Hearthstone Open Beta delayed till January 2014
If you were hoping to play the Hearthstone open beta before the end of the year, you're out of luck. Blizzard has decided it needs more time fine tuning the CCG and has now set its sights on releasing the game sometime in January 2014.
Blizzard originally intended to launch the open beta this December, but after the most recent update to Hearthstone, the team felt their were still too many things in need of fixing before Hearthstone was ready for a wider audience. In a blog post on Battle.net, Production Director Jason Chayes explained the team has "been making great progress on improving server stability, but there are still a few things that have come up that we want to fix before we leave the closed beta phase." He goes on to say the team is "very close" to the open beta and urged everyone to continue to provide feedback and report bugs.
Chayes did have some good news though. As of yesterday, everyone who opted into the closed beta prior to Monday, December 16th should have received a beta key. If you happen to check your inbox and find no key, some users are reporting the invite emails are landing in spam folders and Gmail's new Promotions tab.
About the Author

Michael Dunaway has been part of the MMOBomb team for years and has covered practically every major Free-to-Play MMO title since 2009.
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