Blizzard’s Hearthstone card game opens to the public

Buy some flowers for your significant other right now. You’re gonna need them when you lose all of your time playing Hearthstone.

Blizzard has officially opened up its free-to-play Hearthstone to everyone in North America. The collectible-card game (think a stripped-down take on Magic: The Gathering) that has players facing against one another online is now in an open “beta” phase that anyone can join by downloading the game from PlayHearthstone.com.

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“It’s been a crazy past few months for all of us on the Hearthstone team,” reads a Blizzard blog post. “We announced Hearthstone at PAX East back in March, began the closed beta test in August, had a great Hearthstone event at BlizzCon with the Innkeeper’s Invitational along with our announcements for Android and iPhone support, and now we’re ready to unleash the awesomeness of Hearthstone to you with open beta.”

Hearthstone is playable now on PC and Mac, but we have a guide that explains how you can play it on your iPad or Android tablet right now.

In Hearthstone, you may spend money on additional cards or runs in the Arena, a special mode with better rewards than the standard game. Blizzard also intends to debut an iPad version of the game soon followed by an Android and iPhone release. Since August, the game has been in a prerelease state that was only accessible by invitation from Blizzard.

The open beta means that anyone can start playing the game immediately. Blizzard also doesn’t intend to wipe stats or testers’ personal collections anymore. A few times during the closed beta, Blizzard had to reset all data to test out changes to the system.

While the open testing is only currently available for North American players, the company says it plans to launch it in other regions in the next few days.