14 DAY TRIAL // Dreamhack Bucharest 2014 hosted one of the first big Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft tournaments, and quite a few big personalities were present at the competition, including Octavian "Kripparrian" Morosan, one of the most active casters and players in the Hearthstone scene.
I talked to him about the soft launch of Hearthstone to the general public, its upcoming single-player campaign, and the cheap nature of good decks.
Q: Hearthstone has just been launched to the general public. Has this affected the Arena mode and the PvP matches in a good way, by producing more good opponents, or did it just result in more cannon fodder?
A: I think there are two factors at work. There are more newbies going into the Arena system and many going out of the system pretty quickly while getting discouraged. Over time, the good players stay. There's always an increase of good players who stay around in the Arena. With this launch, this soft-launch, you get an influx of bad players. Right now, there's a balance between the good and the bad.
Q: Blizzard has expressed its desire to do as little tinkering when it came to existing cards as possible after the open launch. Do you think there are still some cards that need balancing in regards to mana cost, health, or attack?
A: I think the game is ok right now. For a very long time people have played with this sort of cards and the type of decks people build hasn't changed that much right now. The best change that could happen is to bring in more cards, that's the most appropriate way. Unfortunately, we need to wait until summer for that, so we'll see how that goes, as it's always subjective.
Q: Do you think that the story mode Blizzard announced some time ago will draw in more players who perhaps aren't willing to engage in PvP Arena?
A: I think so. I've talked about this and said that Blizzard games have always had some form of single-player experience where you can just enjoy it while playing against the computer and have fun while engaging in predictable opponents. Hearthstone, at the moment, doesn't offer that as it encourages you too much to play against other people, which may not be to everyone's liking. If you want PvE you have to take on Expert-level AI which, in my opinion, is a joke.
Q: Now that the game is available on iPad, we can practically play Hearthstone wherever we want. Do you need a bit of breathing room, perhaps to play another game or trading card one like Magic, or do you just focus on Hearthstone?
A: I've been playing Hearthstone almost since the beginning and my goal was to get max level on all my characters. I have just a few more days and after that I want to take a break and maybe play it more for fun. Hearthstone is still a fun game and I'll never give up competitively.
Q: Do you think that right now there isn't enough high-level content for experienced players like yourself?
A: I do feel like that but I've been playing almost since the beginning, for quite a long time. It's a very simple game that people can understand in a few minutes or hours and, after some time, it can get tedious.
Q: This is one of the very first Hearthstone tournaments with big prize purses. Do you think this will be a trend for more and more eSports competitions to get Hearthstone alongside the likes of Dota 2, LoL, Starcraft, or CS:GO?
A: Hopefully. I think over time people who like Hearthstone will stick with it. So the core audience who are good in the game will increase and hopefully that will have a competitive meaning before people get bored of the game. No matter how competitive a game can be, like Starcraft for example, people start finding new things to do.
Q: Considering you can buy more card packs with money, can a player just spend a lot of real-world cash to build a great deck and go to competitions? How balanced do you think the game is in order to avoid the dreaded pay-to-win scenario?
A: A lot of the best decks are very cheap to build. It's not set up to be pay-to-play and that's been proven in different ways.