Hearthpwn

Yeah, I have been playing for 10 years now. I do not consider myself a whale, but I am far from F2P. I have pre-ordered almost every expansion and my collection Achievements show me at 92%.  I am in a position that I do not really have time to play games, but can spend money instead of time.  There is no issue with me paying money to support a game I enjoy.

The first rewards track was not good, but I have really enjoyed it after the second pass. The improvements to the rewards system and duplicate protection caused me to play the game more and spend more money. While I am not the most active player, I think I have only missed completing a few daily and weekly quest since they were introduced. Sometimes my weeks are busy and I am stressing about completing all my weekly quests late on Sunday nights. It is especially hard when the Meta makes the decks I want to play hard to win with.

I just do not have the time to "Win 15 games of Ranked" every week or any of the other crazy requirements. This is one of the few times I have seriously thought, "Do I just stop here since there is no way I will finish 37 more levels to finish the reward track?" (Normally finish between 150 and 200)

Those cards were in the First Core set, so you never "owned" them. They were just loaned to everyone when the was the Core Set. Once they changed the core set, everyone lost those cards. Same thing happened just before core with the reworked cards from the Classic set. It took forever to even get those from the Wild Packs (Only way to open).

Yeah It does suck.

Wow and I thought I was special. First Pack I opened was a Standard Pack and got TWO Signature Legendaries in that one. Ended up getting 2 more out of Normal March of the Lich King Packs.

Missed out on the free dust last time. Glad it worked out today.

My guess is it related to the coin revamp. You will probably have the "buy" the extra stats with coins.

Did not have a good Pack opening this go around. Had 145 packs to open to get all the New Mercs. Got them all, now I have only 22 packs left.

They really need to figure out something with a pity timer and portraits.

Seems like there was a problem with a new Merc so they turned packs off until they fix it.

Anyone else unable to open Merc packs after the patch?

This should have been done weeks ago. Guess better late then never?

I am not interested in Runestone and they kinda scare me. I will try to explain break down their explanation on why Runestones are "Good for Players" (I don't really think they will be in most cases).

It all comes down to processing fees. To pay for anything with a credit card/debit card, a vendor has to pay a processing fee. That usually is about 1.5% to 3%. This can vary a lot between vendors and dollar amounts. Some can be flat fees per transaction. Credit Card processors do not want to get bogged down with billions of $1.00 transactions that might only net them 2 Cents when they can use the same resources to process an order that makes them $100. They can charge a premium for small charges to prevent this. That is why you will see "Minimum Purchase with Card" signs at small businesses and gas stations.

The same goes for purchases from stores like iTunes and Google play. They will often charge as much as 30% of the income for the purchase to the seller. That is what the whole Epic Games Vs Apple lawsuit was about.

What Blizzard says they want to do is allow players to buy cheaper cosmetics without bundles. Lets take Hero skins for example. Often you would have to buy 4 Skins in a bundle to get any. The reason for this was it cheaper to process 1 transaction for $20 then 4 transactions at $5. The player paid the same amount, but Blizzard lost more money on Fees.

What they "say" they want to do with Runestones is allow the player to have more chose while saving everyone fees. Instead of having to spend $20 on 4 Skins from one style, you can use the Runestones to buy 4 skins from 4 different styles if you want to.

There are a lot of Dangers with this line of thought, but I wanted to let people know what possible positive business reason behind the change was.

The improvement to the Task System really makes playing a lot easier to get into. You can do pretty much every PVE Bounty with a Budget comp of some kind. Once you get a team you like, completing all the tasks is not that hard.  Just make sure you get Cookie.

If you have Amazon Prime, the new Hearthstone Rewards are available today.

3 Standard Packs

While not as great as a free Legendary, it is something.

I generally like achievements, but I also just like the ones that you can complete just by playing the intended way. It can be nice to get a little direction on how to pay a card, but with so many bugs, it is not a good way to farm EXP.

You cannot split the card or use Fandral or quest to double up. It just sucks. Another RNG fest.

I love the flavor of totem shaman, but I think that it will only work as an Even deck in Wild.

Quote from RendInFriend >>

don’t play mercs (this game mode feels like a whale hunt to me).

 I play Mercs a lot and it is the opposite of a Whale hunt. Well I think they want it to be one, but the economy is so bad you have nothing to spend money on. Just by playing I have all tasks complete and most of the Mercs Maxed. The chance of opening a pack that has nothing I can use in it is so high I just sit on them. With the last big Merc patch, I got all the Mercs in about 60 packs. You get more packs with each Merc. Currently sitting on 145 Merc packs that are just waiting for next drop.

It seems like I am the target audience for this mode. I spend money on Hearthstone. I interact with the Mode on a daily basis and enjoy the game play. There is nothing of interest to spend my money on.

I would not call myself a Whale. I usually spend about $300 a year on the game with bundles and battle passes. That is about $25 a month. Hearthstone is about the only game that I play. I am not really sure what you can do except chase Golden Cards to become a Whale. Even I have most of the Diamond Cards and my spending is less a month then two meals out.