Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is the game that brought digital collectible card game esports into the limelight. With its gigantic developer/publisher, Blizzard Entertainment, backing it, Hearthstone found its way onto the esports scene not long after release due to its immense popularity and simple, yet strategic, mechanics. Even today, Hearthstone remains to be one of the top five most viewed Twitch games daily and a game with, on average, some of the largest tournament prize pools ever seen. All of this makes Hearthstone incredibly easy to get into for a number of reasons.
As we’ve said, exposure is incredibly important for getting into esports. Also, the main factor in enjoying competitive Hearthstone is understanding what is going on in each match. There are so many cards and strategies that it’s easy to get lost between the various plays. However, the Hearthstone streaming community continues to be one of the most interactive communities on Twitch, allowing viewers to ask competitive players questions and sometimes even play against them. One of the most popular streamers/YouTubers for the game, Trump, even makes videos dedicated to teaching players basic and advanced Hearthstone strategy. Hearthstone is also free to download and play, which is hands down the best way to really get an understanding of how the game works.
When you feel like you have a handle on Hearthstone’s intricacies, finding competitive matches to watch is as easy as heading over to Blizzard’s official Hearthstone website and checking out the esports section. There you can find the dates and times of all minor and major tournaments as well as the tournaments rules. Each of these tournaments are live streamed on Twitch and put up on YouTube shortly after. Competitive matches tend to be easier to follow as well, because of the slow, strategic nature of the game. Due to this, casters are able to provide in-depth insight into each player’s choices as well as help predict what players are likely to do, which makes following the game much easier and even more enjoyable.
