Hearthpwn

Out of 74 packs I got...

• Hedra the Heretic
• Raj Naz'jan
• Blackwater Behemoth
• Gaia, the Techtonic (golden!)
• Glugg the Gulper

plus the following freebies

• Crabatoa (pre-order)
• Kotori Lightblade (pre-order)
• Nellie, the Great Thresher (twitch prime)
• Gigafin (sunken city rank 1)
• Colaque (sunken city rank 1)

Side note: the ranked bundles seem to be very valuable, almost better than the pre-order.

I opened 82 (60 from the pre-order, the others from the reward track + gold) FiA packs plus ~50 standard packs I was offered through some "welcome back" bundles.

• Xyrella, the Devout (bundle freebie)
• Captain Galvangar (bundle freebie)
• Korrak the Bloodrager (lv20 reward)
• Tamsin's Phylactery
• Bru'kan of the Elements
• Magister Dawngrasp
• Wing Commander Mulverick
• Wildheart Guff
• Lightforged Cariel
• Wing Commander Ichman
• golden Anetheron

Just logged into the game for the first time in like three-four weeks, because I couldn't stand the meta anymore. I ordered the small golden and Thralls bundle, afterwards I completed his adventure (was a little to easy for my liking, but nice to play through)

The packs however were more than rewarding for such a small amount, the hunter legendary came as the freebie:

• Circle of Healing
• Northshire Cleric
• Wild Pyromancer

Go hard or go home

How many accounts does this guy have now, 10?

• golden Kargal Battlescar (bundle freebie)
• golden Cariel Roame (bundle freebie)
• Rokara
• Apothecary Helbrim
• Neeru Fireblade
• Bru'kan
• Kurtrus Ashfallen
• Death Speaker Blackthorn
• Firemancer Flurgl
• Plaguemaw the Rotting
• Kazakus, Golem Shaper

so, 9 legendaries out of 101 regular packs. I bought the mega bundle and opened 7 out of 80 first but then decided to spend my remaining gold and opened another two legendaries. The golden packs whiffed as usual but that was to be expected. Still, I'm just happy since it's by far the best opening I've ever had.

• Play Savannah Highmane and have it survive one turn
• Play this card and attack with Highmane
• Summon Trampling Rhino from your deck and rush into something
• Summon Mok'Nathal Lion from your deck and rush...
• Summon Zixor, Apex Predator from your deck...
• Summon Scavenging Hyena

The award for "Necromancer of the Year" goes to...

Quote from yepapapepeap >>

Quote from TallStranger >>

Quote from Shadowrisen >>

I don't know about the last six years, but I posted in detail why, over the last 15-20 years, several areas of the process of making video games has dropped to zero.  So unless there's a gigantic increase to offset all that, common sense says video games are significantly cheaper to produce today than they were 15-20 years ago.

There may, in fact, be such a gigantic increase, but I don't see it.  It certainly isn't in hardware.  Computers are significantly cheaper than they were back in the day, I remember vividly paying almost $3k for a slightly-above average model in the late 90s.

The way I read his drivel was that he was claiming that the production costs for HS have not gone up. His "logic" seems to be that, since costs have not risen, prices should not either. I was ignoring the broader idiocy of that idea and focusing solely on input costs.

Certainly, if one compares video games today to those of the 1990's, it's lower. My point (and I should have made this clearer, but I was trying not to write too much, since we know people complain about that) is that the total salary for HS development and production has almost certainly increased over the past 5-6 years. The development team has gotten much larger, if nothing else. You may very well be right that individual salaries in this field are stagnant, but in sheer numbers, I'm quite certain that total salary costs have gone up since 2014. Now, Blizzard has more than made up for that increase (either due to technological advances, increased productivity, and market power), which is (partly) why the game remains profitable.

 for someone who has a bare minimum understanding of capitalism it sure is rich to call my simplistic take of the raise of product cost of games idiocy, what do you know about running a business? I assume bare minimum


blizzard is artificially increasing the price of their product with tactical, discreetly measures, something a simpleton who does not understand the game to its full effect will not catch on to due to community backlash.

legendary and epic cards have become more essential, fx what is a highlander deck without the legendaries? 
they are rotating the archetypes - making a class like hunter, known for aggro into combo and a class like shaman known for combo into aggro in hopes that the people who enjoy the archetype of lets say combo will start building a hunter deck to get his combo fix and the guy who likes aggro will build a shaman deck to get his aggro fix

I'm sorry, but that's bullshit. I'll just take your claim that legendaries and epics became more essential. To make it as simple as possible I'm going to compare the current top 10 decks (in the legend range) from VS' latest report to a report from nearly four years ago.

