Hearthstone may have officially launched but was I the only one to be surprised by this news? I admit my main interest is WoW but when I started seeing Hearthsteed pics, I decided to find out more about it. For a free game, it can be pretty addictive, especially in the beginning. The day I started playing back in October, I was surprised by all the slick animations and voiceovers.
My first match in play mode turned out to be quite amusing as I was itching to try out a priest deck. Naturally Coolidge battled (or should I say slaughtered) me with his pali deck. Well, it was all still new to me and would never have known the matches took that long if I hadn’t recorded it.
To earn your own Hearthsteed, all you have to do is win three games of Hearthstone in Play or Arena mode. You should then receive your achievement and mount after logging in to WoW. For some, the rewards have been instant, for me… not so much. If you’re having trouble collecting your rewards, you can try restarting the Battle.net launcher and WoW as suggested in the forums but this didn’t work for me until I logged back into Hearthstone and out again.
Here’s what a blue had to say on the forums:
The servers are currently experiencing some delays in regards to picking up the Mount Up! achievement on the World of Warcraft side and we are currently working on it. If you have already earned the Mount Up! achievement in Hearthstone, don’t worry, once the server catches up you will properly receive the Hearthsteed mount on your World of Warcraft account. Please note that the Hearthsteed can only be earned from the Americas region of Hearthstone at this time.
I wasn’t quite sure how fast it would take to win three matches since I literally hadn’t played for months and this ranking system was new to me so I headed into play mode with my trusty priest deck. As the match went on, I felt more and more rusty, which I quickly told Neo as he cheered me on but I was surprised to walk out with a win in my first match. That soon faded when the next few weren’t that evenly matched.
As a fresh rank 25 player, I was surprised to see several rank 23 opponents but that’s the luck of the draw I guess. Neo said it took a while to get his done and that seemed to mirror my experience although I probably shouldn’t have been watching TV while completing my matches. It really didn’t help my concentration (which is why I kept looking over the same cards) but I ended up getting my wins against against a pali and 2 mage decks.
The first match whittled me down to 5 before I started to turn the match around. I’ve never forfeit a match and this is why. Unfortunately, I couldn’t record the second since my HD was full and I couldn’t minimise the game (even in fullscreen mode). By the time I got to the third match, I didn’t even get to use my ability before the match abruptly ended! Check out the video, if interested.
When the pegasus model was first datamined, there were two different versions thought to be Alliance blue and Horde red but it appears the red model will be coming later.
Grats! I was so bad at Hearthstone I don’t ever see me riding one of those, lol.
The best part was keeping all my cards and decks so I didn’t have to build anything for the matches. I practiced quite a lot though in the beginning. I’m sure you can get one over time.
I’ve just got mine. I played a tiny little bit of Hearthstone when it first went into Beta, but got bored pretty quickly (mainly because I kept losing!) … but its worth having a go now, if only for the mount.
There are some people on there who obviously know what they are doing … but there are also plenty who don’t (probably just after the mount!) .. I had one opponent who blew his own hero up with a fireball (and then said “oops” after!), so its pretty easy to get the three wins.
LOL, I can relate to something similar. I’m too used to defensive hero abilities so I ended up healing Cool’s hero in my first real match. :P
Glad I could throw a little encouragement your way. I had several hunters wreck me before I got my 3 wins in a row.
I probably should have looked though my deck before heading in there – just like the first opponent who seemed to be overflowing with tanks. I was just eager to get my wins.
Thx again for the whisper :)
I got my three wins today and picked up my Hearthsteed! Like you, I’d not played in months, so I completed some practice matches before I started into matches against other people in Play mode. I also bought a few card packs just for the heck of it (I love opening card packs, even virtual ones!) and managed to snag a few good cards. I have a decent Pally deck that I do fairly well with if I have good timing with cards I don’t really understand the ranks or how to see other players’ ranks yet. This has made me want to play Hearthstone again, though, so I’ll be devoting some time to it.
That’s great to hear. During the beta I had a couple of real money decks which were reimbursed as gold after one of the wipes. Sadly I was never able to collect any loot cards from the actual TCG booster packs but at least I’ve had a couple of interesting ones from the virtual kind.
When you’re looking at your pali deck before you press play, you can click the icon above your hero allowing you to play in ranked mode. I made this change during the beta so I wasn’t aware you could play unranked any more. You start off at rank 25 and need to win at least 3 matches to progress to the next. The good thing is, you can’t lose ranks above rank 20 which is why I seem to fluctuate between 19 and 20.
I think I’m ranked at 25 which surprises me because it feels like I lose all the time. I picked up the Elite Tauren Chieftan card which, when dealt, gives both my opponent and me a card (usually a random Horde hero) and the ability to “rock” with a “power chord” lol. I never played TCG and I don’t really play other card games like Magic, but Hearthstone will probably keep me coming back periodically because it’s just flashy and silly enough in the signature WoW style.
You will stay at rank 25 until you win three or four consecutive matches. Any loss will knock off one of the stars you’ve previously won. Yes, I’ve had some fun with the Chieftan card. My first match back had me trying it. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect so I used it late in the game.