Blizzard: Hearthstone Validates Free-to-Play

World of Warcraft tie-in title Hearthstone - Heroes of Warcraft has "helped validate our approach" - that approach being Free-to-Play (F2P) says the game's production director Jason Chayes.

Hearthstone is an online card game that emulates the real-world table-top games that are growing in popularity among gamers who want to meet each other in person. It's playable online with no plans for it to move to console.

Chayes continued, ""We really wanted to make sure that it wasn't just lip service to say it's free to play and then hit some kind of monetisation gate where you had to buy things, so for us making sure you could actually earn all the things you needed to be competitive was something we put a lot of time into.

"Seeing that happen and seeing people construct the decks they need to play at the very top levels of play and seeing that happen through the community was awesome. So overall we felt very good about how that evolved and how in some ways helped validate our approach, and we feel pretty good about the direction that's been heading."



Source: Eurogamer