People keep saying that "adventures are better for new players."
I remember back then talking to new players about what sort of decks they should be making. At first I was able to direct them towards cheap decks they could get started on, mostly things like face hunter or zoo. I told them mto focus their crafting on those specific cards and within a few weeks they'll have a deck they can at least climb on.
Then around TGT the question was asked and I realized something: Adventures REALLY screw you over if you weren't around when they showed up.
At the time, the major decks out there were:
Midrange hunter, which used Mad Scientist: a card on the 4th floor of Naxx
Secret Paladin, which required Avenge, a 5th floor card.
Zoo: which used Imp Gang Boss, a 3rd floor card
It took 2 weeks of doing NOTHING but saving to gather enough gold to open one wing. So getting Mad Scientist, and ONLY Mad Scientist required 2 MONTHS of gold grinding. Unlike expansions where you can just dust a few bad cards and pick the legendary you need, you MUST open each wing separately.
Then LoE came in, with Bran, a key card for most decks, requiring 1 month of saving and Finley at another half month. That's on TOP of needing whatever you needed from Naxx and BRM.
Eventually I gave up and said "There's not a single good deck you can make if you just joined the game.
Myself I had no issues as I joined in Open Beta and could easily save for most of the time to get to Adventures. But I'm also the same person who's opening 90 packs every expansion while paying nothing and still have gold epics and rares I haven't even bothered to dust because I'm not sure if I WANT to craft hunter's hero card or not. But to anyone who joined the expansion after adventures, it was a full on F U from Blizzard.
As far as quality over quantity? The cards were of two qualities: HIGHLY overpowered, like "autoconcede all Aggro" Reno or "destroy the meta" Patron or useless like Animated Armor, or Huge Toad. Naxx was a broken mess of high powered cards that we were MORE than happy to see rotated out. BRM can have most of its cards burned in a fire and no one would care. LoE went right back to high powered. Reno turning anti-aggro games into a coin flip: 50% you get reno and win, 50% you don't and lose. Elise turned Fatigue warrior into a "Who can find Elise first" games. Finley and Tunnel Trog: If saying those two names don't make you have PTSD you are either too young or REALLY good at forgetting what Aggro shaman was like.
One Night in Kharazan. If you guys want I'll make a 10 page post JUST on this monstrosity of an Adventure. For those that don't need that, Barnes [/card] showed up here [card]Malchezaar's Imp Firelands Portal, Purify, Spirit Claws.
Blizzard had to apologize for what they did here. They had to revamp all of Arena because of what they did here. People REALLY started hating the game because of what they did here. And, other than it having the best trailer (Though Rumble is VERY close) and a great first floor, the adventure sucked worse than Rumble Run.
Having so few cards in between 8 month periods of expansions means those cards HAVE to be insane to matter. There's no room for setup cards like Hadronox or Grumble. You can't fit in memes like Purify [/card]or [card]Surrender to Madness. The cards have to have POWER because this is all you'll get until the next expansion. You can't have a lot of synergy either. The individual cards have to either make a deck all by themselves or power up an old deck. Reno or Huge Toad. Firelands Portal or Protect the King!.
So having lived through every adventure in the game and the metas they created, I spit on the whole concept. If you want PvE bosses again, Frozen Throne showed you can do that better with an expansion. If you want high impact cards, so did we in the past, and we learned our lessons in asking for them. If you want a better path for new players, ask for decks that don't require legendaries to work like we used to, craftable without 3500 a gold dumped in first.
But the old style adventures. BLAH.
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