@Boris_yo Yes :P

@allquixotic How you achieved that when you played video games 100 hours a week?

@JimmyHoffa Hearthstone is a good trading card game but it's still in beta. it's by Blizzard.

Blizzard never releases a game until it's essentially perfect

@allquixotic Trading cards? What like I buy park place and somebody tries to convince me to trade it for Reading RailRoad?

I believe the beta is still "closed", but you can express interest in joining the beta at no cost, and they use some combination of your system requirements and the time at which you signed up to determine when to let you in

@JimmyHoffa no, nothing like that

it's creatures from the Warcraft universe fighting one another, led by a hero

@allquixotic Old colleague of mine is a dev out there now, the things you hear are indeed that they are with Steam in terms of "Few people; doing it right"

both players get a 30 card deck (the deck's composition is determined based on the game mode) and a hero with a special ability

you take turns playing cards based on the amount of mana you have -- you start with 1 mana and each turn you get an additional mana

@allquixotic O fun. How much is this? I've played a few of those on my phone, seem to be the best type of RPG for phones that I've seen.

each card has a mana cost to "play" it -- cards can be anything from spells to creatures that sit on the battlefield and fight other minions and the enemy hero

@allquixotic But most of all cards are things like "Tic-tacs" and "Chewing gum", it's a strange turn from Blizzard...

@JimmyHoffa they haven't set a price yet to buy the base game (personally I believe it will be free to play), but there is already a store module where you can either buy into the Arena for $2.00 (an elite, but optional, game mode), or buy packs of cards which add variety to your decks

to play in the Arena you either need to earn enough gold by doing daily quests (like winning matches in the ordinary game mode, or killing a certain number of enemy minions), or you can buy into it

@allquixotic Ah, I hate pay-to-be-better games... If I wanted to use money to do better than others I'd just save up to buy my own politician.

@JimmyHoffa it's not pay to be better

all you get is more card variety when you unlock packs -- but you can still only cram 30 cards into a deck -- and it's very possible for a default deck to defeat a carefully constructed deck

@allquixotic You plan the deck order in advance of the game?

you have a "Collection" of cards, which you can essentially buy into making as big as you want, but when you "construct a deck", you choose 30 of those cards to play

if the 30 cards you choose either play out in the wrong order as you draw them during the game, or if the enemy's cards counter your cards well, you are going to lose, no matter how carefully you plan it

at the start of each turn, you get 1 card from your deck, and you don't get to control what mana cost it is, so you could theoretically get all your high cost creatures early and not be able to play anything until mid-game, which is basically a death sentence

even the best player in the world with an extremely well crafted deck can lose to that stuff

the enemy player, if they get a good "draw", will draw low-cost creatures first, then draw progressively larger creatures as they get more mana with each turn

that sort of drawing luck can make the difference in the game -- but there's also a very serious skill aspect

@allquixotic You are so going down when I get off work

every turn there are usually about 10 to 50 possible sequences of plays you can make -- and not only would it matter which plays you select, but in what order

@JimmyHoffa well there are two game modes (right now, anyway; they are planning more modes) -- the normal "Play" mode is free and unlimited to play, and you get to select whichever deck with whichever 30 cards you want between each game

the Arena makes you keep your deck until you either lose 3 times, or win 9 times, whichever comes first

the more you win with your arena deck, the larger your reward

you are guaranteed to get 150 gold (the alternative to paying $2.00 to enter the Arena) if you win 7 games with one deck

if you win less, you get less gold, and less chance at things like a packet of cards for your collection

there's one more thing about the arena I haven't told you yet: you only get to pick your cards to a very limited extent

out of the entire list of all possible cards in the game, the game randomly draws three-card pairs, repeatedly, for 30 rounds, and you have to choose one card per pair to construct your 30-card deck for the Arena

once you make 30 choices (and each choice is irreversible; you can't go back), you are stuck with those cards until you either lose 3 times or win 9

@allquixotic Does losing take away points or money or anything, or is it just losing doesn't win anything?

