Announcing Runestones - With Usage and Frequent Questions
After announcing Runestones there were quite a few questions about how they will work and what you can and cannot buy with them and your hard earned Gold. Blizzard has provided some graphics that should make this all a little clearer.
Quote from BlizzardQ: What are Runestones?
A: Runestones will be replacing real money purchases for nearly every product in the Hearthstone shop. Some products, like Pre-Purchase Bundles, the Hearthstone Tavern Pass, and Packs (purchasing more than one at a time) will be able to be purchased with money or Runestones. A few other select products, like packs and cosmetics crafted in the Collection, will remain purchasable with only Gold.
With Runestones we’ll be able to offer additional smaller-scale items, such as the individual Battlegrounds Hero Skins offered in the shop with this patch. Runestones will be available in bundles of various sizes, including quantities that correspond to our major products (like the Battlegrounds Season Pass), so you can buy exactly the quantity needed for that product or you can stock up on more for later. No product costs are changing with this conversion—all prices are staying the same, just converted to Runestones.
Q: Can I earn Runestones in-game?
A: No, there are no plans to earn Runestones in-game.
Q: Is there anything I can use my Gold for in Battlegrounds?
A: No, there are no plans for Battlegrounds to use Gold in any way. Players who don’t want to spend real money or Runestones will still be able to enjoy the free rewards from the Battlegrounds Track.
oh wow, I hope they do them again, I'd buy in a heartbeat.
the one thing I'm noticing is the fact it says "Decks" does this mean they're going to start selling the "new and returning player" decks or something? if this is the case, this is great news.
The premade decks they've sold were basically meta decks available for ~$20. They were much stronger than returning player decks and included cards from the most recent expansion at the time, but they haven't done them in a while.
I'm trying to quit since 2 years ago. 32 next month, after read this I think this is it for me too. I'm kinda late too
What has age got to do with it? Im 37 and still play almost daily 1 or 2 matches
sorry mate but u still a loser...i just don't want to be like u in my future
I'm playing this at 50 so yes, thanks for making me feel old..... but I think this might be the last piece of nonsense that breaks me finally free of this game. It was fun while it lasted but the cosmetics and ever expanding shop front has just got way out of control over these last 2 or 3 years.
They revealed the price point of runestone bundles but still nothing on how many runestones you need to buy items. I'm guessing the season pass will cost 1600 runestone just short 100 from the 1500 bundle?
So to the people complaining about runestones, and I was apprehensive myself, their cover story of "it makes it so we don't have to charge as much surcharge fees to smaller products" actually makes sense and is a legitimate reason. Also, the prices of the runestones are identical to the money you put in. One of the things a lot of these other companies do is sell "bundles" at reduced price. For instance, youll get 500 tokens for 5$, but you'll get 1100 for 10$ "oooh, you save if you get more" and if you get the 100$ bundle, by golly, youll get 2000 tokens for free! Which always feels bad, and is scummy, but it doesn't look like blizz is doing that.
As much as I hate spending money, they do need to make it to keep the business running and if you compare video games to every other industry, unfortunately they've already been much more generous in terms of prices changing due to inflation. Food's like 40% more expensive, at least by me, but games have only gotten like 10% more expensive since 2000
Surcharge fees aren't a legit reason. Hearthstone easily makes enough money to cover them, and they're still gonna deal with transaction fees from selling the Runestones to begin with. Also "they need to keep the business running" is the same excuse for all awful practices in gaming, please don't fall for it. Hearthstone makes about $400 million a year already, it's very profitable so all of the extra monetization methods are just greed, plain and simple. This is Blizzard we're talking about, a company that makes redundancies during record profits and has some of the most overpaid executives in all of gaming.
the transaction fees will be less for runestones. Up until now in hearthstone nothing has ever been sold for $1 because credit card companies charge a minimum $1 on each purchase so a 1$ purchase would lose money because the other charges, by making a 300 bundle it allows them to sell things for 1$ albeit indirectly. IMO i still disagree with runestones but saying the surcharge isn't a factor at all is objectively false
If the surcharge is such a big deal, why is it more beneficial to buy increments of 500 runestones than, say, the 8000 bundle? Most other companies (in anything) would give you MORE for buying in bulk. Why does Blizzard rip you off?
It's really a missed opportunity that they didn't add even the slightest bonus but actually made 1 x 79.99 more than 16 x 4.99.... Would seem like the only mutually beneficial thing with this new concept, if we could pay our annual HS budget up front for a bonus.
Not just gaming. Most overpaid executives period.
I mean, whatever. The playerbase is like one 30th of what it was, those that are left are up to their neck in sunk cost fallacy. Quitting isn't hard guys, you just sorta stop, and play something else. It's easier tan you think to replace it with other games that will eat your time so you forget all about Hearthstone.
Guess I'm going back to gwent
Adventures are only purchaseable with runestones ?!
So far this is "just" another currency, nothing really changed (except the Battleground pay to win scheme, of course). But this will almost certainly change. There is no case in history where a change like this was beneficial for the customers in the long run. The only question is, how aggressive will Microsoft/Activision Blizzard push their 'milk it & kill it' scheme? E.g. only two mulligans for free, three with the for pay battle pass? With the option to relaunch their Hearthstone-IP as a 'remastered' mobile only game, if things go really south? Endless options for ruthless managers ahead.
I hope I am completely wrong with my predictions, but as a Blizzard fan since Diablo 2 in the 90s, I have lost all faith in the remnants of this once great company.
So the pathetic justification is "With Runestones we’ll be able to offer additional smaller-scale items, such as the individual Battlegrounds Hero Skins offered in the shop with this patch."
Why is it impossible to buy small-scale items with money or gold? You can include transaction fees and sales taxes in the item just the same as anything else, that's not an excuse. Barely anyone buys BG Hero Skins anyway, and you can buy individual hero skins for the traditional game in the shop. It's absolute bull.
This might be the final tipping point for me. I've been slowly losing interest in Hearthstone over the past year anyway but I think I'm about done.
Very simple. Minimum pack offering they have right now is $3 for two packs. That'll be converted to 300 runestones.
Can you buy 300 runestones? No. You have to buy it in a bundle of 500 for $5. Leaving you with 200 runestones that won't be enough to buy anything until you buy another bundle.