Blizzard Rethinking Wild Pack Purchases
Ben Brode was out on reddit this evening and stated the Hearthstone team has been thinking about allowing pack purchases for Wild content due to their additional focus on the gamemode this year. Unfortunately, they aren't ready to say anything else right now.
The thread, "Why can't we buy Wild packs?" has been a question since Standard became a thing back in 2016. Unfortunately, nothing has been said about Adventure content but we can only hope that they too returns should packs for Goblins vs Gnomes and The Grand Tournament make a comeback to the shop.
Quote from Ben BrodeWe've been rethinking our stance on this with our additional focus on Wild this year. Will update you as we have more concrete information.
I give @Daxxari a lot of crap for being bold enough to comment at the time about the Wild transition, and making the comment that removing Wild content from the store would make our (the veterans) collections "more valuable". Yeah, he said that, though with the Blue Tracker gone, along with the original forum, you can't find the original post any more.
I don't actually have any beef with @Daxxari over it. My issue is that I think he accurately echoed the discussions happening inside Team Five at the time. I think they actually believed that players would covet status and embrace being the guy who has Dr. Boom where some newer player does not.
There's also the issue that in their original conception, before they consulted with their focus group of streamers and pros, they intended for Wild to have absolutely zero support at all. It was to be "the new Casual". The only reason we have a ladder in Wild is that the focus group insisted on it and Blizzard bent that far from their original plans.
I have yet to meet the player who spends even five seconds worrying about the "value" of his Wild collection. If he's playing Wild, what he cares about is having people to play against. Blizzard basically screwed the pooch when it came to trying to cast Wild as "the also ran" mode without any support or prestige, while at the same time trying to cast it as this exclusive mode where the prestige came from it's exclusivity.
They should be reconsidering their stance. It was a stupid stance to take in the first place.
Never mind that, as things worked out, Standard became the mode with the incredibly stale metagame and Wild became the place to go to play a creative and varied metagame!
I hope they do adventures also since my son's account doesn't have any. His favorite class is Priest, so I'd like to be able to get him Deathlord, Belcher, Chow, Cultist, Loatheb, etc. Damn, that was such a great expansion...
That is true! I will buy the Naxx adventure immediately with real money.
yeah that was such a good time
While this is a great idea for wild players and people trying to get a full collection,it's a bit odd that wild packs are coming back,3 or 4 weeks after they changed the price for packs in Europe. I mean we asked for packs not to be removed since GvG and Nax were moved to Wild and we got ignored.
Don't get me wrong,I repeat it's great that we can buy the wild packs again (assuming we can do that with gold too) but doing that after you increased the pack prices makes you look even more greedy. Maybe it's just me thinking this way,maybe I'm still hating them for increasing the pack prices and I'm overreacting.
Anyway great job for Wild mode and card collectors,maybe this is how they're gonna start paying some attention to Wild format too.
Keep in mind, he doesn't say packs are coming back. He also doesn't say Wild packs are coming back at full price. It's certainly possible that packs will come back at a cheaper price, include more cards or that dust costs will be reduced on Wild cards. I'd say their approach to Wild is being discussed alongside the question of how do they help new people catch up to experienced players in not only Wild, but also Standard.
I like the idea of bringing wild packs back, adventures comming back doesn't affect me since i bought all the adventures and won't lose/win anything with it. My Concern is for the people who play both wild AND standart since they might want to buy the old packs(cuz they desenchanted cards in the past) and want to buy the new ones from new expansions too, we are comming more and more to the point of farming gold for packs or give up real money but to each their choices i guess
I would very much like if Blizzard made wild packs cost less gold (eg. 75). It would help new players get into the game more (especially in the more formidable mode for a new player), and help old players fill out their collections in the "unofficial" mode.
This wil never happen, for the simple reason that not only new players buy packs, all players, because packs at 75 gold wil be a cheap way to get arcane dust. a 25% discount on arcane dust its not negligible
The value of the grind is earlier access to the content. Time has value. As frustrating as it is to see the next person get a discount, I think it's naive to expect that they'll never add a catchup mechanic to Hearthstone for new players.
Exactly, time has value.
That's why they can't ignore all the time we spent in this game to buy packs for 100g and reduce their price for Wild.
No it doesn't. Do you complain when you "grind hard" at work to buy a new phone and the old phones cost less? Old things with less value are usually cheaper. It revalues your grind from the devaluation of the cards themselves. If you want new things you have to work harder- it's a basic rule of life. Having to wait 2 years to get a discount is enough that you are still heavily rewarded for acting now. Take it from me, who waited until League to buy Naxx and BRM- everyone else having cards that you don't isn't fun. Can you imagine having no cards from before Whispers so that your grimd is fully rewarded? You'd have to play wild because you couldn't survive standard. If you're grinding in arena then you're probably not outright buying packs anyway, and this lets you catch up on old sets.
My thinking is maybe they should make Wild Cards Enchanted and Disenchanted for the same cost. That way by exploring the format you're not netting any loss in dust.
You get a golden Hemet Nesingwary.
If you disenchant them for full value even more people will disenchant their wild collection to craft standard cards. If you put the enchanting cost the same as disenchant, older players will be triggered.
And what if Blizzard making money IS how they can improve the player experience? Specifically the WILD player experience by offering WILD packs for purchase again.