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.
it's not that people are fundamentally against paying for games, or that they just want stuff for free. for most people, its the idea of forever subscribing to, but never actually owning things that makes people dislike them. I would pay somewhere under 50 dollars to play battlegrounds, maybe even a bit more, if it was a one time purchase. But I can't stomach something that will eventually be a much larger monetary commitment than that, with the added issue of changing values (what stops runestone pricing for dollars, or perks pricing in runestone from changing?), and the usual problems of renting vs owning something.
Your framing on this and the other comment you left here is just really bad. "I am sorry companies are trying to make money" yeah that is definitely the whole reason people are upset about runestones, lmao.
Was a great time! I'm done with this game. Thanks for all the great random fiestas.
why did I get down voted, did I say something unpopular?
There are people who will rage against anything that sounds even remotely positive towards what Blizzard does. Some would call you a snowflake/shill/fanboy for not agreeing that the game is 100% rigged or if you pay for ANY content. You just have to adjust your language here to sound more skeptical and edgy, so that nobody assumes you're a guerilla advertiser ;)
ah ok, was just wondering as I've been away from the game for years. I'm not sure what the hot talking points are, what is riling people up etc.
So it's just general hate for Blizz? thanks for the info, bro.
PS: I don't care about the downdudes, just didn't realise that wanting to buy a premade deck was a bad thing.
Yes. Exactly. Blizzard created a mess. There is for sure a huge hate for this company.
God, this is such transparent PR BS. There's nothing stopping them from selling you something for $1 or $2. They already sell packs 2 for $3, and I doubt they're gonna be selling any unbundled cosmetics for less than that. In fact, with this change you'll no longer be able to get 2 packs for just $3, because that'll be converted to 300 runestones and you have to spend a minimum of $5 for 500 runestones. Meaning you'll be left with 200 leftover runestones that won't be enough to buy anything without getting another $5 bundle.
They just want to force you to buy bundled credits so you'll always have extra leftover in your account but never enough to buy something without buying another bundle.
so we have to buy runestones if we want to purchase anything for money? This only benefits Blizzard even more.
There will be times when you buy runestones and will have extra left over after buying what you wanted. So you'll now have a tiny amount of runestones banked up with nothing to spend them on and feel compelled to buy more just to spend those up. Great scheme by Blizzard to keep you buying more runestones.
I mean Blizzard owns a patent for matchmaking system that matches non-spenders vs spenders so non-spender is eventually incentivized to spend.
That's technically (and officially) Activision for Call of duty, but yes :)
I did experience a lot bigger card resource gap, before the Activision merge thou, since there was next to no match making
Sources? Otherwise this is BS as Blizzards Runestone system.
There was this activision patent where it was stated that they can match people in order to entice purchases. But nobody is really claiming that this is the case in HS or any other game. The second thing was just my feeling of the match making during the first years,
ok, but I have been playing since beta and never spent a dime, it doesnt work with me
Lmao, down voted with no real evidence. Guess I earned it for asking for proof that doesn't exist.
My gut feeling says bs.
jeeeez I was just talking about the patent mentioned in the video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T658vTvoRs&t=191s&ab_channel=HearthstoneTipsbyKrisOFive
Pdf: https://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?PageNum=0&docid=09789406&IDKey
BTW, I never claimed that this was any more true than the story I was commenting on. I personally don't experience that I'm set up against players with crappy collections or feel that match making otherwise was designed to entice me to buy anything. Unless the comment before was about another patent for Blizzard specifically
If Blizzard are really saving like 30% on a transaction, and skirting round perfectly fair and legitimate laws to try and ban games from pushing gambling at children, then they should be passing on that discount! Everything should be cheaper with runestones, not the same damn price.
Fuck mobile gaming.
I wanna upvote more than once
For some reason I can't upvote, so here is my AYE! ;)
Also, where is the mass discount? Isn't money better today than in 6 months? Shouldn't we be enticed to throw our entire HS budget at once? Where is the short term greed?!
This thing is so bad that I am already ready for the "deeply sorry".
LoL.