I guess it was only a matter of time. Blizzard, the company made famous by its dumbed down (but beautifully polished) multi-billion selling MMO World of Warcraft, has turned the greedy sites of its ‘lowest common denominator’ team to online collectable card games (or CCGs).
The game itself, Hearthstone, has only just hit the market and many of the proposed features aren’t in-game yet, so it’s impossible to judge how good it’s really going to be (I’m hoping awesome). For now it is a predictably basic sub-Magic new-user friendly game, with much of the depth of a children’s paddling pool, but as it’s free (with easy to avoid micro payments) I’ll certainly be sticking around to see what comes next.
One of the big areas it’s lacking right now is in-game communication. You can add ‘friends’, and then chat to them, but when you’re actually in a card duel you’re limited to a six (yup, six) programmed chat commands: hello, well played, oops etc. I can only presume they’ve done this to stop abuse during matches but it’s SO LAME. It makes it feel like you’re playing a Disney game or something.
Anyway, to try and alleviate this awful state of affairs, I’ve done Blizzard’s work for them and come up with five new emotes they can add for each character. Got better ones? Add them in comments below and I’ll promise to lose my next match against whoever comes up with the best one…
The five most needed taunts
1. Yawn: So many slow players, so many boring decks, so many idiots who think they can wind you up by deliberately playing slowly (dude, I’m working on my other screen - it’s really not an issue).
2. Haha you paid: They have fancy card backs, gold shiny animated cards and their poop smells of roses. They have a Blizzard Platinum Card from their mommy and, worst of all, they’re going to win. At least let me ‘haha’ them.
3. Bum draw: It’s in the nature of a CCG game this simple; or really any CCG. You know it, they (probably) know it; you’d have kicked their ass if you’d not dumped three 5-cost cards and been given two 4s and a 7 in the initial draw.
4. Fluke! You bastard; I’ve been handing you your ass all game and you were totally screwed unless you drew that ONE damned card. You know it, I know it, we all bloody know it. Aaaaagh!
5. Friend chat: I mean seriously, we’ve decided to be ‘friends’; can you at least let us chat within game? Or maybe open up a bigger range of options for chat? Or at the very least have friend chat incorporated into the main screen during a dual?