Hearthstone Players in China to Receive 8 Free Card Packs for Logins
Starting on October 1st and running through the 8th, Hearthstone players with China region accounts will be receiving free card packs to celebrate National Day, the anniversary of the People's Republic of China. Logging in each day and playing a game against an opponent will reward each player with 1 Frozen Throne Card Pack.
Author Edit: I think it's important that everyone remembers the Chinese version of Hearthstone is not managed by the same team that takes care of the global game. It isn't necessarily "our" Blizzard making these decisions and with the unique situation that China has, things will seem out of place to us in the Western world.
The information above was sourced on Weibo through a reddit post.
Why are we bothering to talk about this?
For one, everyone loves it when we get to see what's going on over in the east from Netease/Blizzard China. They do a lot of special stuff that we don't get over here in the other Hearthstone regions (like the Chinese stats app) so we can use these events as a way to give our feedback to the development team to show them what we'd like to see.
Blizzard, don't give us free card packs for anything, we definitely do not want that at all - ever.
It also brings us back to Ben Brode's statement earlier in the year, "Keeping Hearthstone Spicy is Important", which said we'd be getting more special events in the game, kicking off with Free Card Day. Since then, we've seen the Midsummer Fire Festival, the Frost Festival, and the recent Pirates Day. Understandably, it takes time for larger events to be created so we haven't seen too many of them, but at least they've been true to their word! I do believe events could be coming out an even better pace though with more minor events taking place.
This was cool. Do more of this.
When you compare Hearthstone to Blizzard's World of Warcraft, there's a ton of stuff that Hearthstone could eventually have that would be good for the game. If you aren't familiar with the game, these are the types of events WoW has.
- Event Holidays - Over a dozen seasonal events which celebrate specific real-world holidays like Halloween and Easter.
- Micro Holidays - Small one or two day events which get people out into the world.
- Bonus Events - Weekly events which take you into old content, PvP, the world, and more.
Keep these three things in mind while you read on.
Minor Things, the "Micro Holidays"
Giving out a free card pack for a trivial event is something very easily done and a great gesture towards the community. If you look back to early August, you will remember that Wild Packs returned to the shop through the Battle.net website. Since we're encouraging players to get into this mode more than ever before, why don't we celebrate the anniversary of every Hearthstone's expansion release?
- On the day a new set launched, give out a free card pack for that set.
- For adventures, toss players some arcane dust instead.
Here's the upcoming set release dates for those who need a refresh.
- League of Explorers - November 12
- Mean Streets of Gadgetzan - December 1
- Goblins vs Gnomes - December 8
The Exploring Gnomeregan Brawl ft. Reno Jackson
If things end up getting too messy due to how clustered all the set releases are, one could easily dedicate a week every 4 months to give out some packs for the sets that launched in that area of time and run a special brawl which only allowed usage of cards from those sets - probably through pre-built decks due to players potentially not having cards from older sets.
Tavern Brawls, let's talk about that. But first, since we're here due to celebrating the start of something (China's National Day), it's worth noting that it would be nice next year to see something on Hearthstone's (release) Birthday (March 11) instead of silence.
Tavern Brawls, the "Bonus Events"
Much like WoW, we are lucky enough to have weekly events which get players logging in and having fun, though does it really have to be just as repetitive?
- Out of 119 Brawls, we've seen 67 repeats? That's 56% of brawls!
- In 2017 we've seen 39 brawls so far. Out of these, 22 have been repeats - the same 56% repetition rate.
I sincerely hope this is a happy little accident and not a target they're aiming to hit. It would be really nice to see more brand new brawls that can get people excited about and not the repeats which seemingly only exist for players to comment on HearthPwn, reddit, or other community places of gathering to talk trash about it being another repeat. Slightly changing a brawl doesn't count for the record!
It would be interesting to see an updated graph showing how many brawls are played every week, something which was last shown at BlizzCon 2015, to see proof all these repeats are worth it. Has engagement dropped off at all for the gamemode or are more and more players constantly taking part in it? What about repeat brawls? What if you remove those that only play until they get their first card pack?
Don't take variety out of context. They just meant having content between expacs.
It would be even more interesting to see how Heroic Brawls come into the spotlight. I know for a fact site moderation goes up on weeks where Heroic Brawls take place due to anger about not having something that is easily participated in. Why do we switch from an inclusive design of the Brawl button on certain weeks? Exclusivity drastically changes what one expects when they hit up that game mode.
It would be amazing if Brawls and Heroic Brawls could co-exist on weeks where we have the heroic option. It would allow us to see more of them which only adds to the competitive content available to players.
Event Holidays
This is one of those big areas where Hearthstone needs to play catch-up on. We don't need to completely copy the World of Warcraft holiday structure, and I encourage Team Five to not, but there are several real world events that could be celebrated with something special.
So far, we've seen three real world holidays really celebrated within Hearthstone and for two of them, there is much to be desired.
Winter Veil
- The first true seasonal event added which takes place around the time of Christmas.
- Main focus is a gift-giving brawl which rewards players with a card back (nothing extra for repeat years so far).
- Stormwind and Orgrimmar boards are updated to be snowy.
