Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft now available worldwide on iPad (update)

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, Blizzard Entertainment's free-to-play card battle game, is now available worldwide on iPad in the App Store.

Blizzard originally released the title on Mac and Windows PC in March, after beginning an open beta in January. The company soft-launched the iPad version in Australia, Canada and New Zealand earlier this month. An Android version is also in development.

During a recent press event, producer Bryan Chang told Polygon that the iPad version of Hearthstone is designed to be consistent with the play experience on computers, aside from the touch-based interface. According to Chang, feedback Blizzard has received on the iPad version suggests that "people find it to be the ideal way to play."

"Overall, we've tried to maximize the capabilities of the platform," said Jason Chayes, the game's production director. "We are definitely looking at keeping the charm, making sure that's first and foremost, so that a lot of the effects people have come to love are reflected on the iPad version — a lot of the VO, a lot of the sound effects, a lot of the individual characterizations about what the respective cards do. None of that has been compromised as we brought it on to the iPad, so we feel pretty good about where we ended up."

Chayes added that Blizzard wanted to release the iPad version close to the PC version, but had to make sure the tablet experience was up to par.

"Ideally we would have liked to bring it out a little closer if we had the opportunity to do so, but it just wasn't quite there yet," he said. "We put more time into making sure the controls were great, making sure that everything was working the way we wanted it to. We feel like we've reached that point."

Blizzard announced during PAX East 2014 last weekend that it is working on a single-player adventure mode for Hearthstone called Curse of Naxxramas; it will be released later this year.

Megan Farokhmanesh contributed to this report.

Update: Everybody who downloads the iPad version of Hearthstone will get a free pack of cards, said Blizzard in a press release announcing the iPad launch of the game. New players have to make it through the tutorial and play a game, while people with accounts from the PC version just have to play a game. Blizzard also reaffirmed that players' progress and card collections are synced across platforms. You can check out a brief trailer for the iPad launch above, and watch our Overview video below.