2013 PAX East PlayersCut Specials!

The developers of HearthStone: Heroes of Warcraft played cardbattle interview. It’s very funny and awesome! They said it was the best interview ever.:D Plz check our video!

[Interviewee]

Ben Brode(Game Designer of Hearthstone)
Jason Chayes(Production Director on Hearthstone)

[Q&A in Interview]

Q. What are your thoughts on Hearthstone becoming a eSports

J. So, we think that Hearthstone will work very well as an eSport. It’s something that we thought about internally. We’re thinking about which features make sense to build into Hearthstone, but one of the things we do have is we have a mode in Hearthstone called the FORGE.

In the FORGE, everybody gets to start over fresh. They kinda all come in with no cards. They build their deck as part of the game. They build a 30-card deck and then everybody competes to see how far they can make it in the FORGE. Win more prizes, more card packs as you go. If you lose 3 times though, you’re out. So this is one of many competitive ways to play.

Q. Whose idea was it first to make Hearthstone?

B. We love collectible card games. It’s something we play a lot of inside Blizzard. And so it was something we decided we love, we want to play it. We feel like we can do it in a way more accessible to more people. We really wanted to bring this game to life. There was no resistance. It was something we really love and play a lot of inside Blizzard.

Q. How do Team5’s members rank in StarCraft 2?

B. On our team, the best player of Hearthstone is me. And the best SCII gamer is me. I play a lot of SCII , so I’m very good. Much better than him(J).

Q. What was the reason you selected 9 hero characters from so many more? What heroes are there for each profession?

J. This is about the 9 heroes you can play in Hearthstone. All of these come from WoW. You can play as the mage, or rogue, or shaman, warrior, or priest, paladin…,etc. All of these are the same classes you’re playing from WoW.

You see a lot of the same really cool animations, spell effects. You’ll recognize a lot of the stuff if you’re playing WoW and we wanted to capture a lot of the fun charm from the WoW universe when you’re playing Hearthstone.

Q. But, there are no dwarves and gnome in the Heroes… It seems that somebody hates gnomes and dwarves?

J. We love the gnomes and the dwarves. In fact, gnomes and dwarves are awesome. In fact, you’ll see this character when you play Hearthstone who is the innkeeper character. He kinda comes and goes every now and then gives you some tips and pointers on how to play the game. He’s kinda your host as you go through the whole game. So this is a big important role And he’s a dwarf as well. He plays a big role.

We also have gnome characters all over the place when you’re playing your minions. We’re fans of both gnomes and dwarves.

Q. Any reason you chose the rogue not Vanessa VanCleef?

B. We chose Valeera Sanguinar as the rogue because she’s featured heavily in the comic books , she’s got really incredible looking daggers.

Vanessa VanCleef is awesome and her father Edwin VanCleef is in the game. He’s one of our minions you can choose to play as and I think we’ll see Vanessa VanCleef in future content.
But for our hero, we wanted to make Vanessa Sanguinar.

Q.  Are there any Korean developers in Team5?

B. Yes, one of our producer’s Korean, “Young Woo” and my wife is Korean. Where we work in Orange County, though many Korean Restaurants, so we eat a lot of Korean food.

Q. Which minion resembles Chris Metzen the most?

B. There’s a Drenai that looks like Chris. Chris always wears sunglasses so there’s a Drenai with goggles that we painted that looks very much like Chris Metzen. He would have a very booming intro-line when you play him and every other card would turn and rotate towards him and just gaze at him.

Q. What distinguishes Hearthstone from other online TCGs?

B. Hearthstone is beautiful. It’s got 3D graphics. It’s got incredible spell effects and it’s a great window into the WoW. It’s kind of a new way to look at this incredible universe.

J. Another thing that is unique about Hearthstone is that you can get into the gameplay very quickly.
So in 10 minutes, you can get in, play a game and jump out again come back again but because the game play so fast, it’s more fun and very easy to get into.

Q. What other processes need to be taken before release?

J. We’ve just started Alpha internally at blizzard, not too long ago. Everybody at blizzard is playing it, checking it out, sort of seeing what we can do to the game to make it better before we present it to our players. We’re looking forward to get it out to beta by summertime and we plan to release it by the end of this year. We’re moving very quickly, making good progress and look forward to getting it out to our players soon.

Q. If Rob Pardo was a hero unit in Hearthstone, who would he be?

B. Rob Paldo would be Anduin Wrynn. Because everywhere he goes the holy light shines upon him.

Q. The title Hearthstone is not familiar(to Koreans). How was the name selected and what significance does it have?

J. We came up with the name Hearthstone because we felt like it was a warm, friendly inviting game
as we thought about it. Trying to find a good name which, btw, was one of the most challenging things about the game was figuring out what we wanted to call it. Once we came up with the name though, it felt right. Because if you think about the hearthstone you think about sitting around the fire, feels warm, cozy, inviting, easy way to sit down and relax and have a fun experience. So we felt like it was a good match for the game.

Q. What reasons were the announce Hearthstone at PAX East, instead of Blizzcon?

B. PAX East is a great place to announce Hearthstone. Lots of really excited people here. And we’re going to Beta this summer and Blizzcon will be this October? November? later this year. We needed to announce before we went to Beta so this is the best time there were a lot of great people here at PAX to announce Hearthstone.

Q. The Death Knight is in the World of Warcraft TCG, but not in Hearthstone. What happened?

B. Hearthstone focuses on the 9 classes that we had when WoW first launched 2004. We were definitely interested in adding DKs and monks, but we really wanted to focus on focused experience, and start with something harking back to that old WoW experience. We’ll look at DK and monks for the future!

Q. If the players made printed card version of Hearthstone and played offline, how would you react?

J. I mean we’re excited for the fans to try whatever they want to try. if they want to try to play it offline, they can. Hearthstone was designed to paly online so we think that best experience with earthstone is online because the system will take care of a lot of the turns for you and wil give you the ability to summon full cards. But if people want to try it, AWESOME, give it a shot.

B. I CAN’T WAIT FOR YOU GUYS TO TRY THIS GAME!

Our fun and exciting interview will continue on 2013.

Asia finals start!

The first day of competition was boiled with competitive.

What did they say to their opponents?

WCS Global Finals Start! Seven Korean players did their best in each group, so five players advanced to Ro16. We hope the winner who will be awarded “GOSU” trophy gonna be the one of them.

Korean players went to China internet cafe, start to practise. PartinG met Socke who is his first opponent.

Tommorrow, The new history of Korean players begins again.

Won “StarTale_PartinG” Lee Sak arrived Shanghai after yesterday GSL round 16. ”PartinG” met Maunuel “Grubby” Schenkhuizen at hotel lobby. ”PartinG” and “Curious” enjoyed Korean lunch box with StarTale coach.

Today’s dinner is North Korean food. It is the first time have North Korean food for some of them.

For WCS Global Finals, Korean players arrived at Shanghai today.

They met Kim Soo Ro, famous Korean movie star, took a picture together at Pudong Airport, Shanghai.

Korean players met Chinese players face to face for the first time.

How much do they know about their first opponent?

Korean players saw the sights of Shanghai nightscape.

Oriental Pearl Tower was definitely the most interesting site.

They were very terrified because of the Tower.

How was that?

Honestly, the Chinese food is of concern to stranger.

Because Chinese foods have unique fragrance, it makes difficult to enjoy the food.

But, concern was just concern.