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aren't you the guy that burned your magic cards?

so, in your mind, whats the different between the WoW card game and Hearthstone aside from the lack of physical product?

Back to the original question, I play off and on. I've been playing more lately as some coworkers also play so we'll have games in slower periods at work. I like it better than the physical WoW TCG simply because of the automatic resource factor. Games like WoW TCG or MtG because of the randomness of the draw can lead to being resource-droughted (though less so in WoW since you can literally put anything down as a resource). I also like the idea of every Hero having the same health (it was randomly higher or lower sometimes in WoW TCG, depending on the relative ability of the Hero) as well as the "Hero power" which you can always dump 2 mana into if you have nothing else to do.

I absolutely love it. It's a lot of fun, I've been in the beta for a couple months. I like that no class feels super overpowered, and that I don't feel like I have to spend money in order to get ahead and play competitively. The gold you earn and such is sufficient to get you expert packs.

Heads up: The last round of beta invites is supposed to go out next week, which means we will likely be in open beta by the end of the month. They said at Blizzcon that they wanted to be in open beta in December, but there were things they needed to test in closed first (I assume the change to ranked play).

To be fair, of the 5 images you linked only the first 3 are actual art on cards in the Hearthstone game. The last 2 seem to be fan art.

"Good or bad" is kind of relative, as is usual with topics like this. Hearthstone is an interesting, imo, game with cool mechanics and fun graphics/effects. There is magic (because it's based in the world of WoW) and all cards are played by spending "mana" which is the cost mechanic of the game (mana crystals that regenerate every turn, as opposed to lands in MtG). The "minions" are "summoned" (that's their term for playing it) and there are graphics for attacking (primarily the oval with the picture of the minion slamming physically into whatever it's attacking) and for the "spells" (the special abilities that the Heroes play, which are unique to each class), however in my opinion the graphics could have been a lot worse, they kept them very tame (little knives or like sword slashes might fly into a card or slash across it but there isn't any blood or gore as far as I've noticed, the cards just kind of crumble when they "die").

Once the game is in open beta (and even after it's released) it will be free to play (though there is a cost mechanic for purchasing additional card packs or entry into the Arena mode if you choose to, but it is possible to earn enough in-game gold to purchase anything you need) so people can feel free (literally) to give it a try and if they don't like it they can uninstall it without having lost anything but a little time.

Quote from: SiLeNcEd_MaTrIx

"trust me, this game [WoW] IS hurting your relationship with God"
"40% of WoW players are addicted"
"abstain from all appearance of evil"
"bunch of half-naked characters"

So that's what you thought about WoW, but how does WoW compare with Hearthstone?

Quote from: SiLeNcEd_MaTrIx on January 02, 2014, 10:28:07 PM

No real difference other than Hearthstone might have a slight edge on the fun-ness factor.

But I've never heard of Hearthstone, maybe I should look up some images associated with it:
here, here, here,

This doesn't make sense to me.  And now I see that Soul Seeker and Marti play the game too.  This is very confusing.  Is this game good or bad?

This is what confused me. I don't mind that he plays it and I think its a fine game I just didn't understand why, after going so fair as to make a YouTube video of himself burning his WoW cards, he jumped in to Hearthstone.

"Summoning" is just the term they use for putting a "minion" onto the playing field. There isn't any ritual involved, the graphic is literally the oval-shaped art of the card separating from the card frame and plopping onto the field.

Many of the minions are humanoids, so I take the word "summon" in this instance to mean more along the lines of "to request the presence of" than anything ritual or dark magic related (with some exceptions depending on the class).

I'm not saying it's going to be everyone's cup of tea, I just wish people wouldn't condemn it without doing any research themselves into it. I provided a video which is not long and provides a good overview of what you'd be getting yourself into if you played it. I encourage everyone to at least start watching it and formulate your opinions on that, not my inadequate attempts to explain it through inefficient textual communication.

I was just illustrating that we all have preferences that are often selective, so what I would/wouldn't play is not contingent upon the beliefs of other board members. I was using your wording just for context.

You are correct, though, that my issue with summoning is related to "dark magic," more specifically summoning the elemental evils from a D&D perspective. Do me, this is calling on demonic powers, so I have made it clear that my son cannot be a summoner, and that we will not use them in our adventures. That's probably why he chose to be an illusionist. 

That's a fair point, my apologies for being defensive. Along those lines, there are 2 classes wholly dependent on magic, the Mage and the Warlock, with the latter falling definitely in line with your dark magic definition of summoning (several of the Warlock's class-specific cards are Demon minions because that's the basis of the class: demonic magic). And while you can certainly avoid playing them yourself (except a few games as the Mage during the tutorial), and can choose not to have the computer play them, you'd be missing out on a significant portion of the game (as well as have the potential to face those classes if you ever play against other human opponents).

I can respect if you wish to stay away from those sorts of things completely, and fully admit (as stated above) that it would be difficult to play Hearthstone to the fullest if you're ruling out those aspects of it.

I'm likely one of the most liberal (I consider myself a moderate, generally). I play World of Warcraft and other similar games without issue or concern.

I apologize for mis-categorizing your leanings.  It seems like your moderation style is often stricter than mine, and perhaps that explains my confusion.  Perhaps you are more conservative when it comes to argumentation, but more liberal when it comes to entertainment choices.  In any event I'm sure that you and I are both more complicated in our worldviews than can be simplified into a single label

That is the same confusion that I had with your Heroscape request. Have you even seen some of the figures for Heroscape? And if you are basing your judgment on images

I completely understood your confusion about Heroscape, which was why I responded to it and tried to explain where the difference was for me.  As for the images, that actually isn't how I personally judge games.  I posted those for the sake of SM because he seemed to make a big deal in his video about the images involved in the games that he found to be negatively affecting him spiritually.

calling out soulseeker and Marti is quite another.

I'm only "calling them out" in the same sense that you called me out about Heroscape.  I'm not questioning their faith or anything like that.  I'm just curious how they reconcile their beliefs with this particular game.  Marti gave a sufficient answer in that she doesn't have any convictions about this (or other similar games), and I assume that SS also has a good answer.

I don't have any personal vested interest in this game since I've never heard of it, and at this point don't think I'd be very interested in it.  I'm actually just posting out of curiosity (to learn about the game itself, and to learn why certain people like it).  No offense intended from me

Thanks for understanding Marti.

As for YMT, I don't know why you keep bringing up the old goat thing.  It seems like just about everyone else has let that die by this point.  Maybe it is simply an attempt at humor, but it's not coming across that way to me.

Does that mean I can post a picture of a goat without being Banhammered?

Perhaps you didn't see it already, but that was resolved a long time ago.

I'm not going back on what I said in said video/blog,  but I will however say I walked into the gifting on discernment.  Ask anyone with such gifting when they first walk into it, EVERYTHING becomes evil.

OK, so that clears that up as well.  Basically you believe that your gift of discernment was overly sensitive when you first received it, and therefore some of the things that you thought were wrong back then no longer bother you.  I think that is a fairly common experience for Christians so I can understand that.

So that just leaves SS (who is one of my closest friends on this forum YMT, so he is probably not offended by my question).  Would you mind explaining your perspective on games like this and WoW?