The amout of hate and rage on this platform is astonishing. I understand that people are forever complaining the meta as there are always hate for certain cards/decks/playstyle. However, with the announcement of mercenaries mode, things get crazy. People hate the mode that they haven't played yet! They are not forced to play and even can play it for free if they want to. Ofcourse Blizz wants to earn money, but who do not? Cross-sale is a very popular technique to sale more products to an existing set of customer. It is well-known that getting new customers is much harder to retain the same one. And as a customer, if you don't like the product, you can just ignore it. A game is not like food or other necessities. Not play this game does not cause any degradation in our life whatsoever (well, except if you are a pro).
For people who love the game and complaining that the game has degraded in term of quality due to not focus on the core mode (well, the card game), I would say it is more complicated than that. Yes, the current meta kills any control decks, but in term of diversity it is definitely not too bad. Sometimes you have to be in the shoes of the people who create the game. You have to deliver 3 patches of release every year, and each of them must have special flavour. How can any teams achieve that without breaking things? Also, their internal testers can't be compare with the massive amount of players while many of them are either pros or very innovative in term of exploiting combos. With the range of few thousand cards in Standard and tens of thousand cards in Wild, it is impossible for any teams to play test everything before releasing. I can see that they release changes much more frequently in comparison to years before, which is a very good move to cope with the complicated meta. Yes, not everything they changed is good, but who is perfect? Also, since Mercenaries has its own monetary system, thus it is very likely to be manage by a different team. Then the losing of focus on the main card game seems to be just a speculation.
And we also have complains regarding gold to be used in Mercenaries, which in turn forcing us to spend on Mercenary and having less for buying packs. Though the logic is correct, but the critics seem quite weird to me. If you don't like the mode then don't spend gold. If you like the mode, is it natural to pay something to the developers? In opinion, expecting something free with good quality is the definition of "cash grab" that everyone keeps using. I find that the shared resource between mode helps you to play the game more casual. Also, since Mercenaries uses gold, may be there will be plans to help players to get more gold (just speculating)? Hs nowadays gives you much more gold than when it was first release (yes, I understand the problem of "double" legendaries). But the cost of building a deck does not increase as much. Building an aggro deck is just marginally more expensive than before. If you want more decks or more diversified playstyles, you can play arena which has been the main mode for farming for ages, or just pay! Use amazon coin and buy the pre-purchase bundles (not the mega one) or bundles with legendaries (usually appear a bit after each expansion release). In overall, they have good values if you have cash to spare. But I must stress that Hs can be played for free, albeit quite challenging for new F2P players.
My last note is that creating a good product is hard no matter what it is. I still find Hs fun and very casual even though I played from the second released many years ago. I did stop playing it occasionally when I found the meta is bored or got busy with works. I play rank just to complete quest (climbing ladders are too stressful for enjoying the game, especially for rng involved), or play duels as a mean to use old cards and use crazy combos. I do not play battleground as one game is a bit too long for my own flexibility. But I know many people like it. Now we have a new mode coming, which looks actually okay in the teaser despite all the hate. Hs has evolved from just a card game to kind of a game hub. I see nothing wrong with it. In the old time, people played customed modes in Warcraft all the time. I know that it is always very easy to criticize and it sometimes even feel good as it kind of expressing our power over some matter. But it is toxic without trying to think about the positivity or the difficulty the people in charged has to overcome. Just try the mode, if it is not for you, skip it. If you just hate Blizz, then stop using Blizz products. Then you don't have to hold all the rage for just a trivial game. There are things much more important than this game or Blizz.
0
That was neutral common card, of course a class legendary is stronger.
3
Are you sure? Because lately they have been anouncing expansions and events just about two weeks early, which could mean we will have no info for about 2 weeks still.