@JimmyHoffa no, there's no taking cards -- the most you can do to "take things away from other people" is to cost them losses in the Arena, which might mean that you're helping them lose after they invested $2.00 into that arena deck

in the regular matchmaking mode outside the arena, there are absolutely no stakes; you have nothing to lose, only gain (gain would be gold or packs of cards for your collection)

@JimmyHoffa in the arena, losing provides almost no benefit except you get a tiny bit of Experience -- when one of your nine hero classes (each class has its own XP level) reaches certain level milestones, you get an infusion of gold to spend on arena play

in regular mode, you still get XP if you lose, but nothing gets taken away

@allquixotic Just your dignity

I can tell you from experience that an arena deck can last for a highly variable number of matches -- I have already played arena decks that went 4-3 (4 wins 3 losses), 9-2, 0-3, 2-3, etc

paying $2.00 to play 11 games is a fairly good value in my opinion, especially because you get to draw another deck and start the process over for free, which could lead to up to another 11 games if you do well

the 0-3 one was really pathetic, and each loss was very quick... it depends on the skill level of your opponents too

there are a number of times when I've seen that an enemy player's skill, or lack thereof, has made a much larger difference in the game outcome than the random card draws or other luck-oriented aspects

@allquixotic Yeah, like if they're me, who is clearly the best at this. I'm totally going to win! Is this in Steam?

@JimmyHoffa no, to play you have to download the Battle.net client from Blizzard, and like I said you can't play unless you get an invite to the closed beta, so you better go sign up

if you have a Battle.net account and own at least one Blizzard game, you should be able to opt-in to the beta for free -- it took me about a month to get in, but I hear they are opening up the game to more people exponentially over time

@allquixotic I don't think I have anything of the nature. If I have a Battle.NET account it's circa Diablo 2 release

@JimmyHoffa that should be sufficient to opt in to the beta.... I think

@allquixotic You think I know anything about a battle.net account that was created like 15 years ago??

@JimmyHoffa meh....

buy Starcraft 2, then... it's a fantastic game in its own right and totally worth it... you'll have tons of fun in SC2

@JimmyHoffa yes it is!

@JimmyHoffa I liked the Starcraft 2 campaign; really liked the Heart of the Swarm expansion campaign; kinda enjoyed the "normal" multiplayer games; but for me, 80% of the fun of Starcraft 2 is the custom scenarios

SC2 exposes the vast majority of its engine's features to modders to create custom scenarios which consist of a new map, new units, and entirely new game mechanics, with a very robust scripting language and most things you could think of for a game

examples of things that people have made in SC2: Bejeweled; card games (though none as good as Hearthstone); turn based strategy games; tower defense; DotA (which originated, actually, as a map in Starcraft, long before Valve's DotA 2 game); etc

I still go back to Starcraft 2 about every month even if I'm completely bored of all the major custom scenarios that I've played recently, because someone always comes up with something unique, fresh and new... so I continue to get more value out of my investment in the game each time some guy gets a cool idea

there are scenarios that take place entirely in space where you build out and upgrade a battleship and play a 3v3 tug of war game where you try to beat down the enemy (make them respawn, which takes a long time) then take out their fortified base... the scripting and mechanics involved in making the map, I have no idea, there's nothing even remotely similar in the base game

entire new models and textures

@allquixotic Heh no, Y-Combinator is named after something:

new sounds

@JimmyHoffa you mean for funding people to work on maps? no, but people will release their maps and ask for donations to keep it going

Y-Combinator ---^

@allquixotic Will do. And if not, do you have beta invites? :D

actually... I don't think you need to own a blizzard game to apply for the beta test o_O

you can create a battle.net account for free.... try to sign up once you do !

hmm... looks like you might not be waiting very long, in any case... the game is closer to release than I realized

latest rumors are that the open beta (for absolutely anyone with an email address to jump in and play) will start around the time of Blizzcon, November 8th - 9th

they want to release the game in 2014, unless they find some huge showstoppers (so far it looks pretty stable and polished)

I'm guessing it'll be launched the week before Christmas, so kids can ask their parents for money for cards for xmas

and, yep, I just read confirmation that the base game will cost $0, so spending is entirely optional

all spending does is reduces the amount of "grind" you have to do in order to either get in the arena or flesh out your collection

@JimmyHoffa no, they aren't giving out beta key invites to testers unfortunately

I'm in the Game Zone atm

In my reality, isle get it done is several magnitudes larger than that.

if you read "isle" as "I'll", it's kinda like a "round tuit"

I got a "round tuit" as a joke for Christmas one year... "I'll get around to it"

in my reality, I board a plane and leave Procrasti-Nation entirely for certain categories of things, and for others I'm happy to fly back and land almost anywhere except Solitaireitory (how boring; I'd rather actually do it than play Suckitaire) and Doodle District (I'm not very good at doodling, otherwise it'd be fine)

snacks, games, youtube, naps and excuses are all fantastic

if you get hooked on watching his hearthstone videos, don't blame me (I love his dialogue style and I enjoy learning his thought processes as they help me play better)

@allquixotic I am a nap failure, my body is incapable of distinguishing nap from bedtime so everytime I open my eyes from the nap to not find the next morning my body goes back to sleep

an afternoon nap is synonymous with an early night for me