Analysis: Why hasn't Hearhstone been release yet? And why the Tournament at BlizzCon is good news!

Hearthstone has been in beta since Aug 19, 2013 and is limited to those who have beta keys. Currently October 21, 2013 the game has been in beta for around 66 days and still no word on a release date.

Money

So why doesn't Blizzard release the game to the public yet if it seems ready? It most likely has to do with money. Lets not play stupid the game is making money as it stands right now, I've seen players on YouTube buy 40 packs at a time.

If the game was released to 100,000 players with beta invites then how much money did they make? If each player bought only 1 pack then it would have been 199,900 dollars. 2 packs average? 398,000 dollars. That doesn't even consider the arena money gathered for paying to play.

I would say a rough estimate is that players have spent money on average 5 times. That is a safe assumption it is probably much more than that. 995,000, close to a million dollars from a beta.

The Healthstone game is potentially the most profitable IPO the company has right now. Even if the game is in beta it is making money so it allows them to delay release without too much of the pressures of profit.

Bugs

The game isn't ready for release to be honest.

I have watch hours and hours of the game be played. There are definitely still bugs and the Hearthstone team is a small one so patching and making change is slower than usual. I have seen issues with the cards not displaying correctly (missing card from hand, glowing cards, card hovering over the board) and minions being placed off the board. Also I have seen where the cards do not work as intended, counterspell proc'ing off of a silence battlecry from a minion. Odd things like that make the game close to release but not ready.

Blizzcon

Good news that Blizzard will be showing off the product at Blizzcon with a tournament. They might take the attitude beta is beta but how embarrassing would it be for Blizzard if the game has those bugs show up during a live match in front of their audience? So the game should recieve a huge update fixing all the bugs before Blizzcon if were lucky and thus making us that much closer to a released version of the game.

Dungeons Runs - Part 1 - Cool Story Bro

First Impression - Scenario 'Blood in the Snow'

First Impressions of Timeless Isle 5.4

Hearthstone Beta Key - Buy it now $650

Whether or not the post on ebay is legit it got me wondering, would you pay for a hearthstone beta key? The actual battlenet account has multiple games on it but anyone who is a big enough fan willing to spend that kind of dough most likely already has some of them purchased. Did I mention that it has free shipping :)

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hearthstone-Battlenet-Account-including-11-other-Blizzard-products-/281169427776?pt=US_Nonfiction_Book&hash=item417700fd40

Did Stranglethorn Vale copy Vietnam?

Did Vietnam inspire the zone Stranglethorn Vale? Reddit user cairneyouhearme posted eerily similar images of maps of Vietnam and Stranglethorn Vale. Link below to original post on reddit and additional images added that show similarity in the visual look and feel of the zone.

http://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/1mgupx/vietnam_is_a_possible_inspiration_for/

Return to Writing After Long Hiatus

So I'm back after a long break guys and I am playing WoW again. I just reached level 90 on my first character today. I am going to get back to writing about my experiences and making new videos but first a few things I want to say.

The reason why I stopped subbing WoW was Cataclysm, so here is some criticism while probably well known I want to get off my chest about that expansion.

Cataclysm while I played it a lot, after a while I didn't feel very fondly for the expansion. Maybe because for me I enjoyed the story in Wrath so much. Enjoyed is an understatement, I fuckimg loved Lich King. It's this familiar story arc of a hero who is corrupted by great power.. The Lich King made you feel something, something real. The broken relationship with Jaina and the sadness she feels knowing she lost a friend. For gods sake the ghost of his father that he murdered appears to him as he lay dying.

What emotion did I feel in Cataclysm? I felt nothing. It is a dragon, a really big bad ass dragon that wants to kill us all. Screw that scaly bastard. The story with Deathwing wasn't involved enough and I remember blizzard admitting to this. We only got to see the effects of his destruction but never got involved enough with who he is to really understand him. The story of Deathwing itself is interesting but it never was revealed to us in such an engaging was as it was in WotLK.

WotLK is and was a tough act to follow. It shows in the numbers as well, 12 million players peaked during Wrath.