Having just wrapped up an arena winning 7 games, my main thought for the last 3-4 games was “make it end”. I kept playing just because, but yea, not really fun. Mage deck that happened to pull 4 flamestrikes, zzzz but effective. Oh and the new cards are in the arena, and let me tell you, they are a HOOT with all the random BS they cause. A total hoot!
On the flip side was my experience with Hex. The intro tutorial had no sound. The default size of the chat window is so small its kind of a joke. The whole thing doesn’t feel as polished or solid as Hearthstone, and Hex is a PC game where Hearthstone is an ipad app.
On the other hand, even two games into the PvE series (campaign?), I’ve already made more interesting decisions and felt more in control of the game than 99% of Hearthstone games, and that’s using the intro deck which I’m pretty sure is designed to be really basic (though maybe not, see less polish issue above). I could see myself playing Hex for a long time, if once I get over the learning curve it overall ‘works’. Too early to say just yet, but so far so good.
Playing Hex actually made me realize just HOW dumbed down Hearthstone is. I mean I had a good idea of what a normal game of MtG plays like, but it’s been a few years since I’ve actually done it. Playing Hex reminded me just how many decision points during one full round Blizzard removed, to say nothing about the actual cards or other game systems.
Which highlights why I’m so hard on Hearthstone; there is no reason Blizzard couldn’t have gone with the design of Hex, and the polish of Hearthstone. Yes, I know Blizzard was hoping to capture the masses with this ‘casual’ app, but they failed. “The masses” isn’t a game in the top 50 for revenue, and out of the top 200 in terms of downloads when it has the Blizzard name and Warcraft IP behind it.
If Hearthstone was a massive success I wouldn’t be ranting about it, but rather would just accept that its a game not for me but clearly for a lot of others. But it isn’t. Maybe with future updates it might be, but right now it isn’t. And it could have been something far more interesting and successful. Old Blizzard would have delivered that. New Blizzard didn’t. Maybe they can’t.
Hardcore Casual 
Have you tried infinity wars?
Is that a card game? For some reason I thought it was a beat-em-up or something ‘actiony’.
It is a TCG, I have a pretty small frame reference in the genre but I found it much more engaging than HS.
“If Hearthstone was a massive success I wouldn’t be ranting about it, but rather would just accept that its a game not for me but clearly for a lot of others.”
History shows that you are quite happy ranting about successes, or at the least redefining ‘success’ so that you can rant comfortably.
Examples?
If Hearthstone was a massive success I wouldn’t be ranting about it,
Well clearly you would, as Hearthstone is a massive success and here we are.
Yeah, no, Hex is actually pretty awful and won’t see any widespread success for many of the same reasons MTGO is so terrible to play (Pass Priority * 8+ times per turn). Assuming it survives the lawsuit. I say this both as someone who was once pretty invested in MTGO and spent $80 on the Hex Kickstarter.
Once the PvE campaign is actually released perhaps we’ll see what Hex can do, but otherwise it’s a rehashed MTGO with cards that won’t retain any real-world value; which is too bad considering it’ll be a hole you constantly throw money into just to play.
If you want an online MTG fix, stick with the MTG: Duel of the Planeswalkers 20XX games, which already features PvE and online PvP with an “all-included” card base. I’ve heard 2015 was a step back, but 2013 and 2014 were pretty good.
If Hearthstone was a massive success I wouldn’t be ranting about it, but rather would just accept that its a game not for me but clearly for a lot of others.
Oh, please. The only rubric by which Hearthstone isn’t already a massive success is your asinine “iPad app” comparison wherein Match-3 and Time-Management games are somehow comparable to CCGs. All of Magic (paper & digital) is $250 million in revenue, with MTGO supposedly being 1/3rd of that. What’s Hearthstone’s revenue as a 9-month old (PC) game? You tell me.
How is looking at the only marketplace for apps, the app store, which gives a 100% accurate and clear view of success, and seeing Hearthstone way, way down the list, not valid? You’d rather link clickbait that we all can see is clearly flawed just by one glance (and very likely complete fiction). Because if we look at Blizzard’s latest financials, mobile wasn’t 250m, total across all products.
