If people are honest, they will agree that collectibles are desirable because they are limited. If you sell collectibles, particularly for gold, they become less special, no question.
I used to love my Pandaria cardback but, now everyone has it, it has certainly been devalued, which is sad. That said, I always wanted the Eyes of C'Thun cardback and now I have it.
I do think Blizzard are cutting their own throats by doing this though. Genuinely limited collectibles sell pre-orders. I know people that pre-ordered in the past, because they loved a hero / cardback and assumed they would be exclusive. Obviously, they won't do that again.
Am I missing skmethingy? Playing on phone and I go to the hero portraits section of collection and don't see any option to buy any (for gold or money). Same with the shop, don't see a hero portrait section. Just the standard stuff for sale (currently only Mecha jaraxus)
Where are the other portraits that are supposed to be available to buy/how do I access on mobile?
You buy the Hero Skins for gold in the Collection browser. You just click on the hero portrait you want to buy and you can buy them for 1800 gold. Most of the non-preorder and non-battle pass / rewards track heroes are available to purchase with gold
First one is, it's a clever way to get people to 'waste' their coins on this instead of packs. When that happens, those packs have to come from somewhere so by diverting attention from one source, you drive sales in the other.
Second thought I have is since they increased the number of decks you can store to 27, it does help to have easier access to skins, which help distinguish different decks from the same class. I know you can give them different names but having a different visual helps a lot.
Am I missing skmethingy? Playing on phone and I go to the hero portraits section of collection and don't see any option to buy any (for gold or money). Same with the shop, don't see a hero portrait section. Just the standard stuff for sale (currently only Mecha jaraxus)
Where are the other portraits that are supposed to be available to buy/how do I access on mobile?
You buy the Hero Skins for gold in the Collection browser. You just click on the hero portrait you want to buy and you can buy them for 1800 gold. Most of the non-preorder and non-battle pass / rewards track heroes are available to purchase with gold
Thanks. I think what confused me is not all the portraits/skins are for sale, so most don't show a price. Certain ones do though, but none that currently interest me. Only skin I would pay for is Kel'Thuzad and Deathwing at this point
I do think Blizzard are cutting their own throats by doing this though. Genuinely limited collectibles sell pre-orders. I know people that pre-ordered in the past, because they loved a hero / cardback and assumed they would be exclusive. Obviously, they won't do that again.
Very few people bought those just because of elitist behavior. If someone will like a hero portrait alot in a pre-order and he has the money, he will 100% buy it; he won't concerned about being re-sold in 3 years. If you like something, you're gonna take it.
For every elitist childish man that won't buy a pre-order for such a silly thing, there are other 20 people that bought it now because they really want it and the price is way lower, making it affordable. 15*20=300$, so way more money.
Someone saying that he won't buy the pre-order anymore for such a thing is like a dude saying he won't play League of Legends anymore because of pride month advertising. Yeah right haha, like Riot will ever care that 1 dude left! (If he really left)
Also saying that a hero portrait is irrelevant because everyone can have the thing now and the esclusivity is lost, is a huuuge over-reaction. It's not so special anymore that's right, but it will remain as beautiful and people will love to use it. And if you have more people loving it, you have more people buying it.
Until everyone had them and then nobody wanted used them anymore.
It's human nature to want what they cannot have, and when they have them, they don't want them.
That's very false. Look at other games, they sell alot of cosmetics and alot of people still buying them and love to use them. Just because a huge percentage of players have a cosmetic it doesn't make a it irrelevant.
Look at League of Legends, they create around 5 skins in 2 weeks and they live out of that thing. And people buy those alot, otherwise it wouldn't be profitable.
The elitistic idea that "only I should have it otherwise is useless/exclusivity is all that matters" is toxic and Blizzard finally understood that the people thinking like this are a minority and, in the end, you make much more profit by letting people buy what they want even if you lose like.. 5% that was buying the pre-orders constantly just to be an elitistic dude. After all are re-sold, both Blizzard and the players will be in advantage.
The moment they started to sell Pre-Order stuff they lost a whale , no more x2 preorder bundles from now on....maybe 20 bucks for the pass and that's about it.
Have more then enough cards/dust/gold to f2p couple of years from now.
This is called cutting your nose off to spite your face.
So they release an expansion, you like the look of it, the bundle is released and the portrait is cool, you're really going to just pass up on the discounted packs, simply because someone may be able to purchase the hero skin, for real money, in a couple of years?
Like, you do you but that's really daft and that sort of mentality will 100% spill over into other areas of your life. My advice would be to consider what the actual gain is for you, if you are set on being that petty then fair enough I suppose but it's really very childish. It's a cosmetic skin in a card game, you'll likely never encounter 99% of the people who bought it.
With all skins for sale, everyone wins: fans can have skins they missed out on, while this is another gold/money sink for Blizzard to benefit from. The only people being upset with these are people who want to feel special by having a rare cosmetic. As for allowing the trade of Legendaries 1:1, this will never ever happen because by having around 5-6 legendaries in your collection, you can basically have every single deck in the game, as long as you are ok with dusting in between deck changes. Long ago I was advocating for wild card packs to become cheaper, because they cannot be played in standard. But they have not changed that for many many years, I doubt that we will see more fair prices, unless they start losing lots of players out of the blue.
I can promise you that's not going to happen. A sizable majority of their revenue comes from card packs, not skins and other cosmetics. The demand for these cosmetics is tiny compared to card packs, battle passes, etc. Not only that, I can doubly promise you that, if card pack prices go down, there is no way in hell the dust ratio is going to improve. You're essentially asking Blizzard to take a massive financial hit, for no compelling reason. HS is, in my view, a pretty reasonably priced game if you're willing to play regularly.
