Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, Blizzard’s virtual collectible card game based on the Warcraft universe, has now moved to open beta, inching closer to release.
As it is, Hearthstone has 382 cards, none of which can be traded between players. Instead you choose prepared decks and work your way to collecting, either by winning the cards, buying them, or crafting them.
The game requires Battle.net, although only one mode requires purchases. In Arena Mode, you draft a deck per game and then battle other players online. Since you’re building them from scratch, Arena decks have no card restrictions. You can use in game gold or outright purchase playtime.
In contrast, Play Mode has several rules and limitations on playing while matched against online opponents, presumably to discipline players into improving play. Practice Mode is the single player mode, where you battle the heroes so you can unlock more of them. Finally, Collection Manager is where you go to peruse your cards, craft them, and build decks.
In their blog post, Blizzard indicates how excited they are that they are now at open beta, but make it clear that this is not the full release of the game. Subsequently, they also explain that they will pull out the beta every now and then if instances of going over server capacity come up.
If this is right up your alley, you can go ahead and download Hearthstone, or play online, from here. You should be able to play it on your Windows or OS X computers now, with iPad, iPhone, and Android apps on the way.
