Hearthpwn

It already is! I'm literally downloading the patch right now.

This really demonstrates the power of nostalgia, I guess. As someone who's never played WoW and didn't play Hearthstone from the beginning either, I find Ragnaros the Firelord to be a fun card with great art, but nowhere near my personal top ten favourite legendaries. If it was up to me, Ragnaros should have lost to Edwin VanCleef. 

Well, the community has spoken, so hail the Firelord! Thanks to the mods for organising this fun event.

I agree with you, the changes look very reasonable, and I'm happy to see Duels finally get some attention. Making most of the passive treasures a little less powerful is a good decision for the mode.

It's also nice with a new hero as well, even if it is for a limited time. I would have liked to see some more updates to the existing heroes though - maybe add some new treasures or rotate an old hero power out - because the meta has become somewhat stale. 

Leveling up the mercenaries, collecting coins and completing tasks feels rewarding... but the game is not fun to play IMO. Every battle quickly starts to feel the same. It's definitely a mode that is designed for making people addicted to that hit of dopamine you get for completing small tasks etc. 

I usually LOVE PvE content. I have spent hours playing Dungeon Run, Rumble Run, Dalaran Heist and Tombs of Terror. I really liked playing though the Books of... as well. But this? It's not for me. Probably because it's not a card game. 

I still don't understand why Blizzard have turned Hearthstone into a platform for mobile games rather than just making an entirely new game. It feels so clunky - the fact that there are two shops (both of which sells mercenaries pack, but only one who sells Hearthstone packs), different places for daily tasks/quests, and that you're opening coins in packs, which doesn't really make any sense... I think they could have made a better game by making it entirely its own thing.

I'm not going to preorder anything, mainly because I'm still disappointed in what Mercenaries actually turned out to be. I thought it would be something like Slay the Spire or, even better, like the Arkham Horror LCG. I LOVE single-player content, and a single-player RPG mode with rogue-like elements sounded perfect for me - instead we got this... 

Quote from STFlow >>

What's the reasoning behind buying the most recent expansion card packs and getting all legendary cards first?

Based on my perspective, I thought it would be best to buy the classic card packs as the expansion card packs would be rotated out while the classic card packs would maintain in rotation therefore the best packs to buy would be the classic packs. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to start an argument here, just wanted to know why getting the legendary from each expansion would be the best option. 

You're not going to get ALL the legendary cards from each expansion - just one. Most people would argue that the more legendaries, the better, especially for F2P, so being guaranteed one just by opening a maximum of 10 packs of each expansion is a pretty good deal. If you're worried about rotation, you can stick to the most recent expansions, Forged in the Barrens and United in Stormwind. Another great investment is the Wailing Caverns miniset, which will grant you 4 legendaries, 1 epic (x2), 14 rares (x2), and 16 commons (x2) (66 cards in total) for 2000 gold. 

As others have stated, Classic pack are no more - or rather, they are exclusively for the "classic" game mode - and the core set is free, so you really only have to buy expansion packs.

Can I just day how much fun this is? As someone who doesn't play wild, it's great fun to be reminded of old favorites and the good times I've had with various decks. There's absolutely no consistent system to how I'm voting, I just go instinctively with the cards that speak to me - and that's the entire point, right? Thumbs up to the mods for arranging this!

I've made a Shadow/Corrupt Priest deck which is beating mage consistently. I don't know how well the deck does against other classes though - Mage is quite literally the only class I've faced for the last couple of hours.

Quote from Bugsylla >>

Does this mean they are forcing us to buy the entire bundle for the expansion? 

No, you will be able to buy the perks for 2400 gold as usual. Just have to wait until everything is live.

I'm on EU, and I haven't experienced longer queue times.

It was a great addition with the puzzles, those were fun. In general, I feel like people have been too harsh in their judgement when it came to the Book of ... content. I like that the Hearthstone team is experimenting with narrative mechanics. Hearthstone isn't exactly an ideal platform for storytelling, but IMO they're actually doing a great job of making it work. I for one am very invested in the Book of Mercenaries story line!

Quote from Anukai036 >>

Not only are the fights pretty good, it is awesome to see gul'dan picture change with each fight as he gets more evil.

They've all had changing hero portraits, and I agree, it is a nice detail. It's also nice that they've taken the time to give existing cards new, more appropriate art (for storytelling proposes that is). In general, it seems a lot of time goes into the details, and that's something i personally appreciate.

 It says on the Battle.net shop that it will be available "through August 2".

It says in the shop that Ve'nari will be available in "late August", so it won't be usable yet. The first usable BH cosmetics will be the Beach Party bundle, which will be available on July 27, according to the announcement.

I mainly play stanard, battlegrounds and duels, spiced up with the occasional arena run and the weekly tavern brawls. And of course SOLO CONTENT! I have no idea how many hours I've put into dungeon runs, rumble runs (gotta win all the shrines!) the Dalaran Heist and Tombs of Terror. I'm definitely a completionist. I'm also excited whenever a new Book of... is released. The mercenaries' books have been particularly great so far, so much effort has been put into them, and the storytelling is excellent IMO.  

TL;DR: I enjoy many of Hearthstone's different modes, and it differs with one I play the most, depending on what I'm feeling like. Plus, the solo content is awesome.

The third party software Blizzard is referring to is bots farming gold. I don't think you can 'hack' battleground like that and make it give you triples. Sometimes people just get insanely lucky.