Hearthpwn

Her name was Alicia, I had a friend that had his own apartment at the time, complete with a waterbed. She cut class and we hung out at my buddy John's apartment playing Off World Interceptor on his 3DO and eventually having what can only be called awkward, and incredibly speedy, relations in his water bed while he was at work. Afterwords we cleaned the apartment, it seemed like the least we could do for him after desecrating his water bed with our clumsy and naked thrashing about. It was ummm special. Oh. .  . you meant .  . . . Wow! . . . .Boy is there egg on my face! 

Not at all. I can point to actual tangible uses for an Apple product that could be used to justify it's price point. For 90 dollars Blizz is giving you 18 pictures, 9 simple animations, and a couple minutes of sound. There's no justifying that price point. If you collected all that onto a CD and tried selling it to people you'd be laughed at. Hell, if you collected those pictures and put them into an actual book then packaged that as a proper art book then included a DVD that had the animations and sound on it and tried selling those as a tangible professionally made product for 90 dollars you'd still be laughed at. 

Yes, people are getting what they are being sold. I don't dispute that, but the cart vendor that shills 20 dollar hot dogs to tourists is giving those people what they were promised as well, same with the cabbies and the 200 dollar cab rides. They just know that tourists are usually too stupid to realize they are being ripped off or too scared to say anything or don't want to argue so they charge that much because they can typically get away with it. In short they know that most tourists are rubes and treat them accordingly. These prices show that Blizz thinks that it's players are a bunch of rubes as evidenced by them trying to sell us 18 pictures, 9 simple animations, and a couple minutes of sound for 90 dollars. 

Quote from Agony »

Quote from kwikill »

Quote from Agony »

Quote from kwikill »

What is "plenty profitable"?

still trying to track down the exact figures, but Kotick made a comment that -just- Destiny and Hearthstone pulled in $850M in revenue for 2014. Dunno why he'd mention those two together since they have nothing to do with each other (other than those were the two "new IPs" of 2014.

Ok, found another source: Jan-Sept. 2014, Hearthstone alone made $114M in revenue. Now unless you think Hearthstone has dozens of millions in production costs and overhead, I'd call that "plenty profitable".

I find it so odd that people seem to think that there should be a  maximum on how much a company is allowed to profit from their own product. That is not how it works.

Is it bad for their image/business to have set the price at 10 dollars, probably. A lower price would have been better both for the hearthstone players and for Blizzards image. To play the devils advocate here they probably have set the 10 dollar price because of the 2 reasons:

1. Analyzing sales, experience from other games etc... setting the price at 10 dollars probably means they will rake in plenty cash even if less people buy it.

2. To make it more exclusive content, if the price was set lower and you would see everybody with the new heroes, it loses its value of being special.

Finally if you don't like the pricing or don't think its worth it don't buy it, seriously its cosmetic content that does not impact the game. vote with your wallet don't buy it.

No one is saying they shouldn't profit.. the anger is coming from -how- they're doing it.

1) Is the very real concern that the temptation is there to focus on the (extremely more profitable) cosmetic stuff than actual game content

2) Is the "snake oil" aspect of it all. Know what these skins are? These skins are Dasani/Aquafina. It's a penny's worth of water being sold in a dollar bottle.

2) The comparison is wrong since snake oil products are looking to fraud their buyers, Cosmetics in games don't fraud their buyers.

 

It's not fraud per say but it's pretty damn close. The cart vendors in New York that bilk tourists for 20 dollar hot dogs and cab rides that cost hundreds of dollars aren't committing actual fraud either and they are doing the same thing Blizz is doing here. What you are getting compared to what you are paying is so grossly over priced as to be offensive. They are banking on people being too stupid to realize they are getting ripped off or not caring they are being ripped off. There is no way that a collection of 18 pictures, a couple minutes of sound, and 9 simple animations is worth anywhere close to 90 dollars. 

Of course I'm of the opinion this gets changed somehow before it goes live as Blizzard is getting shit on close to universally in response to this announcement. It's getting only a slightly better response than the infamous "599 US Dollars"

Quote from GrimmRec »

10 dollars is a great price. I mean, the voice actor had to do like ... whole 10 sentences. Do you know how tiring it can be to be an awesome dwarf? And the animation of the hammer alone is worth at least 8 dollars.

Fucking blizzard. What pisses me of is that there is going to be a load of people that buys this trite. Its not that I dont want you to support the game monetarily, I do too every now and then, but for the love of god, buy packs or arenas instead.

Honestly, I would be floored if they didn't have most of the portraits and voice work already sitting around in some long forgotten folder someplace. The only originally produced content will be the card backs and maybe the animation but I think the hammer may have been recycled from one of the adventure wings but I'm not certain. 

