Fans of life-destroying internet card games, rejoice! Blizzard’s Warcraft-themed, digital, collectible card-based life assassin, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, has hit open beta. If you want to play, all you need to do is toddle over to this website and click the massive PLAY FREE NOW button. Which makes my inner grammarian itch.
Whoa whoa whoa, hold your horses. You didn’t think it was that easy, did you? I mean, it sort of is, but only if you’re in the North American region. I’m not quite sure whether this means you can’t play, or if it means that if you sign up you’ll have to play on the US servers, but… well, I guess we’ll see. Either way, you won’t have too long to wait; the official blog states “we plan to go to Open Beta for all of the other regions within the next few days as well” so hey, you should be carding it up by the weekend.
You can at least rest assured that any cards you unlock and decks you build will remain yours. According to the aforementioned blog post, “We have no plans to perform any more wipes of Hearthstone, so feel free to amass your collection and play against your friends.” Of course, that says “no plans” rather than “totally won’t ever happen.”
Assuming it hasn’t completely changed since I last played it, Hearthstone is really rather enjoyable. For the price of Free, you might as well give it a whirl, eh?