Hearthpwn

Yes, and Millhouse would be decent if it weren’t for that pesky battlecry. 

Comparing it to dynomatic is tempting, except this is a legendary, so a one-of that in 20% of games will be in the bottom 6 of your deck. That deck has to be made intentionally inconsistent for it to have any reason to be included at all. 

Consider if Vargoth had the text “battlecry: your next Arcane Missiles cast this turn is cast an extra two times.” Even that would be better, as you’d only have to include one other sub-optimal card and you could conceivably go face after a doomsayer/nova turn. 

Unfortunately, I can only see two scenarios: either they printed the highlander legendaries as largely wild-only cards, and Mage will have to chalk it up as their duskfallen aviana set, or they print some Glittermoth-type support cards and bomb warrior gets a free pass against four out of five classes for the expansion. 

While a charitable thought, the end effect would be detrimental to the game.

It would benefit me greatly. I started in mate MSoG and really only have cards from Mammoth on, being largely F2P. When I play Rogue I have to play without double prep and double SI:7, I still don’t have two copies of Blizzard, Eaglehorn bow, and lightning storm, much less some Classic epics. I’d love to have those holes filled.

And yet, giving them away for free would seriously harm the game, not only in the potential offense taken by more established paying players. 

The need to collect cards in a CCG serves more purposes than monetization. For one, it gives players a goal to strive for. In another game the developers made collecting too easy and even though I was late to the party I was able to get multiple copies of every collectible item without paying a dime (buying them all with premium currency would run close to 10,000$ US). Guess what happened when I finally got my last piece?

I quit the game. There wasn’t enough of a challenge anymore. 

Obviously that’s not going to happen to everyone every time. Yet losing the draw of collecting would lose the game some of its players. 

Secondly, collecting serves as a gateway to the game. In game design we talk about the learning curve of a game. And CCGs in particular have a solid approach to the learning curve: basic sets and a slow accumulation of cards. Consider the first time you played MtG, odds are someone gave you a mono red Sligh deck and you went face. Or perhaps a token green, the individual deck doesn’t matter. All your learning curve was the cards in your (likely borrowed) deck and the ones on the table in front of you. Most games have since come out with preconstructed boxed sets to help catch players who may not have the friendly aid of a loaner deck. SW:CCG was ridiculously complex, but starting with the pre-built decks, the mental load was significantly reduced. Hearthstone is no different. Wonder why they hit FWA with a mana bump instead of some text? FWA is basic, and one of the cards by which a level 1 Warrior learns what a weapon is. Starting out a new game with hundreds of different moving pieces would lend to choice paralysis and players would walk away.

This is only going to get worse. Could you imagine walking into a game store and asking to about MtG and being sat down at a table and handed 4x of every card from Alpha to Ravnica and being told “have fun!”. Experienced players would drool at the chance, a beginner would be more likely to run away and never look back. 

But let’s say you’re an avid collector and had the fortitude to get through the mountain of cards handed to you on day one. Now what?

Well, you’ve got a few options. Arena looks interesting, but you don’t have much gold. Standard is supposed to be the main event, but you don’t have much of those cards, compared to the third option: most of the cards you got excited about are flagged as “Wild only” so let’s play wild. Great, welcome to the game: Big Priest.  Odd Warrior. Hourlock.   Well, you have enough of those cards to try some of those so let’s try that. Huh. That’s what Hearthstone is like? 

The game just lost another group of players. 

But say you push through even that. Welcome to the game, get buried in cards, play Wild and love it. Awesome. Now. At what point would you ever be incentivized to spend money? The cards in Standard (the only ones that require paying for in this world) don’t make a huge portion of influence in Wild. Maybe a card here or there. Ziliax looks good, maybe I’ll dust Millhouse and a few other obviously trash cards for him. What’s that? By making everything free you’ve made them undustable? Well, in return for the chance of a new player buying a few packs you’ve pissed off an even larger chunk of your older players. And what’s more, why pay anything for Ziliax? He’ll be free in another 10 months or so. 

They’d need to amp the appeal of the newest set(s) hard to even stand a chance of making a dime. Each new set would need stronger-than-KFT/Kobolds type cards for them to appreciably make Wild-only new players even think about opening their wallets. Which means that those who can’t/won’t simply will not be able to compete. 

Congratulations, you’ve either bankrupted the game or driven it to an entirely P2W model. All by trying to make things free and easier for beginners. Hopefully you don’t work in game development. 

Though I understand there’s some positions in the US Government opening up soon. You sound like you’d fit in just fine there. 

Battletag: Tao#1162
Region: NA
Trade Only?: Yes, you go first please.

Edit: Done!

Battletag: Tao#1162
Region: NA
Trade Only?: Yes, you go first please. 

Done!

Battletag: Tao#1162

Region: NA

Trade only? Yes, you go first.

Finished with Ed911#1715, thanks!

Battletag: Tao#1162

Region: NA

Trade only? Yes, you go first please.

done!

Battletag: Tao#1162
Region: NA
Trade Only?: Yes. You go first please.

Battletag: Tao#1162
Region: NA
Trade Only?: Yes, you first please

done

Tag: Tao#1162

Region: NA

Trade Only?: Yes, you first please

 The OP has a couple of demons they want to flog and the trouble is they're all getting stacked up in this one topic.

