by JR Cook - 11 years ago     show comments

Hearthstone closed beta participants in North America and Europe will soon be experiencing the first and only account wipe scheduled at present. It’ll reset levels, card libraries, essentially everything, save golden Gelbin Mekkatorque, which players received for making a purchase during the closed beta. The official word is that it’s been done in an effort to level the playing field while making a number of balance changes. That absolutely makes sense. It’s also fair to assume that this milestone moves us closer to the release of open beta, and eventually the official release of the CCG.

Beyond that, Eric Dodds explained in an earlier interview that the direction the dev team went in would be largely up to the voice of the community. Options brought up were ideas such as new combat modes, possibly including team battles, more quests, and even a spectator mode. It might not be a surprise, but we at BlizzPro are lobbying for a spectator mode, and here’s why.

It’s crazy to believe, but even in closed beta, Hearthstone has a fairly intricate competitive scene, thanks to the guys over at ManaGrind, who have been running weekly tournaments for North America players and, most recently, European players. Every weekend players come out to push their decks to brink against other, at least somewhat serious players. It’s been a lot of fun to watch, but admittedly, the lack of a spectator mode has hurt it somewhat.

This is not a shot at ManaGrind at all. Far from it. What they’ve done, essentially as volunteer work, has been incredible, and I would imagine very much time consuming. The problem is, they really do lack sufficient tools right now to do what they want to do, which includes shoutcasting and real time analysis. Sure, you can still watch the matches, but it feels like an incomplete product right now, unless the player streaming is doing a topnotch job explaining his or her plays on a per turn basis. It doesn’t help that TwitchTV is essentially forever buggy. It’s pretty crazy just how often their chat is down. That’s obviously not something Blizzard has any control over.

So yah, right now, those in the competitive scene are working with an incomplete tool kit, and still managing to make the tournaments incredibly entertaining. With the proper setup, it can not only be better, but it can also attract a wider range of audience. There’s been no shortage of well-deserved hype about the game and, once a spectator mode is in place, there’s no doubt in my mind that this game could be right up there with League of Legends in terms of competitive popularity, because of the all important price tag of: Free.

Even if you’re not into the tournaments, consider that, more people being brought into the game equals more possible revenue that can be spent on improving the game. I don’t want to say exactly how that could be done, because that’s for Blizzard to decide, but more capital to work with almost always translates to more updates, content, you name it.

Spectator modes, tournaments, community involvement – all of these are ingredients make for not just a successful title, but an enduring one. There’s a reason that the games at the top have all been able to remain, not just as noticeable titles, but as crushingly dominant ones. There will come a time where alternate game modes and other similar features can be focused on, but they should not be what we look for upon the initial release of the game. As a community, we should all be rallying around the idea of a spectator mode, and more features to support it.