Hearthstone

The Hearthstone icon

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is a free-to-play digital collectible card game from Blizzard Entertainment. It was first announced in a presentation by Rob Pardo at the Penny Arcade Expo in March 2013, and began its closed beta phase in the Americas region on August 26th, and in the Europe region on September 4th. The game entered its open beta phase on January 21st 2014, and was fully released on March 11th 2014.

Hearthstone is currently available on Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems, as well as on iOS and Android phones, Windows 8 devices, Android tablets, and iPad, supporting iPad Air, iPad 4th generation, iPad 3rd generation, iPad 2, iPad mini, and iPad mini with Retina display.

In May 2015, it was announced that the game had 30 million registered players.

Gameplay

A game of Hearthstone in progress.

Main article: Gameplay

Hearthstone is a free-to-play card game set in the Warcraft universe. Players can compete against other players or AI opponents in 1-on-1 combat, battling to destroy the enemy hero before they are themselves defeated. Players can achieve this using a variety of spells and minions - creatures summoned onto the battlefield to fight on their behalf - as well as equipping weapons to dive directly into the fray. Hearthstone was designed to be a quick, fun and accessible game, but also offers significant depth, strategy and complexity for more serious players.

The game currently features 535 collectible cards, and players can build and explore their card collections through an in-game collection browser. Players can gain new cards by purchasing booster packs, using either real money or gold, an in-game currency earned from completing quests. The game's cards, characters and locations draw from the deep history of the Warcraft universe, creating a game rich with detail and humour. Players can choose to play as any of nine different heroes from the series' history, each representing a different class, complete with its own unique minions, spells and weapons, as well as a signature hero power all its own. Battle itself takes place on one of a number of battlefields; interactive game boards depicting well-known locations from Azeroth, complete with numerous hidden bonus features for players to find.

For an in-depth exploration of the game's features, see Gameplay.

Platforms

The starting screen for the iPad version of Hearthstone

Hearthstone is playable cross-platform. Players can play against any opponent in their region regardless of the device or platform used by each.

Basic gameplay is identical on all platforms, although there are numerous differences to the interface to address the needs of mobile and touch-screen devices. Other cosmetic differences include the use of a different starting screen (see right).

The only known difference in the game itself is one quest which is only available on iPad, offering a single card pack in reward for completing a game on that platform. Differences between platform releases of the game have not been stated or commented upon by Blizzard.

In development

Another game of Hearthstone in progress.

Main article: In development

A number of features are and are not currently in development for Hearthstone, but have not yet been added to the game. Planned features include improved matchmaking.

Patches

Main article: Patch

To catch up with the latest changes to the game, see our full list of patches.

The Hearthstone universe

Hearthstone is set in the Warcraft universe, with the vast majority of characters, spells, weapons and locations drawn from World of Warcraft or earlier games. Wherever possible, the developers go to great trouble to recreate the feel and personality of cards' Warcraft counterparts.

However, Hearthstone is not strictly tied to the lore of these games. In many cases Hearthstone has introduced new characters, spells and weapons, as well as reimagining existing ones. The game of Hearthstone itself also deviates from existing lore in several respects, and is steadily introducing new characters and events, which are not yet confirmed as existing in the main Warcraft universe. As the game continues to expand, an ever growing body of lore emerges that is clearly and uniquely Hearthstone.

• For background on specific cards and heroes, see Lore sections on individual pages.
• For an overview of new lore, see Hearthstone lore.
• For a list of cards original to Hearthstone, see Original cards in Hearthstone.

Design and development

Main article: Design and development of Hearthstone

See also: Hearthstone timeline

Staff

See also: Category:Blizzard employees

Hearthstone was developed by Team 5, a "small and nimble" group created specifically for the task. Team 5 handles all ongoing game design, with the assistance of the far larger roster of support team staff, and the game's executive producers Rob Pardo and Hamilton Chu. The team is headed up by Senior Game Designer Ben Brode and Lead Designer Eric Dodds.

Community support for Hearthstone is provided by a small team of Community Managers: Keganbe, Aratil, Daxxarri, Whirthun and Community Team Leader Zeriyah.

Statistics

Player numbers

• In May 2015, it was announced that the game had 30 million registered players.
• In February 2015, it was announced that the game had 25 million registered players.
• In September 2014, the official Hearthstone Twitter account announced that the game had 20 million players.
• In March 2014 it was announced that the game had 10 million registered player accounts.

Matches

As of October 2014:

• The game had seen a total of 2 billion hours of play
• The quickest ever run to Legend rank took 74 games to complete
• The longest ever Play mode win streak was 24 matches
• Over 3 million players (of 20 million in total) had reached 12 wins in the Arena

Miscellaneous

Most liked, late 2014

Most disliked, late 2014

As of October/November 2014:

• The most used hero power is the shaman's Totemic Call, followed by the mage's Fireblast, followed by the warrior's Armor Up!
• The most commonly picked neutral cards in the Arena are Chillwind Yeti and Harvest Golem
• The worst card in the game is Magma Rager, only winning 29% of the games it is in.
• Players drawing a Baron Geddon have a 56% chance to win.
• The more cards they draw, the more likely Control Warriors are statistically to win the game.
• 3 million Bananas have been 'eaten'; 15 million minions have been Polymorphed; and 69 million Hounds have been unleashed
• 556 Defender of Argus are played for each Angry Chicken played.
• The deadliest Naxxramas boss in Normal mode was Grand Widow Faerlina, while the deadliest boss in Heroic mode was Maexxna.
• Players took an average of two attempts to kill a Normal boss in Curse of Naxxramas, while defeating a Heroic boss take players an average of nine attempts.

Surveys

In a survey taken on Reddit in late 2014, the following words were used most frequently by players to describe what they liked and disliked in Hearthstone. Note that the latter list is far shorter, because players focused far more heavily on a few words in their 'dislike' replies. See the images to the right for the full wordclouds.

Liked

• Fun, play, easy, quick, simple, cards, RNG, Arena

Disliked

• RNG, decks, Zoo, bots

Trivia

• Hearthstone is played by many developers within Blizzard, on teams responsible for each of the company's different franchises. An email from then StarCraft II Game Director Dustin Browder light-heartedly complained that his team were too busy playing Hearthstone to work on StarCraft.
• Blizzard's first ever employee-only Hearthstone tournament was won by Luis Barriga, lead game designer for World of Warcraft.

Videos

• Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft - Cinematic (Official)
• Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft - Building the Fire (Official)
• Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft - The Tavern Is Open (Official)

Media

• Hearthstone wallpapers, artwork and soundtracks can all be found in the media section of the official site.
• Class and Innkeeper Twitter icons and Facebook cover photos can be found here.

See also

• Hearthstone merchandise

Gallery

Original Hearthstone key art

"Hearthstone on iPad" key art

Curse of Naxxramas key art

Goblins vs Gnomes key art

Blackrock Mountain key art

"Hearthstone goes Mobile" key art

Tavern Brawl promo art

The Grand Tournament key art

External links

• Official website
• Official Twitter account