They released those 3 like a year ago, whats the hold up? how long does it take to slap on a shiny animated pic and a hero power for warlock, druid, shaman, paladin and rouge?
They are just thinking how to get most money from it. Planning to pick a right time window, when the current ones are barely selling at all, so that a new batch feels cool and exciting and people feel like it's a good time to spend some money on HS. Just my thoughts.
1) They might have felt that releasing them all at once would have been monetarily intimidating. If you have 9 things going up at once for $10 each, that's $90 of stuff that just came out. If you only have 3 things, though, that's only $30, which is less huge.
2) They might have wanted to only release a few at first to test the waters on the concept. It'd be a shame to waste a bunch of resources on 9 of these and they not end up doing well. Instead, they only do three for now to try it out and see how it does and maybe make some changes to the remaining ones if these aren't turning out just right.
3) Staggering release means staggered demand. It's for the same reason that they stagger releases of expansions and adventures. If they just release an expansion and an adventure at the same time and then waited eight months to do anything else, there'd be a lot of complaining towards the latter half of those months that nothing else was coming out. By releasing the adventure four months after the expansion, you spread out the content but then also spread out the demand for more content. As it is now, people are demanding just a few more hero skins. If they had released all 9 at once, people would be demanding the next round of 9 more hero skins.
4) Some alternate hero skins are more difficult to implement than others. Specifically, I'm talking about Paladin, Rogue, and Shaman, whose Hero Powers produce additional tokens that may also need to be changed. That's why I expect the next batch to be Druid, Priest, and Warlock. At least definitely in the case of Paladin, they need to decide what they're going to do about Muster for Battle, Quartermaster, and other cards calling out Silver Hand Recruits specifically.
4) Some alternate hero skins are more difficult to implement than others. Specifically, I'm talking about Paladin, Rogue, and Shaman, whose Hero Powers produce additional tokens that may also need to be changed. That's why I expect the next batch to be Druid, Priest, and Warlock. At least definitely in the case of Paladin, they need to decide what they're going to do about Muster for Battle, Quartermaster, and other cards calling out Silver Hand Recruits specifically.
I think they might just pick another Hero for Paladin that's from the Argent Crusade/Silverhand related stuff.
4) Some alternate hero skins are more difficult to implement than others. Specifically, I'm talking about Paladin, Rogue, and Shaman, whose Hero Powers produce additional tokens that may also need to be changed. That's why I expect the next batch to be Druid, Priest, and Warlock. At least definitely in the case of Paladin, they need to decide what they're going to do about Muster for Battle, Quartermaster, and other cards calling out Silver Hand Recruits specifically.
I think they might just pick another Hero for Paladin that's from the Argent Crusade/Silverhand related stuff.
because they didnt sell well, stop they stopped wasting resources on them.
Let's do some math:
Creating a freaking GIF: 1 talented person, 12 hours.
Copy-pasting a character file and replacing the proper lines with references to the new animations, emotes and voiceovers: 1 not completely useless person, 1 hour.
Let's say that portraits earned Blizzard 10 000 000 $...
Just... just freaking get out of here: They profit massively -- and the only reason what so ever money may have anything to do with them not creating more hero portraits, is if they're actually scared of breaking a hole through the fabric of time with the profit to production cost ratio, kind of like dividing by 0 -- except you divide by zero an infinite amount of times.
And if it's harder to accomplish than this... They really need to fire someone in the programming team. Never hardcode: Anything that ever may be subject to change, ever.
...
Or perhaps most of the Hearthstone Team has been transfered to logistics -- all of them too busy driving all their money to the bank to create new content..?
They released those 3 like a year ago, whats the hold up? how long does it take to slap on a shiny animated pic and a hero power for warlock, druid, shaman, paladin and rouge?
You forgot priest.
Kept you waiting, huh?
It hasn't been a year. They were released in June, 6 months ago
because they didnt sell well, stop they stopped wasting resources on them.
I want a new Priest.
The one now is prissy.
Nightblade Argent Lance Flame Imp
Argent Watchman Argent Squire Frost Giant
Aviana Hogger Snipe Sea Giant
It wasn't enough of a money grab, so they will wait it out until all forums are exploding with anticipation for the new ones and BAM! Cha-ching!
Same goes for new deck slots, it is probably gonna be a purchase-only feature.
"Put your face in the light!" - Tirion Fordring
There's a thread about this every 2 days go look for those.
They are just thinking how to get most money from it. Planning to pick a right time window, when the current ones are barely selling at all, so that a new batch feels cool and exciting and people feel like it's a good time to spend some money on HS. Just my thoughts.
A few possible reasons:
1) They might have felt that releasing them all at once would have been monetarily intimidating. If you have 9 things going up at once for $10 each, that's $90 of stuff that just came out. If you only have 3 things, though, that's only $30, which is less huge.
2) They might have wanted to only release a few at first to test the waters on the concept. It'd be a shame to waste a bunch of resources on 9 of these and they not end up doing well. Instead, they only do three for now to try it out and see how it does and maybe make some changes to the remaining ones if these aren't turning out just right.
3) Staggering release means staggered demand. It's for the same reason that they stagger releases of expansions and adventures. If they just release an expansion and an adventure at the same time and then waited eight months to do anything else, there'd be a lot of complaining towards the latter half of those months that nothing else was coming out. By releasing the adventure four months after the expansion, you spread out the content but then also spread out the demand for more content.
As it is now, people are demanding just a few more hero skins. If they had released all 9 at once, people would be demanding the next round of 9 more hero skins.
4) Some alternate hero skins are more difficult to implement than others. Specifically, I'm talking about Paladin, Rogue, and Shaman, whose Hero Powers produce additional tokens that may also need to be changed. That's why I expect the next batch to be Druid, Priest, and Warlock. At least definitely in the case of Paladin, they need to decide what they're going to do about Muster for Battle, Quartermaster, and other cards calling out Silver Hand Recruits specifically.
I want my animated totems :(
b-but I .. have.. more... cakes...
They should make alternate heroes purchasable with gold ~_~
Creating a freaking GIF:
1 talented person, 12 hours.
1 not completely useless person, 1 hour.
Let's say that portraits earned Blizzard 10 000 000 $...
They profit massively -- and the only reason what so ever money may have anything to do with them not creating more hero portraits, is if they're actually scared of breaking a hole through the fabric of time with the profit to production cost ratio, kind of like dividing by 0 -- except you divide by zero an infinite amount of times.
And if it's harder to accomplish than this...
They really need to fire someone in the programming team.
Never hardcode:
Anything that ever may be subject to change, ever.