just came back from the fireside gathering. It was not as I expected. I knew the place where the fireside gathering should take place because some colleagues told me about it. It was a little pub with some tables, a bar and that is pretty much it. You can order at least 5 different kinds of whiskey and order your sandwiches in different grades of spicyness, so that is special about that place. I expected nothing, the worst case is to drink a beer and get out of here. I did not even bring any device to play hearthstone because I was very sceptic about the event.
I walked into the pub and I saw 7 people. 3 people with black t-shirts at the bar, they seemed to belong together. 2 older people at one table 2 other relatively young people on another table who used their phones. The 2 young guys briefly looked at me, but I couldn't tell if they belonged to the fireside gathering or not. The pub was full of smoke because there is no anti smoke rule yet in Austria but still felt comfy just like a living room. I was unsure about the 2 guys at the table so I did my plan B (drink a beer and get the hell out of here), so I took a seat at the bar 2 seats next to the 3 guys. I ordered a beer and it didn't take one minute until the guy 2 seats next to me started talking to me. We had a little chat but it turned out fast that he was either really drunk or just dumb. He asked me questions which I answered the sentence before. I decided that I don't want to talk to him anymore so I looked for the toilet to give me a break. On the way to the toilet I saw that the 2 guys at the table with their phones played hearthstone. I was so happy that I didn't have to talk again to that other drunk/dumb guy. So after the toilet, I said hello to them and asked about the fireside gathering. It turned out, that they didn't organized it and they already waited for 2 hours for people to show up. They were really nice and we started talking about hearthstone, I even ordered a second beer. We had a good time. We even exchanged battle tags. They were very disappointed that they couldn't get the skin (it wasn't even a tavern event btw), because they drove to that place half an hour with a car. One guy even said he wanted to go to another event on Tueday where he had to go with the train for 1 h. I felt really bad for them. You could see the disappointment in their faces. I checked the location where the one guy would go on tuesday and made sure that it is a real tavern where he could the skin.
Message to Blizzard:
- Please make the rules more clear ( difference between tavern and fireside gathering, I wouldn't have known the difference if not for this forum)
- Check the appliaction process for the fireside gatherings. Apparently, it is very easy to set up a fake thing.
TLDR: So that is my experience about my first fireside gathering. A smoky pub, a drunk/dumb guy, 2 disappointed hearthstone fellows, some talk about hearthstone. I guess it was worth it, I had my share of fun.