• Highlander Hunter (9540 dust, 1 epic, 5 legendaries)
• Aggro Demon Hunter (3800 dust, 2 epics, 2 legendaries) *
• Soul Demon Hunter (6320 dust, 0 epics, 3 legendaries)
• Pure Paladin (9400 dust, 4 epics, 4 legendaries)
• Miracle Rogue (7440 dust, 4 epics, 3 legendaries)
• Control Warrior (12080 dust, 4 epics, 6 legendaries)
• Evolve Shaman (4040 dust, 2 epics, 1 legendary)
• Face Hunter (4840 dust, 0 epics, 2 legendaries)
• Bomb Warrior (12120 dust, 8 epics, 6 legendaries) *
• Aggro Shaman (6180 dust, 4 epics, 2 legendaries)

* Altruis and Galakrond were added for free

• Aggro Shaman (7560 dust, 0 epics, 5 legendaries) **
• Dragon Warrior (5000 dust, 2 epics, 4 legendaries) **
• Miracle Rogue (8360 dust, 2 epics, 4 legendaries)
• Pirate Warrior (4520 dust, 0 epics, 3 legendaries) **
• Jade Shaman (4520 dust, 0 epics, 3 legendaries) **
• Midrange Shaman (4560 dust, 0 epics, 3 legendaries) **
• Reno Mage (9360 dust, 6 epics, 7 legendaries) **
• Dragon Priest (1620 dust, 2 epics, 1 legendary) **
• Reno Warlock (7840 dust, 6 epics, 6 legendaries) **
• Control Warrior (10720 dust, 5 epics, 5 legendaries)

** Thaurissan, Finley, Brann, Barnes, Reno and the Curator are excluded from the dust calculation, since they came off of adventures which you had to unlock via gold or real money

avg. total cost of 7576 vs. 6406. And now consider the fact that we had more neutral legendaries back then such as Sylvanas or Rag, yet the amount of dust required to craft the top decks on average only went up by like three epics. Highlander decks are traditionally expensive to craft, that's nothing new. Also goes to show that Shaman has never been "known for combo", where did you get that idea?

Source: https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-180/ and https://www.vicioussyndicate.com/vs-data-reaper-report-30/

/edit - I've noticed that some dust totals from the current report are incorrect so I had to doublecheck them

Quote from yepapapepeap >>

Quote from P4dge >>

Quote from Lorcen >>

The world isn't black and white.  While I feel like HS is too expensive and the new reward path is disappointing, I also understand that HS was made to make money.  There was so much blowback when the BG pass was released, like Blizzard was supposed to spend all that time, money and resources creating the mode without expecting any money from it.  Companies don't stay in business by giving all their crap away for free.  

For me, HS is in the grey zone.  It's too expensive, 100% agree with that.  I shouldn't have to spend $300 every year to get a couple of competitive decks.  But I also think people who somehow think that Blizzard should make this a 100% F2P-friendly game are just being silly.  If they were to recreate the game from scratch, sure, they could design it as true F2P with other ways to monetize.  That's not going to happen though, so the game is stuck with the monetization model that it has, which is selling packs to people.  So will I defend their right to charge for new game modes and to charge for packs?  Absolutely.  Will I defend the price-points they have chosen?  Not at all.  

 This person gets it. Agree with all the points here. 

OP you're also comparing apples and oranges. If CDPR continue to develop content for Cyberpunk for the next 5 years and release several large updated each year that significantly add to and change the game, but they do so at no extra cost, then you may have a point.

