Just wondering if anyone else got a beta invite to Hearthstone, and what your thoughts are on it so far?

I've got one a few days back and played a bit, but didn't have too much time yet. So far I think it's pretty cool, the Arena system is nice, and if they would add stuff like in game tournaments it will have a succesfull future!

I even thought of maybe adding a heartstone card database to deckbox for deckbuilding, but I'm not yet sure yet... The trading support for it would be useless pretty much, since you cannot trade, and inventory management again not important since you have it in game anyway...

I had gotten into the beta a while ago, and it was fun. The novelty wore off pretty quickly for me. The deckbuilding is simple compared to Magic, and I didn't want to grind or spend cash in the beta for cards. The arena play was fun. If there was a simple way to add it to deckbox for the purposes of collection tracking and deckbuilding tha would be neat. I'm going to go back and try it again closer to release/ after release. I think if it finds a community and takes off and they do well with adding to its card pool it will be a fine game. It also really needs to be on tablets ASAP. That is where I think it will shine as a bite sized on the go type of game.

I'm in the beta for Hearthstone. Overall, the game is pretty simple to learn. The mechanics are similar to Magic, and those that aren't are easy to accommodate to. The card pool is pretty small, but large enough to have at least some variety among different decks. So far, there are at least three "tribes" in way of creatures; Murlocs, Pirates, and Beasts. I hesitate to include Beasts, as they are majorly Hunter specific, but the other two are class neutral. Class balance is still a little bit off, and every now and then you'll see a trend of one class pulling ahead in terms of dominance and overall performance.

Grinding for cards is at times tedious, as there aren't enough ways to earn enough gold to buy a pack a day, unless you grind games heavily and have a high win ratio. Heading in to arena can prove to be a great, or horrible experience, as card pools seem to lean towards one extreme or another at the moment(from my experience). You either get a very good card pool for your class, or you get a terrible pool for your class that another class would fare much better with. However, regardless of how you place, you will be rewarded, and for that I find it encouraging, and don't see any reason to use the gold for anything but rolling around in the arena. It feels a bit like doing a booster draft each time I pay up for it, which is helpful either way I look at it.

Overall, I'm impressed with the game. For a small production team, they've created a pretty solid piece of software that is pretty enjoyable. the only thing I'm wishing is that they would give in and incorporate chat rooms and/or a private message system that can be used out of game to communicate with people you have just played with. I have had some amazing games on Hearthstone, and it bothers me that all I can do is toss out a "well played" emote.

I'm looking forward to seeing how they handle content post release, and seeing if they can keep up with the demand for refinement and improvement. Producing new "sets" of cards will be one of the harder things for the Hearthstone team to do. I'm also hoping that they decide to release a mobile game, as that would attract a massive crowd. I know that if it were available for a mobile device, I would be sure to play it whenever I had downtime, as it's easily the most entertaining option out there for a possible mobile game.

Completely agree with the mobile game thing, and I'm pretty sure they will release something as it fits perfectly for a tablet / smartphone game.

I like they have gold rewards for quests and for leveling up classes, it makes you want to play all the classes, and you learn a lot. Until now I've followed the general line of: do I have 150 gold? then play arena. Otherwise, play constructed to level up some new class that I don't know yet, until I have 150 gold again :)

We'll see how it will evolve. Promising until now!

Love the game. Spent way too much money on buying packs and drafting.

Love to be able to sink money into another online card game besides Magic Online.

I'd like being able to manage my Heartstone decks on Deckbox a lot. In the game, I can only have 9 at a time, so I can't try out new stuff if I want to maintain one 'working' deck per class. Being able to save the deck somewhere else would help.

As for the game itself, I like it. It's simple, much more so than Magic, which makes it an easy half an hour to spend on a few games. I wouldn't want to play it for hours on end like Magic, but it's good for a quick game.