This past week, I played World of Warcraft a total of one time, and that was on Tuesday. After realizing my game time had run out and I needed to buy more time, I hit level 36. And that's all that happened that was at all noteworthy.
However, I have been attempting to get a Hearthstone beta key since the beta release. On Wednesday, I finally won one thanks to Twitter. I didn't get the key until Thursday night, and wasn't able to actually play until Friday afternoon. The opening cinematography is overall great. I did have trouble though with the images and sound skipping. The voice work of NPCs is fantastic. The tutorial is a little slow at first but it is very descriptive, makes it easy to pick up the functions of the game and how to play. The first step of the tutorial just gives you one card at a time walks you through it. With this, there is only one move per turn. The second stage teaches you to use mana and lets you pick the card you want to play out of your hand. In the third step, it gets more difficult, and in the forth 'taunt' cards are introduced. These cards basically target the attacks from the opposing player. Additionally, I did not like that the only card I could start with was the murlock (after playing more though, I got over it). The fifth step of the tutorial, the verbal taunting from the opposing NPC was actually incredibly frustrating for me. Thank goodness there's a mute button! Finally, the sixth stage. It always starts (no matter if it's tutorial, practice, or play mode) with one mana crystal. I found it odd that all of my cards required two crystals or more (again, after playing more I got over it).
**And turning the page in my notes I'm following to type this, I find that my two year old sister scribbled all over them, while I was visiting, making them nearly illegible. So I'll do my best from here on out**
During the sixth stage of the tutorial, I kept getting kicked out of the game and back to the desktop screen. I couldn't figure out why for the longest time. Then I found the solution: I was using a stupid function of Windows 8 on the track pad of my laptop that takes you back to the desktop. Overall, the sixth stage was the hardest of them all. It was in this stage that I first lost. When I lost, a message popped up on the screen that said "This game is totally not fair. Blame the designers." I found this to be amusing. Through my second attempt, I did win even though I had a rough start.
After I finished the tutorial stages, I played against other players. In four attempts, I lost four times. One of them, I was very close to winning, but didn't quite make it. And to quote a movie "It doesn't matter if you win by an inch or a mile, winning is winning." Basically, yeah, I lost. Big deal.
Finally, the most wonderful aspect of this past week:
I was visiting family this past weekend as Friday was my little sister's second birthday. I decided on Sunday, after a ridiculous finger painting fiasco, to teach my six year old brother how to play Hearthstone. I figured he would just pick cards at random, or ask me which card to play. He did surprisingly well. He managed to figure the game out pretty quickly, and though I had to explain it to him in terms of points instead of health, and in terms of winning and losing instead of killing, he managed to get the hang of it pretty well. I sort of coached him through it, and though he didn't like losing, he was incredibly excited when he won and was very proud of himself. I can say I was surprised by the fact that he was actually thinking it through, and he took the time to analyze different aspects of each card. He thought about which cards he could use with the amount of mana crystals he had, and about which minions should be killed of the opposing player, etc. I have a feeling once the game is released and my parents get a better computer for their house, my brother will be playing this game more often than the once a month that I go visit and play with him.
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