Eternal - Dire Wolf Digital
I've been playing Eternal off and on for a year now and watching people get excited over every Hearthstone expansion and opening hundreds of packs makes me faceplam so hard.
Eternal (imo) has way better game mechanics than Hearthstone - much closer to MtG but without the paper-derived antiquity MtG fails to escape even with their new digital game. Personally, I never got into MtG. I didn't care for learning the game, the turn phases, etc. When they launched the digital game, it still had the same barrier to entry. Hearthstone was much more simplified and was a good way to get into the genre, but I stopped playing by the time they did the grand tournament expansion. Eternal has much more depth to it but not in a way that prevented me from getting into the game in the way MtG had. If you're coming from HS expect a bit of an adjustment period.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyvL6sazi54
Singleplayer
Campaign - unlockable 'adventure' modes with starter sets of cards. Can be unlocked with gold or real money
Puzzles - a fun intro to game mechanics that awards gold for completing first time.
Gauntlet - Take a deck into a gauntlet of 7 AI opponents. 1 loss will end your run. You are awarded chests for your run which increase in quantity and quality based on your wins. 1 win will get you 1 wodden chest (roughly 25 gold), while 7 wins will get you 2 silver chests (~250g each) and a 'rank up' chest which has a card pack inside. The Gauntlet mode resets every expansion, allowing players to re-rank from bronze to master and re-earn free packs. Once at master rank, your 3rd chest for 7 wins is simply another silver chest. This mode is always free to enter and has no limit on how many times you can play it, making it a great way to farm free packs/gold.
Forge - This is Gauntlet meets Hearthstone's Arena. Again you face 7 AI opponents but you are afforded 2 losses before your run is retired. Instead of a constructed deck of your choosing, you draft your own deck by selecting 1 card from 3 options and repeating until you have 25 cards. You keep all the cards you draft in this mode. Like gauntlet, there are increasing rewards for how far you make it (up to 3 gold chests) and free packs for ranking up by completing a full run. The Forge rank resets every expansion as well. The cost of entry is 2,500 gold (the equivalent of 2 1/2 packs) - considering you keep 2 pack's worth of cards just from entering; you get more value from the forge than you would purchasing packs.
Multiplayer
Events - Each weekend the game will host an event with a 2,000g buy-in. You play against other players in a run of 7 wins or 3 loses (whichever is first). You then earn rewards like card packs based off your run. Your runs will rank you on a leaderboard which pay out additional rewards based on your rank when the event is over. You can buy-in as many times as you want, but only your first 3 runs count towards your rank. You can retire a bad rank and start again if you wish. (
Battle at the Gates Event Results - News - Dire Wolf Digital I placed #5 at the end of my run at the beginning of this week's event but was bumped down to #36 by the time it was over)
As of this month, DWD also introduced a Sealed format which runs for the whole month. Players buy-in at 10,000g. You're given 8 packs to open and construct a deck which you then use to play against other players. You keep all the cards from the packs. Players play 10 matches each week with their deck and are placed on the leaderboard based on their W:L - you can also play 20 tie breaker matches each week to increase your standing within your W/L record. You're free to continue playing matches after those 30 each week, but they do not count towards your standing. Each of the following weeks in the event, players are given another pack to open and add to their pool. This is a total of 11 packs for 10,000g. At the end of the event, you earn rewards such as card packs and foils based on your rank.
Casual - a constructed format with no rank. You earn chests for each victory.
Ranked - Simply put; Ranked constructed. The ladder resets every month. Players earn packs and foils based on their rank. Again, you earn a chest with each victory.
Draft - 5,000g buy-in. You open 4 packs in a draft format; Open a pack, take 1 card, pass that pack and receive another which has had a card taken, select a card, repeat until you've drafted 48 cards. Similar to forge, it's a first to 7 wins or 3 losses and 7 wins gets you 3 diamond chests (roughly 2,000g each). Similar to ranked play there is a monthly ladder with pack and foil rewards.
Miscellaneous
A note on chest rewards: these have a chance (roughly 20%) to upgrade to a tier higher. Any time you open a bronze chest it could upgrade into a silver chest (which then has a chance to upgrade to gold and diamond). So even a PvP win could turn into a lot of gold (and does with a lot of play).
Your first pvp win of the day will give you a free pack of the latest expansion.
Daily Quests - Like HS, you can hold up to 3 daily quests which awards silver/gold chests. Quests can be rerolled. Unlike HS, the quests don't require 'class wins' but rather colour wins which is way easier to pull off.
Packs are bought for 1,000g - They contain 12 cards but unlike HS, will only contain 1 rare card (which has about a 10% of being legendary instead). Packs also contain 100 Shiftstone (crafting dust).
Achievements - LOL Who cares about achievements... well they actually give you gold and shiftstone.
Faction Progress - Each time you play a match, you will earn EXP for each faction (colour) in your deck. As these factions rank up you earn: gold, shiftstone, packs, emotes and other cosmetics.
Deck tool integration - Yes, the devs even threw this into the game. Decks can be imported from your last draft and forge as well as your clipboard. Sites like Eternalwarcry are a source for decks built by the community - 1 click to copy the deck will allow you to import that deck into your game. If your collection does not have all the cards in the deck you imported; the game allows you to craft them with a single click. Any deck you construct can also be exported with a single click in game.
Deck building - The game provides a power curve for your deck, a pie chart with faction breakdowns as well as a listing of how many units/weapons/spells/power/etc. The game also allows you to run sample draws/mulligans.
Match History - You can view your last 20 matches. The game shows who the opponent was, who went first, what your opening draw was, what your mulligan was and which cards were drawn and which were not during the match
Promo Cards - Once in a while DWD will print Promo cards that players can earn with a pvp win of the day. If you miss out, you can still craft them any time.
Premium Currency - anything in the game can be purchased with gold or real money via premium currency. The only items exclusive to premium currency are cosmetic; hero portraits and interactive board totems. No game mode or cards are pay walled.