The anti-preorder agenda: There is actually a good argument for this, but it just doesn't apply to Hearthstone. Preordering was an artifact of minimizing loss in the gaming industry when games were physical. Companies don't want to print too much more than they sell. Afterall, you could have the best selling game in history, but if you printed twice as many copies as you sold, you might still take a huge hit on those profits. In the publishing industry big name publishers have actively lost money on best-selling novels, because they over-estimated the market and made too big of a print run. Preordering gives the company real numbers on which to base their print run, while at the same time giving players insurance against their game selling out before they get it. Now that games are largely digital, there isn't as much of an incentive for players, though the company still benefits from being able to assure shareholders "our numbers are up x%" even before the game has sold. More data means more refinement of product, and happy investors means more money to get the next project out. But since the players no longer need the assurance (in business terms it is acronymized as FOMO, Fear of Missing Out), companies chose to add additional shinies to motivate sales. If you preorder you get this exclusive Halo skin, or this exclusive Warcraft mount and minipet. If those shinies have in-game impact, those with anti-preorder agendas decry it as a p2w scheme and elitist, but if it is only cosmetic, then the same nutjobs cry that they're using cosmetics as a mindscrew to divest the weak willed from their money.

The real problem comes when you setup preorders on a crappy game or a product that is largely a bait and switch. The shady company has their money and can bail and the players are just screwed. If they'd waited they could have seen reviews and shoddy games don't get the chance to get any money deceitfully. (Granted, that is assuming that consumers would do their due diligence prior to buying the game anyway, and that just doesn't hold up to reality. If preorders were suddenly outlawed, the same people would just buy on release day, and exclusives would likely be tied to that day. The only change would be the lack of early information on consumer interest.)

Why it doesn't apply to Hearthstone. Hearthstone's pre-orders aren't a gamble on content. All cards are released to the public before the cutoff date, and the game is already established. This isn't buying something and hoping that your 50$ is going to get something playable. This is like buying the latest expansion of Dominion. The vast majority of consumers buying the expansion already have the game and know what they're getting. And while Hearthstone does have cosmetic shinies in the form of cardbacks and alternate hero skins, their draw is also intelligent spending from a fiscal end. If you're going to drop 50$ on the game this expansion then you can do it before the launch and get 50 packs (plus perks) or after and get 40. The fact that the OP says 'you're an idiot for preordering' is like telling someone they're an idiot for not buying their packs 2 at a time "because you could get really lucky and get all the cards you need before you open 40 packs" even when the price per pack is significantly higher. If you're spending the money, get the most value out of it as you can. If anything it is idiotic to pay more for less.

The OP is interesting in that they state that the mega bundle would be better with 3 golden legendaries instead of 1 (implying that paying players should have more in-game advantages than the f2p players) while pointing at the cosmetic and crying foul. So they seem to be wanting more benefit for the paying player while claiming to have never preordered anything. Which means either they are working against their own interests, lying somewhere, or they are regularly paying more for less and not exactly someone who should be advising anyone on their spending habits.

The anti-lootbox agenda: Again, there can be actual, rational reasons for being anti-lootbox as a supplementary monetization scheme. One need not dig too far to find examples of companies jumping on the bandwagon and trying to milk collectors and completionists for all they're worth. You'll find claims of it tapping into gambling addictions, but the only peer-reviewed studies I've seen on the issue came up wanting. If anyone has any I'd love to see them. Personally, I could see there being something here, as there is assuredly a rush when opening up the unknown, and a dopamine release when getting something above the norm in value thereby. Apparently the lack of payout being able to buy back in is an issue that prevents it from being the same, and there are other technicalities that differentiate lootboxes from true gambling. Either way, being anti-lootbox can be perfectly rational.

Why it doesn't apply to Hearthstone: For all their similarities, cardpacks aren't lootboxes. They aren't peripheral content being sold as a supplemental monetization model to a game. The cards are the game and buying the cardpacks is the only monetization of an otherwise remarkably f2p game. If you're playing the game for free you're getting ~70% of the game's content for free. If you drop real money on it, you get the option of switching between decks easier, while paying for the developers and the server uptime that everybody shares.   

As for the megabundle and all the hoopla about it, different people value things differently. From a non-gold completionist's point of view, the Boomsday preorder and the Witchwood preorder came out about the same. It would take ~150$ plus an expansion's worth of in game gold to get a complete set for either. The bonus dust from 2 golden legendaries plus the chance to buy 130 packs at a discount instead of 50 and the 20 extra packs from Witchwood come out exactly even. You get 100% of cards for your 150$ either way.

For those interested golden cards or explicitly in a complete golden collection, (if they exist) TBP preorder was better. For those only spending 50$ and wanting packs, WW's preorder was better. Either is far better than any single expansion previously.

Battletag: Tao#1162
Region: NA
Trade Only: Yes, you go first

Done, thank you.

Myra's Unstable Element isn't as useful as it seems in this deck.

Looking for 6 combo pieces means in 20% of the games played one will be card #30, leaving Myra as a dead draw.

In over 80% of games you'll not have seen all 6 pieces by the time you've seen your 20th card, meaning the times that Myra can do more than burn a handful of cards is slim. Granted, it'll be nice when it happens, but is it worth it?

And you'll have to survive to that point.

Battletag: Tao#1162
Region: NA
Trade Only?: Yes. You go first

done

Battletag: Tao#1162

Region: NA

Trade only: Yes, you go first

Ty Flashgordon

R/P/S will be Warlock for control, Exodia Mage for Combo and a new deck for aggro. Parity Hunter/CtA Pally/Rush Warr all could fit here.