an adventure and another full expansion in 2017 but instead they will release three full expansions.

"Looking back, we learned a lot in 2016 with the introduction of the Year of the Kraken. One of the things we’d like to put additional focus on for the Year of the Mammoth is having additional deck-building options and deck variety in Hearthstone. To help give players additional tools and options to accomplish this, we are changing up the way we handle our release cycle. Previously, a Hearthstone Year alternated between Expansions and Adventures.

For the Year of the Mammoth, our release cycle will include a ~130 card expansion at the start of the year, a ~130 card expansion in the middle of the year, and another ~130 card expansion at the end of the year.

Why the change of release cycle?

At their core, Adventures paint colorful and thematic stories about the Hearthstone universe. Imagine being able to learn about the history and lore behind each of our sets inside the game in a similar way! Defining who the Jade Lotus are through a series of battles between the Mean Streets of Gadgetzan families would have been a great way to supplement the overall Gadgetzan story arc. That concept is something we would like to do more of in future sets: Take the storytelling and cool missions of Adventures, and combine them with the card pools of expansions.

Cards will be acquired via packs like other expansions in the past; additionally, each release will include optional single-player missions that will help develop the expansions’ thematic narratives and offer fun challenges."

Blizzard hasn't let us know when the new expansion drops but when it does it will start off the Year of the Mammoth. Since I love all things Hearthstone i'll let you all know when news of the new expansion hits and I keep with tradition a new pack opening video to celebrate.

http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/20475356

The Mean Streets of Gadgezan Shows How Well Cartoony Crime Pays

jdodson gives this a solid "Rad" on the Ghost Scale

This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.

jdodson gives this a "Rad" on the Ghost Scale

This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.

The latest Hearthstone expansion The Mean Streets of Gadgetzan has been out a little under two weeks now and I've played enough now to finally be able to talk about it. If you are curious how my first experience with the expansion went, I recommend you check out my pack opening and crime boss quests video. It was a fun time and, to date, it was the most packs i've ever opened in one sitting. I also opened far more legendaries than I've seen so if anything, watch it to see my incredible luck!

Now that Hearthstone has been out for a few years and received quite a few expansions and adventures how do you keep it fresh? It's an interesting question for one of the most... Read All The latest Hearthstone expansion The Mean Streets of Gadgetzan has been out a little under two weeks now and I've played enough now to finally be able to talk about it. If you are curious how my first experience with the expansion went, I recommend you check out my pack opening and crime boss quests video. It was a fun time and, to date, it was the most packs i've ever opened in one sitting. I also opened far more legendaries than I've seen so if anything, watch it to see my incredible luck!

Now that Hearthstone has been out for a few years and received quite a few expansions and adventures how do you keep it fresh? It's an interesting question for one of the most popular multiplayer games around and the developers answered it in a couple ways. First, in the last expansion Whispers of the Old Gods they dropped a new game concept of Standard Mode and Wild Mode. Standard ensures that the game constantly rotates in and out sets in a yearly cycle keeping the game meta fresh. If you want to keep playing with your old cards, Wild Mode allows this and thus Hearthstone took a page out of the Magic the Gathering model of keeping the competative game fresh while allowing you to keep playing the cards you love. Mean Streets of Gadgetzan builds off that but takes it one step further by adding factions. There are nine classes in Hearthstone and in Gadgetzan they fall into one of three factions called the Kabal, the Goons and the Jade Lotus. Each faction has special cards and mechanics that can only be used by the factions themselves creating a interesting way to share neutral cards. Each faction has a theme that carries over to their card design such as the Goons buffing cards in your hand, the Kabal providing magical potions and upgrades and the Jade Lotus stealth and Jade Golem cards. The factions bring an interesting play element to the game and really spice up the classes and have thrown WAY more competitive and varied decks into the game meta.

After I opened Gadgetzan packs I held out on crafting new cards until the meta stabilized. Whereas people are still refining decks and trying out different play styles I think things have settled enough for me to craft a bunch of cards for decks I find really interesting. I really enjoy Reno decks and so far have had a blast playing Reno Priest and my favorite deck of all time, Reno Warlock. Both require you to scrap in the early game for a win but if things snowball in your favor the games can be very rewarding.

So far the cards i've crafted are a Dirty Rat, Kazakus, Aya Blackpaw, Bloodmage Thalnos, Jade Lightning, 2 Mortal Strikes, another Doomsayer, Buckaneer and 2 Jinu Waterspeakers. I'm really happy with those crafts and was lucky enough to open cards such that I had enough dust to craft them.

If you are looking to head back in to Hearthstone or have yet to make the plunge now might be a good time to play it. I am completely free to play and have found the grind VS fun to be a very balanced element. Early on things were rough but I think the game is worth plunking some time into and for people that only have a handful of minutes per day, Hearthstone really fits well.

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/3189/i-had-the-craziest-luck-opening-my-hearthstone-gadgetzan-packs