Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is now available for anyone to play on Mac and PC with Blizzard’s launch of the game’s open beta. The game was first revealed at 2013’s PAX East gathering, with a closed beta that launched in August. Android and iOS releases are in the works as well, and they should be out sometime in 2014.
Hearthstone draws on the fiction from Blizzard’s World of Warcraft universe. Like most games of this sort, players collect cards of varying rarity in booster packs. There are two main online competition modes, the F2P Play and Arena, which you can spend either in-game gold or real world money to jump into. There are many fine points to the game’s rules, so there’s also a Practice mode that allows players to take on AI opponents. Cards can’t be traded like they can in other collectible card games (CCG); instead, you “disenchant” unwanted cards to reduce them to a special form of currency that can then be spent on creating a new one.
For more info on Hearthstone, check out Blizzard’s FAQ. There’s a link to get started with the game from there, but you can jump into right away by following this link right here. Note that you’ll need to have, or create, a Battle.net account in order to play.