Quote from Snow_King »

Quote from Xanthious »

The prices on these new skins is actually offensive to me to a certain degree. 

How are you offended by a company offering to sell you a product? If you like it, you buy it, and if you don't like it, you don't buy it. 

How entitled to you have to be to be offended that someone offers to sell you something. 

I'm offended because there is simply no reasonable way to justify a 90 dollar price point for a set of pictures, card backs and emotes. It's grossly over priced and it shows that Blizzard thinks it's player base are a bunch of fucking rubes, and make no mistake if you lay down money for this cash grab you are the book definition of a rube. When I play someone with one of these heroes I won't greet them with "Hello" but rather with "Sorry".   I will feel pity for them the same way I used to feel pity for tourists who got ripped off buying 20 dollar hot dogs or 200 dollar cab rides when I lived in New York. 

It's even more staggering when you compare it against the other things in this game that have cost real money. You can buy an entire wing that comes with multiple cards and playable solo content for less than what a single one of these new "heroes" costs. This is a cash grab pure and simple. The only way it could be a more obvious cash grab is if they threw out the new "heroes" all together and just put a fucking "donate" button in the game. 

Finally, it's not as simple as not buying it because I couldn't be more opposed to seeing Hearthstone going this route as it sets a bad precedent in a game that's been pretty flawless to date. Blizzard needs to be thoroughly shit on for this and thankfully that's been the consensus. People are shitting on Blizzard pretty hard right now. Personally, with the way this has been received I think it's going to change somehow between now and when it goes live. I guess we'll see. 

I have to think that with the way Blizz is getting almost universally shat on that there is going to be some kind of change before this goes live. The prices on these new skins is actually offensive to me to a certain degree. 

The way I look at it is that at 10 bucks a piece I could go out right now and buy GTA V and Dragon Age Inquisition for my PS4, and don't get me started on how many great games I could get off Steam or GoG, for the same price that I would spend on getting all 9 of the new heroes. Seriously, fuck that. 

*Edited to fix mana cost. 

Started playing this deck around rank 18 earlier today and I'm currently I'm at rank 12 and I've only had one, maybe two, losses. This deck has worked really, really well. I like how in the early game this deck appears to be a generic aggro deck only to switch gears in the mid to late game. Very nice deck! 

Quote from gator7870 »

I have golden Shaman and Lock. Does Shaman impress you? /shrug

Another 45 wins or so and I'll have the druid too. :)

Yeah, honestly shaman is probably more impressive to me than Pally to be honest. 

Yeah, I'm sure no one wants to read your findings, because unless Ben Brode's your half brother, you know just as much as we do.

Not enough incentive for speculation

http://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-general/general-discussion/105464-possible-hint-at-next-expansion and your thread is almost useless. Those all 3 are covered in the article.

Quote from MechBearCat jump

Letting people choose which pack they want causes irritations down the road.

I know everyone jokes about the famous "people are too stupid for more deckslots or tokens or whatever" , but fact is that whenever people are presented with a choice, they can and will make mistakes. And by mistakes I don't mean poor judgement in general, I'm talking about things like purchasing the wrong packs.

And what happens when they misclick and purchase the wrong pack with their tokens? They attempt to undo their mistake by calling the customer service. And even if Blizzard declares that there is no going back once you purchased your packs, people would still try. And that try loses them money, if only due to employees having to deal with it. So yeah, the random pack solution isn't pretty, but perfectly understandable in my opinion. And here we are not even talking about the pain of re-designing the UI for the tokens (including on phone!).

I'm really the last person to defend Blizzard, because they ARE greedy as hell (because they can), but this change is reasonable in my opinion. Even with the obvious downsides. And hey, as said earlier, maybe there will be the possibility to not get a pack at all, but a full gold reward instead. The wording "whenever a pack is rewarded" is still there, after all?

 

There doesnt have to be any new token mechanic, simply make a new type of pack, with "?" icon for example, when u click on it, u will get a choise (for example like with druid choose one mechanic) and u can choose which pack u want to be awarded. Random pack is pure BS now with 3 different ones, imagine later on when there will be 5 or more, total crap for new and old players.

Dont give me that it is good to have possibility to get all "important" cards from all expansions, there are VERY few top key cards, that u want/need from each and players will be crafting at minimum one copy of them in 90% cases anyway, so if they could at least choose pack and limit the possibilites of card pool their gona get the card from and focus into the set they want, that would be much much better... nothing then forcing ppl to buy packs (= more money) hides behind this decision, no other argument will make this randomized choise valid.

I just decided to be silly.

7 mana, 7 characters long, 7 appears in the text.