My Blizzcon 2015 Wrap-Up: A Hearthstone Adventure

img: Blizzard

While I found the opening ceremony preview for the next Hearthstone adventure quite endearing, I hadn't actually planned on sitting down to test it out on the floor. But sometimes, life has other plans for you and you've got to make due with your available options. Basically, my friend and I ditched the Linkin Park concert a bit early (despite the fact to my surprise, they put on a great show) with the intention of playing Overwatch without having to wait in a long line. It worked for us last year...and didn't work for us this year. Clearly the Overwatch hype train is roaring at full-force.

Realizing we didn't want to spend a great deal of time in line just to try something we played the year prior, we strolled over to the Heroes of the Storm demo area. We checked out the new Arena mode earlier in the day and thought about trying to new map this time around, but that would've also involved a 20+ minute wait. Then we realized there wasn't a wait for the new Hearthstone adventure, so we thought, "What the hell!" What follows is an "I played some of the new Hearthstone adventure, what the hell, I'll toss some thoughts out there" write-up. This will be light on details, with more focus on impressions. I figure if you're interested in Hearthstone at all you already know about the new cards, maps, mechanics and the like. If you're interested in a casual player's perspective, read on.

I sat down at the PC and was greeted with a screen that allowed selection of one of two heroes: a rogue or a shaman if my memory serves me. It wasn't immediately clear if this signaled two separate adventures, or if it simply provided two class options for the same adventure. It turned out to be the latter, the adventure being The Temple of Osiris.

I chose the shaman (or whatever class it was) first. Pretty sure it was a shaman. It actually didn't end up mattering which class I picked because very early on in the match I had a card that, when played, replaced the default hero power with a random hero power. I ended up getting the warlock's Life Tap. However, because of the format of the adventure itself, the hero power didn't really factor much in the two matches I played.

The board looked like an underground temple ala Raiders of the Lost Ark. Naturally, I spent a bit of time clicking around the four corners to see how I could interact with the board itself. Nothing too memorable, but thematically appropriate. In this game, I didn't face an enemy hero---I fought against the temple itself. The key was to survive 10 rounds without dying. Doing so meant I'd essentially escaped the temple with my physical and mental facilities in tact.

I was given a pre-built deck in each instance. The temple did possess a zero-mana hero ability that summoned powerful minions to try to prevent me from escaping. But this wasn't the only interesting mechanic; after almost every round, I was given a choice to do something---usually I was shown two cards and had to pick one. One I can clearly recall was a choice between drawing two cards or healing my hero for 10 health. About halfway through the 10 rounds, the temple's ceiling caved in and cleared the entire board of minions---a blessing or a curse depending what I or the temple had placed on the board prior.

img: Blizzard

That all said, I didn't really have a problem countering what the temple threw at me with the cards in my deck. It was a fun experience, but I can't say it was a particularly challenging one---I'd have to assume it would be the same for anyone with basic familiarity with Hearthstone play. The second playthrough with the rogue felt a bit more difficult due to the cards I drew, but I was still able to escape with relative ease. What's more: I had a friend playing next to me who had never played a game of Hearthstone in her life. I looked over and she had 6 health remaining and five more turns to survive. At this point she asked me to assist and I guided her on what to play for the remaining rounds, assuming we were doomed. At least I'd get to see what losing looked like.

To my astonishment, she also escaped the temple with her life. It made me think that perhaps we'll see some balancing tweaks before release, but considering it will go goes live within a week today my guess is that there will be variance in difficulty modes to offer greater challenge to more skilled players. Either way, it's a cool take on the solo adventure, much different from Naxxramas or Blackrock Mountain. Well worth the money or gold, in my opinion.

My Blizzcon 2015 in Pictures

I'm still deconstructing all of the information that came out of Blizzcon last weekend---there are definitely a couple of posts worth of thoughts, but to start off, I'm simply going to share a selection of the pictures I took. If you have the means to attend Blizzcon, I would highly recommend it. Even though the convention's focus is moving away from Warcraft, and even though Blizzard is packing a lot more content into the weekend which makes it impossible to catch everything, the experience in itself is worth seeing at least once. Or four times, if you're me.

Each year our group rents a little house nearby the convention center. This was the view from the front porch. I'm sparing everyone pictures of the bacon, eggs, toast and mimosa breakfasts. You can imagine how that went.

