Feb 1 and 2 questions!

Whoops, holy crap, did you know it's FEBRUARY already??? Yeah, I sorta didn't realize it until I had to go to work today. Here are the two questions that I missed from the weekend:

What is the best thing you have learned from being involved in fandom? What is the worst thing?
Best thing I have learned is that you're not alone - you're never alone. Somewhere out there, in any fandom, is someone with your same take on things, or if not exactly the same, downright similar. You can meet so many amazing people.

Worst thing is that people can be dicks, they can say things just to be upsetting and fandom politics (pulling rank etc.) gets old really fast.



The best book and the worst book that you've ever read.
Wow, this one is hard, mostly because I don't finish books if they are really bad. Best book would probably go to...hm...I think I would say "The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak. The story, the writing, the feels - it's all very well done and I think the fact that so many people of so many different ages have read this "young adult" book and loved it means I must be a little bit right.

Worst book...hm...probably something I was forced to read in school. Like "Cold Sassy Tree" or "House of the Seven Gables". Bleh. I didn't make it through "City of Bones" or "Maximum Ride", two very popular series who had writing styles that made me want to rip them into pieces...but they were library books so I just returned them and then refuse to put them on display. But as they are both massive best-sellers, I don't think I hurt either author in the end.



No question for today! But I still have some empty dates if you have something you want to know about me!

video game thoughts: Hearthstone

When I first heard about Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, Blizzard's new online collectible card game, I rolled my eyes. I had never played any CCGs in real life and I couldn't imagine myself playing one virtually.

Then my brother texted me about the open beta and asked if I was going to try it. So I found my old Battle.net account, logged in and downloaded the game to just give it a try. And now I'm sucked into it.

I'm sure veteran card gamers will probably feel the same way about Hearthstone as most hard-core MMORPG players feel about WoW - it is very accessible, easy for casual players to pick up. That's why I love it. You can launch this game and start playing through the tutorial and you'll have the basics down in minutes. You can stay in the "Practice" zone for as long as you like to work on strategy and earn cards for your main deck, but the real fun begins when you start to challenge actual players. Since it is all linked to your Battle.net account, all your WoW friends automatically populate your player list so it would be easy to suck friends into card battles, maybe while waiting for the rest of your guild to log online for game night.

The cards all have that great WoW art look and the sound effects and sayings from your favorite in-game characters are played with each card.

I gave up on WoW itself a long time ago, I couldn't justify the cost vs actual time I spent gaming. It was fun but my Xbox was gathering dust and it felt silly to keep paying for the same game over and over when I had brand new games to try. But Hearthstone is free! As far as I can tell, it's going to be free.

Now, you can **pay** to get extra special cards, and I haven't really experienced a game against someone of that level yet. Already you can give Blizzard real money and earn a limited edition card for when the game officially launches. I've only played the Casual matches and they have been lots of fun but I am thinking that the Ranked matches in the Arena will be a lot rougher and you will find the people willing to pay real money for virtual cards playing in that section.

But right now I'm having a hella lot of fun trying to complete my rogue deck and playing against random opponents. If you're looking for a fun way to kill 30 minutes, download the demo and play a few games (nice feature: there is a clock in the game so you can see what time it is).

Have you tried Hearthstone yet? What do you think?