Redesigned Firebird's, New PTR Build Tomorrow, Demon Hunter Feedback, INVIS vs Greater Rift 100
Curse of Naxxramas: Pricing Structure, Heroic Mode, Golden Cards, Music & Sound Info
This Week's Hero Rotation, Spectre Illidan & Kandy King Muradin Added to the Shop
Tier 17 Hunter Preview, Nighttime Changes, Blue Posts, Beta Downtime, Horridon Solo
Golden Cards Acquisition Clarification
There's been some confusion over a comment made by Zeriyah yesterday on internal testing acquisition of golden cards, and she has addressed it in the post below.
Golden cards have always been craftable in Naxxramas, however, the unlock method to craft them has changed over time. Originally you needed to defeat a boss on Heroic mode to craft the card associated with it, and now you are only required to own the normal version of a card before the golden one unlocks.
How do you feel about having to craft the golden cards?
Quote from ZeriyahHey guys - there is a bit of confusion here that I wanted to help clear up. First, let's start off by quoting something I mentioned yesterday about golden Naxxramas card acquisition:
Acquiring golden cards from Heroic Mode bosses was actually something we had in-game during internal testing. We actually received a lot of negative feedback on this method of golden card acquisition. Like I mentioned, Heroic Mode bosses are not easy, and it felt really bad for people that felt like they could never get the golden versions of Naxxramas cards. We made this change to make things more accessible for everyone.
So, crafting golden cards was always a part of the equation during internal testing when it came to Heroic Mode. However, you were not able to craft golden versions of a card until you defeated the Heroic Mode version of that boss. Getting a golden card as a confirmed drop from a Heroic Naxxramas boss was never a part of the equation - they have always been craftable, but the ability to acquire and craft them used to be through defeating the Heroic Mode version of that boss as opposed to just getting the non-golden version of the card through Normal mode in order to craft the golden version.
This didn't feel like a good reward for defeating a Heroic Mode boss in Naxxramas, so we took out the part where you had the defeat the boss on Heroic first to craft the card. In this manner, it made acquiring the golden version of Naxxramas cards more accessible to everyone.
This was not explicitly clear that crafting golden Naxxramas cards has always been a part of the equation in my initial post, hence the confusion that has manifested. For this I apologize - I hope this explanation helps clear up what may appear to be contradictory statements, but was in fact simply just omitted information in the initial post, where assumptions could easily be made.
Heroic Mode, you're mine!
This isn't outrageous, but it would be nice to keep it consistent that all cards in the game can be acquired without expending dust.
3200 dust i am guessing then to craft a golden = bleh, i think it should be an option for the dust rich folks, but also something else, either a low chance for a golden card to drop from defeating heroic (even if its a once per day thing), or the dust cost should get substantially reduced for people that do beat it on heroic, just making it available through dust does not sound appealing, not all of us play 24/7 or dump hundreds of dollars in game to have thousands of dust accumulated just to craft golden cards.
Talk about shooting your self in the foot here Blizzard. Not that I'm saying it's completely wrong to make the gold cards craftable, but the way you advertise it--removing a challenge. Which I'm having a hard time to believe is "unbeatable", who ever the player might be. It's like someone saying your to stupid to do this.
The point with a challenge is it to be exactly that, challenging.
And making it so you need to spend around 58.000 dust(which is a tad insane amount when you think about it) does not make it much more "accessible", as you say, to the majority. At least that's what I think.
More to the point, the advertising of your game as a 'F2P causal' is going to be misleading. I know that it's possible to obtain everything for free. However as a new player you would hit a huge gold barrier from the start. Probably somewhere above 5000 gold--cause unlock of Naxx and cards packs to get a healthy card pool. And now I'm not including the free wing. I'm talking about players who going to start playing hearthstone 5 weeks+ post launch. And that is not casual by any means.
Nevertheless I'm happy Naxx is around the corner now. However I don't agree with you this time Blizzard. Hopefully the community will make a fuzz out of this so things will get even better next expansion.
Do you guys think I'm unreasonable?
That means crafting them will cost upwards of 50k dust... Screw that... make them both craftable and unlockable/findable like the other goldens.
Nope. The initial posting clearly says acquiring, not unlocking or any other confusing word. There was no confusion, you just changed your story. But apparently everyone believes you. Well Played!
So we can only get the golden versions by crafting them?
This would be correct.
I would have preferred the harder option... it would be nice if there was a method other than via dust. Going to be a long journey to get the full gold set!
Unlikely. Blizzard almost never updates on weekends or Fridays, because they want the staff on hand to fix whatever turns out to be broken.
Scheduled updates are usually pushed out Tuesday. So the 15th is definitely on the table.
the source is a twitter post where some of the hearthstone guys said that they were going to eat a giant gummy bear when naxx ships. the 15th is national gummy bear day or something (i don't remember exactly what it is but it's related to gummy) so the theory is that they were hinting at a july 15 release, but it isn't official.
Well, most F2P games keep cosmetic stuff (which certainly includes golden cards) as pay-only. So to have this as available for all (though highly difficult to obtain) hardly seems unfair. They have to keep the game operational somehow, otherwise there will be no game for us to play and complain about. Missing golden cards will certainly not hurt your chances in matches.
It will be something new. The card back they showed is July's card back.
so there is no reason to do a heroic boss now?
cause buying all wings and then doing them all on heroic (which is soooooo challenging that most ppl will never do it according to blue post) just for a card back which i get a new one every month seems weak if not very weak. for what? prestige? rather show off my legendary card back if thats the case.
Getting gold cards for heroic challenges is a prestige issue as much as getting a unique card back. Personally, I've little interest in gold cards. The only reason I have some is due to leveling classes and the fact that I have all the non-golden cards. So any non-basic goldens I get now, there's little point in disenchanting them.
I will definitely try for the heroic card back, for the prestige. If it's exceptionally challenging to attain, then it will be a card back much more prestigious than any card back currently in the game.
I have hard time imagining that defeating AI, even on heroic mode, could be more challenging than getting to legend.
The problem is, currently you can get golden version of any card in two ways: opening pack or via arena rewards. If you find golden card, it feels like a very nice bonus. If you craft golden card, you do not get such a feeling.
I think heroic bosses in naxx should have small chance to drop any of naxxrammas golden card. That way defeating them would have purpose even when you already earned your naxx card back. You could farm them for a small chance at random golden card, it is much more fun that grinding dust and crafting golden cards.
It is not too late to implement this!
I don't have too much of a problem with having to craft them, but why not still put in a reward for beating the heroic boss. For example, if a specific gold Naxxramas card costs 2000 dust to craft, make beating the respective heroic boss reduce the dust cost by 50%. So, using my made-up numbers, it's 2000 normal and 1000 after beating the boss.
You will get a special card back for defeating all the bosses at heroic difficulty.