Some people will spend £600 on ten AAA games throughout the year whereas some people who exclusively play a game such as hearthstone and they may put in £600 over the year. If they get an equal playtime or even anywhere in a similar region, neither is getting 'more' value than the other. They are running at a similar £ per hour of gaming.

It all comes back to the same point, every single time. If you don't feel it's value for your money, don't pay it. If enough people feel like that, the game will stop making money and either adapts it's monetisation or crumble/stop making enough to justify its ongoing development. 

Clearly they don't though. You guys can huff and puff all you like but it seems to me at least that enough people do put their money in and the game is able to continue. 

Starbucks coffee is very over priced. I personally won't go there daily and spend that amount on a coffee. I just don't think it's value at all. Clearly enough people do though because Starbucks continue to operate and make money. My personal feeling on it being over priced is therefore irrelevant. If enough people thought like me, they wouldn't buy coffee from there and they may have to adjust their pricing. But we can say that about anything. 

There are a ton of articles on this, what are you hoping to achieve? You make an article on an unofficial Blizzard forum and receive 20 messages of support from people who feel the same way. Whilst that's happening though there are 50 people that are in the game client and have bought packs. 

I'm not sure what you're hoping to achieve here, other than creating some echo chamber that allows you to feel better about your feelings towards the price of the game. 

 

 I disagree with the whole apples to oranges anology, both are games, and i would even assume that hearthstone is cheaper to produce so even less of an excuse for the price

and all I am trying to do is simple, make one more person fed up with blizzard so that eventually they will either sink or sail in a different direction... as it is now I hope hearthstone dies, but I wish it could just go back to be affordable again

To everyone still responding to OP: why? The guy made it clear his goal is to act like a 5 yr old. "I can't afford to play this game MY way! Burn Blizz, burn!" REEEEEE

I may be wrong but most of the complaints so far seem to come from people who didn't log in for more like 30-60 min/week, because of various reasons. So, mainly those who tried to squeeze as much gold as possible with minimal effort by clearing their dailies, no more, no less. Some of them also admitted they'd never spend a dime on this game. I'm sorry, but if you refuse to spend money or time which could be utilized e.g. for balancing the game then you don't belong to the target audience. In the end, this isn't a gold farming simulator and if you don't have fun playing otherwise you'd better quit your "part-time job".

The new system aims to reward any playstyle, not just logging face hunter to grind your daily 100 gold from wins. I get that cheap aggro decks are the main choice for newbies if they want to climb the ladder and build up their collection. But please, let's not pretend that the min/maxers are anything but a minority in this community.

What they should fix though is people abusing the new system by roping or going AFK in e.g. BGs. Maybe it should count in-game actions or turns instead of pure game time.

• Tickatus (golden freebie from the bundle)
• Kiri, Chosen of Elune (freebie from the reward track)
• Il'gynoth
• Sayge, Seer of Darkmoon (golden)
• Ringmaster Whatley
• Maxima Blastenheimer
• Grand Totem Eys'or
• Inara Stormcrash

= 6 legendaries out of 83 packs, one of them golden. After the various terrible openings I'm very happy, just somewhat sad that I didn't obtain any of the "new" old gods.

10/10 card since it solves the biggest issue with many Shaman weapons: consistency

you can use it to tutor The Fist of Ra-den in Control/Big Shaman

you can use it to tutor Boggspine Knuckles in Evolve/Token Shaman

you can use it to tutor Splitting Axe in Totem/Overload Shaman

what's not to like? Especially Knuckles is a crazy good card (just check the drawn win rate) when you're able to play it on curve together with Dread Corsair and possibly other minions on board.

turn 1, ???

turn 2, play the new 2/2 weapon tutor elemental

turn 3, equip the new 3/2 weapon

turn 4, coin + this card to smash your opponents face for 10 while giving Inara +X/+X

seems ogre-- eh, okay to me

Got Star Student Stelina and Disciplinarian Gandling as the free Scholomance legendaries on top of Astromancer Solarian and Waxadred. Pretty happy with the result!