But what, did Blizzard intend Hearthstone to be a PC game with an app port, and that’s why the entire game is structured around being an app and is (lazily and poorly) ported over to the PC?
What’s funny is you keep bringing up MtG:O, which DOESN’T have an app, as some sort of valid comparison for Blizzard’s app game, because that’s the only thing is remotely stacks up against. Any top mobile app and Hearthstone is a footnote by comparison, which surely is what Blizzard was aiming at when designing a mobile app using the Warcraft IP.
Of course, I’m talking to someone who considers the recent WoW expansions as a success story because they ONLY lost the game 5m or so subs, so yea.
How is looking at the only marketplace for apps, the app store, which gives a 100% accurate and clear view of success, and seeing Hearthstone way, way down the list, not valid?
For the exact same reason you don’t look at Steam’s Top Seller list and try and find EVE’s rank. It’s utterly asinine to compare games across genres just because they were released on the same platform, and I shouldn’t have to tell you that. How is Hearthstone doing against other CCGs, app or otherwise? How is its revenue stream? Those are actual metrics of success.
But what, did Blizzard intend Hearthstone to be a PC game with an app port, and that’s why the entire game is structured around being an app and is (lazily and poorly) ported over to the PC?
You do realize Hearthstone was released on the PC first, right? It was 7 months between the final beta wipe and the iPad app being launched (that’s as far back as I can be bothered looking). And what, exactly, would be “lazy” or “poor” about any of it even if it were? Have you even seen MTGO? I’m not exactly sure what you’re trying to express here.
What’s funny is you keep bringing up MtG:O, which DOESN’T have an app, as some sort of valid comparison for Blizzard’s app game, because that’s the only thing is remotely stacks up against.
It takes some serious mental gymnastics to first say HS is a dumbed-down MTGO and then suggest HS can’t be compared to MTGO, despite them both being digital CCGs. Can you compare them or not?
Of course, I’m talking to someone who considers the recent WoW expansions as a success story because they ONLY lost the game 5m or so subs, so yea.
Have I ever defended Cataclysm or MoP? Hint: no. My point has always been that your “steady 12 million subs is a failure” prognosis of Wrath is indefensible, especially when you refuse to admit how badly that reflects on EVE’s (probably declining!) sub base.
Hearthstone is comparable to MtG for gameplay, sure. I mean I’m not saying “Hearthstone lacks depth compared to CoC”, am I? I mean I could, and it would horribly lose out there as well, but that’s almost not fair at that point. But its very clear that in terms of gameplay, Hearthstone aims to be a MtG clone, yes.
Hearthstone isn’t comparable to MtG in terms of mobile app success, because one has it and the other doesn’t (to say nothing about MtG being mostly a physical produce that is now what, 20+ years old vs a new mobile game by Blizzard with an IP like Warcraft).
Bringing up that Hearthstone was first ‘out’ on the PC, are you saying Hearthstone is a PC game ported to mobile? Or is it a mobile game with a PC port?
Also, are you implying that Blizzard was aiming to just have Hearthstone sit around 200 in popularity and 50ish in revenue? That’s what the suits expected out of the Warcraft IP and a Blizzard mobile game? To just get a little, tiny tiny slice of that pie? Is that what Blizzard does now? Release footnotes in genres?
Glad to see you at least admit Cata and MoP were failures, that’s good. Now lets work on WotLK.
Prior to WotLK, WoW was rapidly growing. During WotLK it stopped growing. Short of the servers being taken offline, it would have been impossible to take the giant snowball that was WoW back then and go directly to negative, but it’s still an impressive feat to take something with so much social momentum, in a genre where social momentum is a huge f’n deal, and stop it with just one expansion. To then continue sinking it with two more expansions is, well, New Blizzard I guess.
You can play both MTGO and HS on the computer, they are both digital CCGs, so yes, they can be compared. Or compare HS with any other CCG successes like… err… huh. Scrolls? SolForge? Hex?
That’s what the suits expected out of the Warcraft IP and a Blizzard mobile game?
Considering Bobby Kotick explained to investors that Activision Blizzard wasn’t interested in the mobile sphere as late as May 2013, I’m sure the suits are happy with the critical success of Hearthstone and the mystery tens of millions in revenue it has achieved.