But it's already happening, to an extent.
When they sell mini-sets as a fixed batch of cards, that's a whole lot cheaper for players than if the same cards had to be found in randomized packs. The ability to buy the mini-set with gold makes it even more player-friendly.
Of course, no one outside of Blizzard can definitively say that this new pricing model is directly related to the revenue they are getting from cosmetics. We don't even know how much money cosmetic item sales are generating, so there's no way to say it makes up for sales "lost" to the mini-set pricing. What we do know is that this feels better to players, so it's probably better for business in the long run even if the overall revenue gain is somewhat small.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose nor a body to kick." -- Lady Saba Holland
I would buy hero skins and card backs if they reduce the cost by 90%.
50 gold for a card back and 180 gold for a skin, sounds fair.
But I'm not going to waste 18 packs on these.
Mixed feelings tbh.
If people are honest, they will agree that collectibles are desirable because they are limited. If you sell collectibles, particularly for gold, they become less special, no question.
I used to love my Pandaria cardback but, now everyone has it, it has certainly been devalued, which is sad. That said, I always wanted the Eyes of C'Thun cardback and now I have it.
I do think Blizzard are cutting their own throats by doing this though. Genuinely limited collectibles sell pre-orders. I know people that pre-ordered in the past, because they loved a hero / cardback and assumed they would be exclusive. Obviously, they won't do that again.
I like that they sell pre-order skins, only for real money.
You buy the Hero Skins for gold in the Collection browser. You just click on the hero portrait you want to buy and you can buy them for 1800 gold. Most of the non-preorder and non-battle pass / rewards track heroes are available to purchase with gold
I have two thoughts on this.
First one is, it's a clever way to get people to 'waste' their coins on this instead of packs. When that happens, those packs have to come from somewhere so by diverting attention from one source, you drive sales in the other.
Second thought I have is since they increased the number of decks you can store to 27, it does help to have easier access to skins, which help distinguish different decks from the same class. I know you can give them different names but having a different visual helps a lot.
Expansion pre-orders hero skins are not purchasable with gold, only with real money :(
Thanks. I think what confused me is not all the portraits/skins are for sale, so most don't show a price. Certain ones do though, but none that currently interest me. Only skin I would pay for is Kel'Thuzad and Deathwing at this point
Very few people bought those just because of elitist behavior. If someone will like a hero portrait alot in a pre-order and he has the money, he will 100% buy it; he won't concerned about being re-sold in 3 years. If you like something, you're gonna take it.
For every elitist childish man that won't buy a pre-order for such a silly thing, there are other 20 people that bought it now because they really want it and the price is way lower, making it affordable. 15*20=300$, so way more money.
Someone saying that he won't buy the pre-order anymore for such a thing is like a dude saying he won't play League of Legends anymore because of pride month advertising. Yeah right haha, like Riot will ever care that 1 dude left! (If he really left)
Also saying that a hero portrait is irrelevant because everyone can have the thing now and the esclusivity is lost, is a huuuge over-reaction. It's not so special anymore that's right, but it will remain as beautiful and people will love to use it. And if you have more people loving it, you have more people buying it.
That's very false. Look at other games, they sell alot of cosmetics and alot of people still buying them and love to use them. Just because a huge percentage of players have a cosmetic it doesn't make a it irrelevant.
Look at League of Legends, they create around 5 skins in 2 weeks and they live out of that thing. And people buy those alot, otherwise it wouldn't be profitable.
The elitistic idea that "only I should have it otherwise is useless/exclusivity is all that matters" is toxic and Blizzard finally understood that the people thinking like this are a minority and, in the end, you make much more profit by letting people buy what they want even if you lose like.. 5% that was buying the pre-orders constantly just to be an elitistic dude. After all are re-sold, both Blizzard and the players will be in advantage.
Sorry, but something like that will never happen.
This is called cutting your nose off to spite your face.
So they release an expansion, you like the look of it, the bundle is released and the portrait is cool, you're really going to just pass up on the discounted packs, simply because someone may be able to purchase the hero skin, for real money, in a couple of years?
Like, you do you but that's really daft and that sort of mentality will 100% spill over into other areas of your life. My advice would be to consider what the actual gain is for you, if you are set on being that petty then fair enough I suppose but it's really very childish. It's a cosmetic skin in a card game, you'll likely never encounter 99% of the people who bought it.
With all skins for sale, everyone wins: fans can have skins they missed out on, while this is another gold/money sink for Blizzard to benefit from. The only people being upset with these are people who want to feel special by having a rare cosmetic. As for allowing the trade of Legendaries 1:1, this will never ever happen because by having around 5-6 legendaries in your collection, you can basically have every single deck in the game, as long as you are ok with dusting in between deck changes. Long ago I was advocating for wild card packs to become cheaper, because they cannot be played in standard. But they have not changed that for many many years, I doubt that we will see more fair prices, unless they start losing lots of players out of the blue.
But it's already happening, to an extent.
When they sell mini-sets as a fixed batch of cards, that's a whole lot cheaper for players than if the same cards had to be found in randomized packs. The ability to buy the mini-set with gold makes it even more player-friendly.
Of course, no one outside of Blizzard can definitively say that this new pricing model is directly related to the revenue they are getting from cosmetics. We don't even know how much money cosmetic item sales are generating, so there's no way to say it makes up for sales "lost" to the mini-set pricing. What we do know is that this feels better to players, so it's probably better for business in the long run even if the overall revenue gain is somewhat small.
"Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose nor a body to kick." -- Lady Saba Holland
And 100% of this site.