Ok after playing a bunch today and scouting the new system I can see how the scam works.
1. The system is designed, like most F2P scams, to bombard you with rewards right off the bat to make it seem like rewards have increased. You quickly gain levels from 1-20 and get a bunch of gold and packs. Looking ahead, you can see that the rewards actually increase for higher levels. But insidiously, the amount of exp per level is not displayed, only the amount to your next level. And that number is increasing over time. This prevents you from calculating how the amount of rewards you're getting for the time invested, and the amount of rewards the experience from quests is giving you compared to the very obvious flat gold rates from before.
2. The achievements rolling out simultaneously is not a coincidence - as many achievements give exp rewards as well. This is designed to increase the short term reward shower with the rollout of their battle pass system. You very quickly rack up the easy to earn achievements that you'll get just by playing the game normally. I got 3-4 levels worth of exp just by playing one run of duels as Rogue and redeeming the achievements I earned. But these achievement boosts are a one time thing. When the next expansion rolls out, you won't be getting this artificial infusion of exp from a barrage of easily earned achievements, and reward acquisition will plummet.
3. Gold is not rewarded with every level tier. Often you will get a pack instead, which is functionally worse than gold because it's from a specific set, when with 100 gold you could instead choose which set to buy. Particularly, any set other than Darkmoon Faire is objectively lower in value, because people already own those sets. Even rewarding Darkmoon Faire sets will be inferior to gold because they will be rewarded for the next few months long after expansion release. The normal player behavior is that people save their gold and then splurge on 50-100 packs at the start of an expansion. This makes logical sense - you want the cards immediately as they become available or your deck strength plummets in comparison to other players who get the most new cards they can right away. So these "backdated" pack rewards are not very rewarding at all - they're not going to help you next expansion like gold would and F2P players fall further behind the curve.
All in all, it seems exactly like I thought it would be - rewards are obfuscated by inserting another "currency" (experience) in between, intentionally making it harder to gauge how much your time is really worth. Rewards are decreased compared to the pure gold from quest system they had, and rewards are less valuable in attaining the cards you need each expansion to stay competitive.
The saddest thing of all is that the "paid" pass only grants an exp bonus of either 15 or 25% (I'm not quite sure how it works, you get a 10% boost right away then a 15% boost at level 10, which could either be replacing your 10 with 15 or adding 15 to make 25). Even a 25% boost in experience would not even be remotely worth $20, with how many packs that could buy you previously with Amazon coins and such. Activision's greed has consumed the development of this game.
1
"We got the winter bundle lol" OMEGALUL
4
Hi guys, the card named Charge from the warrior says: "Give a friendly minion Charge. It can't attack heroes this turn". Shouldn't this card text after the Witchwood expansion be: "Give a friendly minion Rush" ? and maybe the name of the card changed from "Charge" to "Rush".
17
Can we please have a classic mode? with only basic and classic cards :D
5
Just imagine how would that be.
1
You can use an emulator on PC to log in with an "iphone". Google it.
2
Craft both non-gold versions, you will remain with 2 legendaries instead of 1 golden.
1
If I craft Baku (for example) golden, will I receive 3200 dust when year of the dragon begins?
-9
I wonder why you posted a photo where we can see your rank and you have selected that deck? That doesn't mean you got rank 172 legend with that deck just because you have that one selected in photo.
1
Why isn't a adventure? :(
7
Hm... We will get Tyrande from a special promotion... that special promotion will be with the new iPhone 7?