- Like WoW, why not give out a gift (arcane dust) to let players craft their own toy? It's repeatable each year!
Lunar New Year
- Technically the first seasonal event, though it doesn't do much.
- Greetings emotes are changed for heroes if you have a Chinese or Korean client.
- Luck is a large part of the real life event. It could be celebrated through gifts of gold or increased gold drops through play.
Midsummer
- The most recent holiday event to be added.
- Double Gold from quests! Great idea.
- A special brawl featuring Ragnaros which when played gave us an upgradable fiery emote.
- No idea if this is actually going to return next year. It was a lead up to the Frost Festival for The Frozen Throne expansion.
We Need More!
It strikes me as odd that we haven't seen any other holidays celebrated yet, though the addition of Midsummer was huge for the game. Hopefully they can sneak in something for Halloween or an update to Winter Veil to add to the pool.
Last year we ran a Halloween themed Card Design Competition.
I'd personally like to see something along the lines of Easter which could put us on a client-wide hunt for small goodies, and Oktoberfest (Brewfest) which would work perfectly with the Inn theme and could bring out some really fun brawl ideas for each of our heroes and steins to throw at our opponent's through emotes.
In Conclusion
Hearthstone has finally begun to grow up and add fresh content to the game outside of expansions, but there is definitely a ton of room for improvement and communication from Blizzard.
- More large holiday celebrations that get us logging in and earning cool stuff would be a win.
- Doing more small things just to keep things fresh isn't a bad idea and is highly encouraged.
- Brawls repeat too much and the rate at which they do is slightly alarming. Why don't we get more custom stuff?
My words don't matter a ton though, what matters most is what everyone else thinks. Thanks for the read!
What event content do you want to see added to the game and how would it work?
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Yet the iPhone is still considered the better status symbol in China, but who could blame them for not wanting korea phones
'NA gets free packs, China gets free packs.. yeah we forgot 1 region but don't worry - starting November 1st every EU player will be taken a random legendary from their collection 4Head' - Blizzard
I have a similar situation, i really love the concept of a fireside gathering raid. But my chances of going to one in South America are slim to none. Missing on a huge chunk of content that they decided to develop for some countries only.
Blizzard: we hear your feedback so we are bringing back Spiders, spiders everywhere! as an event brawl for every holiday next year!
Hearthstone's rigid under-the-hood design makes it difficult for Blizzard to adjust to the changing landscape of card games. I'm sure Team 5 is working a lot behind the scenes to get this stuff implemented so they can do these on a regular basis and stop bleeding players, but if that new Ranked system they've been talking about for a while is anything to go by, these things unfortunately are going to take a while.
And you know why these things take so long? BECAUSE HEARTHSTONE CODE IS A PIECE OF FUCKING TRASH
Do you even know what the CCP celebrates on national day? They celebrate that THEY defended the japanese....
I find this very offensive that Blizzard celebrates the day the CCP took power in China. A reqime that puts people in jail if they dont hail to what the CCP does (yes, they take people in if they stand up against the CCP). They even keep scores of how much you play... they dont have a bank secret... ANYTHING goes into that score, even who you're friends with on WeChat (mix of Whatsapp and Facebook).
Srsly a country that promotes that you use WeChat-Pay (paypal in WeChat) and makes the country more convinient, so they can keeps scores on what you do with your money is just nuts. Do you know how many people died when Mao took over and farmers couldnt work anymore? THEY HAVE NO FUCKING FOOD ANYMORE. And Blizzard helps them to promote how awesome the time was that CCP took over...
You could argue that things are better now... but if you watch ppl like serpantZA and ADVchina on youtube (maybe even China uncensored) you would know how akward it is to promote chinese nationalism for a Western company.
Way to bash an entire country over Hearthstone packs.
I feel you, bro. There's that saying in my country: the best communist is the dead communist. I guess it's valid worldwide.
Stop bullshitting on those things you know little about. If you really know Chinese government scores everything in daily life, prove it. Otherwise, you are just ignorant guy whining about not having enough free packs.
The Chinese national holiday is just like Christmas in the US. It's more of a national long holiday now and that's it.
You know nothing about China....
National events in HS!?
I mean, really Blizz?!
I usually defend them, but this is ridiculously discriminatory, and possibly offensive.
Yes and No
For most of ppl in China, it only means a 8 day long holiday, which is one of the longest one. National or political stuff?i relevant.
On the other hand. Since the western ppl spread their religious belief all over the world using the "winterveil" events, we should allow others to do the same. kappa
Lunar Festival is by no means western stuff.
Also, if you do not get the difference between "Christmas" and "Winter Veil", you are totally missing the point.
Offensive, because they are trying to inject purely nationalistic stuff in the game and only for a national community - without any attempt to share it worldwide as a "pop folklore" event.
Kinda impressive to see Blizz giving 8 free packs for a national holiday. Maybe if they could just give that many packs for holidays in other countries this game would start being cheaper.
... all are equal but some are more equal ...
Why does China get all the cool shit lol
There better be something good in store for us too!
:d
I bet the reason we haven't seen a Darkmoon Faire event is because they plan on making an expansion with that theme