Ben Brode: "Keeping Hearthstone Spicy is Important"
Earlier today, Blizzard announced that we'd be having a Free Card Day event this weekend on May 20th. There's been a lot of people wondering what's up with it and Ben Brode decided to tell us a bit more about the reasoning behind it.
- They like doing special events and they've got more planned, both bigger and smaller, down the line.
- Giving out a free card was something easy they could do as a fun one-off.
Quote from Ben BrodeLots of folks in this thread wondering: "Why? Are they testing something?"
Honestly we just think it's fun to do surprising things. We like the feel of our Winter's Veil event, our "Hearthstone New Years" event, and the (now-redundant) Friendly Feud, and we've been ramping up our events team to do even more. We have some stuff planned that I think will be pretty hot. Keeping Hearthstone spicy is important... and giving out a free card seemed like something easy we could do as a fun one-off. We have some bigger (and smaller) events planned... we're just getting warmed up!
Enjoy the free card! (or the dust!)
Yea, this is totally not testing the waters with an epic quality card to see what kind of traffic it brings in on a random day in May.
It's to keep Hearthstone spicy.
What kind of test is that? The numbers of log ins go up. Maybe some of the players who log in start playing again? That's true of every cool event we could create. It's like, do we need to test if people like free stuff? My guess is no. I'm fairly certain they do.
Have you all looked into doing daily login rewards like other digital CCGs do?
Yes, we did it leading up to Un'Goro launch and it was pretty fun.
In general, putting aside the question of "how much is the right amount of free stuff", the question is "what's the right way to deliver the free stuff". For example, we added ranked rewards, better quests, tavern brawl packs, etc. I'm not against finding other ways to reward stuff, but is daily log-in the best way? I tend to find it tedious to have to remember to log in every day. It makes me sad when I miss a day.
Our daily quest system for example, could have a single slot for your quests, instead of 3. 'Log in every day and complete your quest'. It's the same total amount of stuff given out (1 quest a day), but you'd have to make sure to log in daily to get that value, as opposed to getting some slack and letting you miss a couple days without losing any of that value.
I do think it's cool to have a fun present to open every day, though. There are pros and cons to a system like that.
What Kinds of Events Would YOU Like to See?
Here's a question for the comments below. What kind of events do you want to see the Hearthstone team do? Personally, I'd love to see them play more with the Warcraft-themed holidays through either Tavern Brawls or flavorful takeovers of normal assets. Some Quests for those events would be A+.
Complete all of your turns in a match within 15 seconds and win: Earn Nozdormu
Concede Turn 1: Achievement Completed
Yeah no
Like others here have said already: free stuff is good, I won't complain for sure.
But Ben, please, pretty please with cherry on top, give us ACHIEVEMENTS!
I think theyre just shitting their pants due to GWENT open Beta, since their main income are casuals which mostly didnt play closed beta. They could lose huge market percentages.
I think this is to litle to late, reward system in hearthstone sucks balls. Quests are horrible and gwent is just a better game overall with a better dev team, like blizz was before activision took over and turned everything to shit like they always do.
You don't even need to look far, Ben. Just look at all of the free shit Heroes of the Storm has given out in the last month. Free shit doesn't hurt the bottom line, if anything it expands it because the paying players are so happy they'll pay more.
lol 2 packs a month, so much generosity
this game contain 5 times more cards compared to 2014, we don't need free stuff but three times more packs per purchase, a 50$ pre purchase should give you 150 packs which is the right amount to play correctly, all other decisions or shitty free stuff are completely useless, this is just to make retards happy, so they spend more money to get nothing.
"I'm not against finding other ways to reward stuff, but is daily log-in the best way? I tend to find it tedious to have to remember to log in every day. It makes me sad when I miss a day."
So much this! Ben Brode knows what's up.
If they increased the gold for winning they would still have to keep the daily cap low or you would have a wave of bots. There are already plenty playing Pirate Warrior in Wild for a 100G a day.
Free autosquelch after the first 500 BMs.
Free Stuff Saturday - make it a thing. Every second & last Saturday of the month login to get something.
Can the Naxxramas repurchase ? I want to play wild deck !
You can craft the Naxx cards now, I think.
At least we get something..Let's hope for more and better daily stuff in near future...
Free stuff, Thanks Brode!
Stop bitching, people... free dust!
Achievements, please!
Not everyone is addicted to achievement hunting, but I am pretty sure that there are a lot of players like me, who enjoy accomplishing given goals and getting rewarded with something special (not only card pack). Maybe Golden Elite Tauren Chieftain as an example for playing 1000 horde minions.
There is no such thing called horde in hs but the idea is cool. It must be in hs mechanics like Battlecry or whatever.
Its an implicite tribe tag, yes, but nonetheless an existing one ^^