[…] but it’s still an impressive feat to take something with so much social momentum, in a genre where social momentum is a huge f’n deal, and stop it with just one expansion.
Not really. The explosive growth was already stalling out before TBC was done. The mid-expansion bump came from China’s TBC release, and the rest of the year saw anemic (in comparison) growth. It’s almost as though market saturation exists.
But even if that wasn’t true, and 12 million subs stuck it out for an entire expansion out of social obligation alone, what does that say about your favorite game? Growth or bust?
Again you bring up Hearthstone on the PC, but you didn’t answer the question; is Hearthstone a PC title with a mobile port, or a mobile title with a PC port?
“Again you bring up Hearthstone on the PC, but you didn’t answer the question; is Hearthstone a PC title with a mobile port, or a mobile title with a PC port?”
This is the first time in history I’ve ever agreed with Azuriel–but an iPad is not a ‘mobile’, and HS doesn’t come out on the iPhone until 2015–so yeah, HS is a PC title with a mobile port.
Hearthstone is a PC game they ported to multiple platforms. I don’t see how you could possibly argue otherwise.
So if its a PC game, why does it have a mobile UI? Why are the graphics scaled to mobile? Why does it ‘feel’ like a mobile app that also happens to run on the PC? Why is nothing in the game PC-specific? Why aren’t PC basics like hotkeys even in the game?
Either Blizzard made a mobile app that happens to run on the PC, or they made a really, really shitty PC game which just happens to perfectly fit the mobile space. If you are honestly convinced that its a PC game, that pretty much ends the conversation about it here.
Your rhetorical questions work better applied to Farmville than they do to HS. Yet Farmville was only available for the PC, IIRC, so how could it have been anything else but a PC game? The situation is pretty simple: games designed to be playable by 60-somethings losing their eyesight will have big graphics without much detail,and no hotkeys–which also makes the game easily playable by 30-somethings on a mobile device, when Blizzard finally gets around to porting this game to mobile devices at some point in the future. According to your rubric, video poker and video slot machines in Vegas, some weighing over a thousand pounds, are ‘mobile games’. Nah, I don’t think so. They’re designed with the same criteria as HS, and they are also easily portable to mobile devices–but they were not initially designed as mobile games.
Farmville was/is a browser game. Anything with a supported browser can play it.
And just like with Farmville and Video slot machines in Vegas, you’re clearly not the intended audience for Hearthstone.
Well, I don’t know much about Farmville, I’ll retroactively change the main thrust of my analogy to vegas video slot machines, then.
The video poker machines rampant in Nevada might be an even better analogy, as they use cards and have a pretty similar UI to HS, when you think about it.
Azuriel. Pass priority has had a skip input added, so on opening turns you can skip to end phase, but its still there mid game so you can counter an opponents move mid-turn, which adds to the strategy & thought needed in gameplay.
You simplify the MtG comparison. Hex is still developing but it will add MMO aspects to a TCG…hero’s you can level & gear, multi player parties for grouping in dungeons, tunneling cards..a lot lot more. Here’s a reminder of how successful the KS was.
As to its eventual success – time will tell.
The auto-skip features are certainly welcome, but just like in MTGO, they can give away too much information. The priority system as a whole is just something that doesn’t translate all that well in the digital sphere. Or perhaps I should say it translates too well; it feels natural in paper Magic, but clunky in digital.
I backed Hex because of the PvE features you mentioned, but that was 1.5 years ago. I don’t even know if there’s an ETA for PvE anymore.
Regardless, it’s pretty clear to me at this point that Hearthstone occupies my “casual card game” mind-space and Hex is going to need to be 10x better to justify getting invested in an infinite-cash-sink game again.
Just wondering why you are still playing hearthstone? Blog content?
Generally something to do when live TV is on commercial, no CoC war is happening, and MPQ heroes are recovering. Amazingly in just that little amount of time you can ‘master’ and keep up with the game.
Whereabouts in the Legendary rankings did you end up last season?
It’s all dice rolls, remember? The people who hit Legend are always random.
Guess when you have nothing left, just go full troll huh Az?
To be fair, Syn doesn’t have enough Legendary cards to win. It’s a pay2win game – that’s why the most consistently successful decks are…erm…zoolock and aggro hunter…
The easy joke is I don’t have the cards to make either of those decks.