See-through Nova mini figure. Wasn't impressed with this, was hoping to trade for an ETC before the convention's end. Sadly did not happen. Ping me if you want to trade!

Trip to California not complete without a visit to In-n-Out Burger.

The day before the convention. People starting to filter in.

Front side of the convention center the day before the con.

Beautiful fountain in the courtyard featuring colored water jets.

Sole image I managed to snap of the Wowhead party on Thursday night held on the rooftop of the Hilton. Unbeknownst to me (initially) was that there were two sides to this party; the other half was on the opposite side of the roof, and you had to walk through the Hilton to access it. After wandering to a bathroom in a slight stupor, I accidentally returned to the party on the opposite side, which featured green-lit palm trees instead of the red ones seen above. For a few moments I thought I'd wandered into a parallel universe. 

My signature on the signing wall, which I'm happy to say remained there the entire con---many others got scribbled over due to sheer volume.

Long view of the signing wall, with my buddy @thronus in the foreground at left.

I snap pics of the statues every single year, and they never cease to amaze me. This is probably my favorite. See below for some new statues!

Day of the convention; things are starting to get busy. This is the long walkway that leads to the front of the convention center which is lined with food trucks. 

Priests!

Gotta love the training dummy!

A blurry Tracer. I'm convinced Blizzard modeled the character after this gal. 

New this year: a Tracer statue, which is available in the Blizzard store (the mini version, of course)

Will the real Darkmoon Faire please stand up?

Kerrigan statue. Just beyond is the entrance to the arena where the Starcraft championships were held.

Winston overshadowing a well-done Rollerskate Nova.

My buddy @thronus and the Tracer we saw earlier.

Winston statue. Fierce.

A couple of beards at Blizzcon featuring yours truly and @Epic_Insanity.

The Lich King. This dude was like 6'8", which only added to the looming presence of the get-up.

Blizzcon would not be Blizzcon without the protesters and the counter-protesters. 

Probably my second-favorite statue.

The above statue includes this base: Mannoroth's lifeless head.

In the coming days I'm hoping to post my thoughts about the Demon Hunter experience I was able to test, in addition to reflections about how Blizzcon has changed throughout the years.

Fool Me Once...

It's probably safe to say that most people who were queuing up to purchase a ticket for Blizzcon 2014 felt a bit nervous. Breaking the mold of previous years, Blizzard contracted a third-party vendor---Eventbrite---to facilitate ticket sales. Granted, one can hardly blame them for this choice. Not only does it likely save them time and money, but it passes the headache of coordinating such a high-demand sale to an entirely different entity.

Googling "Blizzcon ticket fiasco" tells a story. The articles and blogs from this year haven't yet broken to the top of the results, but you'll find a lot of info on what's known as the Official Fiasco of 2008. There's another article on the 2012 process on the first page, where Blizzard's own ticketing site was down for hours, leaving people who set aside time unable to buy tickets.

Last year, I was a first hand witness to Eventbrite's systems. While many people reported issues with the queuing system, my friends and I were able to get through with relative ease. We weren't deaf to the plight of others, but luckily hadn't experienced the same issues other people were having.

Blizzard acknowledged last year's problems. In fact, we were assured Eventbrite had looked into the causes of the bottlenecks last year and would be prepared. Then Wednesday happened. Long story short, Eventbrite admitted there was an error in the Waiting Room system, but they believed they'd returned it to full functionality by the Saturday sale.

Unfortunately, that did not happen. The issues experienced Saturday were, for one, much worse and more widespread than last year. Additionally, the issues experienced on Saturday were much worse and more widespread compared to Wednesday. It was an actual regression. Some players got to the purchase screen only to submit their order error out. Other people, myself included, had the order error out, yet received an e-confirmation that indeed, our transaction went through.

Perhaps the most common problem was being placed into a Waiting Room that truly lived up to its expectations; you literally just waited, and for too many people nothing happened. Meanwhile, the savvy/less-patient of us out there opened new browser windows and were able to nab tickets almost instantly.

That's two years now. I think Eventbrite has had their chance to prove whether or not they're capable of handling the type of demand Blizzcon sees. It's not about having the ability to do better; it's about actually doing better. Blizzard would be best served by another vendor.