The better joke is that even if I did, I’d still not subject myself to playing one deck and limit the efficiency that Blizzard has designed into the game. Bonus points if you can list all the reasons why the second joke is true.
“So if its a PC game, why does it have a mobile UI? Why are the graphics scaled to mobile? Why does it ‘feel’ like a mobile app that also happens to run on the PC? Why is nothing in the game PC-specific? Why aren’t PC basics like hotkeys even in the game?”
Exactly my thoughts while trying Hearthstone. I would even add : why no decent chat function ? (It may have one now, I haven’t played in ages.) This has nothing to do with gameplay. Feel and presentation of the game definitely have a mobile vibe. It’s neither negative or positive, as with any good ui, it doesn’t get in the way of gaming. From a dev perspective, it’s well written, it’s a plus as it could be ported more easily to other platforms.
@Trego
Could you explain your point about the ipad not being a mobile device ? This one is totally lost on me. Tablets are mobile by definition in my book.
Well, wikipedia says the ipad is a ‘mobile device’, so I’ll say I was wrong there. I still object to the larger point here, which is has to do with what HS was intended to be. We have desktop PCs, laptops, tablets, and smartphones, so many groups not just 2. Syn is attempting to delineate a dichotomy between PC and mobile games here, but in actual fact when we look at the groups above, the game was released first for PCs of both types, then a month later for iPad, 5 months later for windows 8 tablets, *tomorrow* for android tablets, and in a few months for android phones and iphones. Furthermore, even when one releases a game only for PCs ,one has a target audience and a target group of PCs which will be advanced enough to run your game. In this multiplicity of target groups, it’s possible to draw one target group which, as a side effect, also perfectly encapsulates another target group. Adding into this is the fact that intention changes over time, it could be that HS started with the intention of targeting “mobile users”, then by release Blizzard had changed course and was targeting older, bad vision/slow reacting players on desktop PCs–with the requirements in terms of interface barely changing at all between these two target groups. Or, perhaps at some point in the middle they were aiming at both groups. Who knows? Blizzard probably isn’t going to come out and tell one or other of these groups that “we don’t really care about you”, so this is something that isn’t merely left unclear, but has been left unclear on purpose.
p.s. this entire sub-point is actually COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT. If we are trying to determine if HS is a success or failure, the only thing that matters is the financials. This entire sub-point is Syn trying to handwave away the fact that so far, no one in this thread has been able to find and post the relevant PC market financials. Even if Syn came up with a brilliant argument, or an interview with the developer where he claimed that at every single point in the development process, this was intended as a mobile-only game, and the fact that it came out for PC’s first was a huge cosmic joke on the world; those intentions are basically meaningless–if HS is making a ton of money on the PC market, it’s still a success, intended or not. You guys can say you’re satisfied to ‘assume’ that it’s clearly a mobile game, so it’s not making money in the desktop world; and I’m free to say I don’t buy that assumption; but I hope you can at least see that arguing about Blizzard’s intention isn’t going to convince anyone else of your assumptions about the actual end results in the marketplace.
I’m not arguing anything. I’m simply stating that when I tried HS, it felt like a mobile game in its presentation and execution. I didn’t try to explain it, I can’t know what were Blizzard intentions or dev flow with the game. I didn’t comment on market success either as I don’t know the numbers, even worse, I believe most public numbers are incomplete and do not allow outsiders to really know the bottom line.
As for my questions, it was more a matter of making sure we’re using the same definitions. So many arguments go wrong when in fact, people are just using different definitions while assuming the other side uses the same. You could have another category for the ipad and it could have been a valid point.
Here is all the ‘data’ I’ve found so far.
http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/23/the-10-highest-grossing-online-pc-games-in-2014-hearthstone-dota-2-cant-compete-with-league-of-legends/
superdataresearch.com, provided data in the above article that Hearthstone made 114 million in gross revenue from desktop PC sales alone. I have no idea how reliable that figure is, but it’s all I found.
For comparison, this just under a sixth of what WoW was reported to earn in 2014, and HS wasn’t even out for all of 2014.
If this data is correct, then HS is a huge success on the desktop platform; not Wow-level, but still a huge success. It may well be not correct; perhaps some other readers are more knowledgeable in the field.
From the Activision/Blizzard third quarter financials: http://investor.activision.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1104659-14-76552&CIK=718877
“As previously discussed, the increase in the Company’s net revenues for the three months ended September 30, 2014, as compared to the same period in 2013, was mainly due to revenues from Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft , which was released in early 2014 ”
I have a hard time believing that a failure of a game could noticeablely boost the financials of the entire Activision/Blizzard conglomerate. This isn’t from clickbait, this is from their accountants.
If all this data is even nearly correct; and we add into these facts your contention that HS is best as a mobile game, as well as the fact that HS doesn’t come out on android tablets, android phones, and iphones, until the future, then damn, the future is looking good for HS, wouldn’t we have to say?
““Hearthstone has been exceeding all of our expectations,” Blizzard chief executive Mike Morhaime said during a conference call with investors. “We’re not ready to share a number, but we’re very excited about its future. Especially when you consider its expansion to other platforms.””
from: http://venturebeat.com/2014/08/05/hearthstone-and-diablo-iii-push-activision-blizzard-to-bigger-digital-revenues/
For starters, superdata is one hack and his interns making stuff up, so lets please leave the clickbait out of this.
Second, notice how quick Blizzard was to announce sub numbers when they went up for WoW? Why is it that for Hearthstone, the only data they gave us was the number of accounts created for a F2P game?
Also revenue isn’t profit. Of course revenue is going to increase (in some part) in 2014 compared to 2013 due to Hearthstone; it wasn’t out in 2013.
But lets wait and see what, if any, real numbers Blizzard ever gives us for the game. Right now the only real numbers we have show the game in the dumps in the app store.
Put a stake in the ground then – how much revenue does Hearthstone need to make in order for it be considered ‘a success’ in your book?
-Somewhere near MTG?
-Or Clash of Clans?
-Or Darkfall?
-Or EvE Online?
We will then see when Blizzard announces their financials.
Long-term it needs to be profitable, but we rarely get that data per title.
I predict Hearthstone will be Blizzard’s least-successful title to date (HotS has the potential to fail harder IMO, and its too early to really tell how bad Overwatch might be), but again that’s a tough metric to really nail down. A few bucks less successful than D3 is still better than most games do, but at the same time if Hearthstone is just a middle of the road title in terms of success, that will be a Blizzard first (and bad for the IP). Until this point, everything they have ever done has been a blockbuster.
Also just measuring revenue is pointless. A billion in revenue means nothing if it took you a billion to get it, right? So unless we get a leak of the cost of Hearthstone (which layoffs might give us), or Blizzard shares that info, its a lot of guesswork here.
What I do know is if I told you a Blizzard game using the Warcraft IP was going to struggle to crack the top 200 in the app store, you’d call me crazy and remind me that everything Blizzard does is a huge success, yet here we are.
Plus the game itself is unlike a Blizzard title, being so shallow and containing as many design flaws as it does, which is also newsworthy.
k, didn’t know that about superdata. Wait and see it is.
Trying again to find a credible source to back up my gut feeling that more people are playing HS on PC than on mobile:
http://caas.raptr.com/most-played-pc-games-october-2014-fifa-borderlands-and-shadow-of-mordor-climb-the-chart/
Is raptr a credible source? If so, the 9th most played PC game is much superior than the whatever worse number ipad app that it currently is–and I think would settle the debate about whether it’s a PC game or a mobile game–although it leaves open the question about how much money those people are spending on the game, where we will still have to wait and see.
http://social.xfire.com/games
HS is 7th on xfire. I know I’ve seen you quote xfire numbers before.
Trying one last time to find a credible source for PC vs mobile usership:
http://social.xfire.com/games
HS is 7th on xfire. I know I’ve seen you use xfire stats here before.
http://caas.raptr.com/most-played-pc-games-october-2014-fifa-borderlands-and-shadow-of-mordor-climb-the-chart/
HS is 9th on raptr. Not sure what you think of raptr–I don’t really know how representative these sites are myself.
These don’t address the profitability question, which we can still wait and see on, but they at least address the question of whether HS is a PC game or a mobile game–and if you accept the credibility of these numbers, it is unquestionably a PC game, right?
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