Hearthstone is a textbook example of a company squeezing every penny out of players while pretending it’s all fun and games. Blizzard’s got a PhD in parting you from your wallet.
The game’s “free-to-play” label is a bait-and-switch. Sure, you can download it for nothing, but good luck building a competitive deck without coughing up cash. The card collection system is a grind fest—cards come from packs, and packs cost gold (earned slowly in-game) or real money. Want that shiny legendary card to stay relevant in the meta? Fork over $20 for a bundle, and even then, the random pack system might leave you with duplicates or useless commons. Blizzard’s RNG (random number generator) is like a slot machine, designed to keep you chasing that next pull.
Expansions drop every few months, each with 100+ new cards, rendering your old deck obsolete faster than you can say “paywall.” The average expansion costs $50-$80 to get a decent chunk of cards, and that’s just to keep up, not dominate. Blizzard’s balance changes are a joke—nerfing cards you spent money on, while boosting others you don’t have, nudging you to buy more packs. And don’t get me started on the Battle Pass. It’s $20 a pop for rewards that barely justify the cost, yet it’s practically mandatory for serious players.
The in-game economy is rigged. Daily quests give you a pittance of gold, and winning matches nets you crumbs. Do the math: you’re grinding for days just to afford one pack that’ll probably give you trash. Meanwhile, Blizzard’s store is always open, flashing “limited-time” deals to pressure you into impulse buys. They know exactly what they’re doing—preying on FOMO and addiction.
And the community? Blizzard doesn’t care. Matchmaking pairs newbies against veterans with stacked decks, ensuring you feel outclassed and tempted to spend to catch up. The game’s addictive nature hooks you with quick matches and shiny animations, but it’s a hamster wheel. You’re not playing Hearthstone; you’re playing Blizzard’s profit machine.
In short, Hearthstone is a masterclass in manipulative game design. Blizzard hides behind “player choice” while rigging the system to make spending feel like the only way to win. Save your money and play something that respects your time.
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All top Russian and Belorussian players – they literally CAN’T pay bc of sanctions – are just lucky? 
Or maybe you can spend your resources wisely, start with one competitive deck, then gain more resources and build more decks…
What the hell are you talking about, what Russians, you mad bro? I do literally have 80% of the whole collection, the point is new players can’t even start thinking about starting the game cause it would take them years or thousands of dollars to get anywhere near let’s say my collection. It is the dumbest game ever, and it will die eventually, not to mention ton of stupid bugs and cheats like pig deck with priest or imbue cheat mage that is total BS I can go on and on and on for days listing idiotic cards. But keep comforting your self that you are good at it cause that’s what they want in the first place to get you more hooked, this game should be illegal under these circumstances because it’s misleading, says free and and ain’t free at all! Enjoy your addiction.
It is nonsense. I don’t know what you are doing with all resources that you have got at the start to come to conclusions like that. I know a lot of ftp-players (mostly bc I am Russian-speaking and they don’t have too many choices in the issue of paying or not paying), many newbies, they are relatively ok, at least all of them have one or two competitive decks, those who play a lot have more.
You are conveniently forgetting about the Core Set and the Standard Rotation of sets making only the last couple/few expansions of any relevance to the standard competitive scene. It isnt impossible, it isnt the grind-fest you claim it to be. There is a small element of grinding involved if you wish to not spend any IRL money. But we are talking perhaps a month or two of daily/weekly quests to obtain enough gold to purchase enough packs to supplement one’s beginning collection to be able to cannibalize what they dont need to craft what they do need.
If you mean a collection like you claim to have, for WILD, then you are just being obtuse on purpose as Wild isnt taken seriously, at least around here it isnt. I know there’s some folks around here that play it exclusively or just partake in it as much as they do any other mode. But it isnt the majority of folks here I can tell you that.
I am one that has never dusted anything I didnt have enough to make a deck with, so i have to reach x2 of any legendary or x3 of any other rarity for me to dust. And I still dont agree with your claims.
Who cares about standard it’s the most boring thing ever!
Some wild decks are cheap. Well, ofc, you need much dust to build some wild decks. But it is still possible after few months of playing.
I noticed one mistake that many wild players make: they don’t dust cards after the rotation. But the small percentage of these cards are playable in the wild mode. You should not try to reach having the whole collection. You should dust weak cards and create strong cards to play in the wild mode.
Also dust cards for playstyles you don’t see yourself using, for example I don’t like plague DK, period, so anything that is ONLY viable for that I dust
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Who cares about your opinions? They are the most wrong ever!
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“the random pack system might leave you with duplicates”
As much as I have issues with the monetization of Hearthstone, this is just straight up false. The game has had duplicate protection for many years.
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who cares. what a fat nothingburger topic. Literally no one makes you pay anything. If you pay its your own stupid fault.
You can spend the time instead of the money.
If anything their skewed RNG in battlegrounds is a thing to look at. The standard and arena/wild whatever are fine.
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Some of what he is saying is true, but only as a general overview.
Game is too expensive
-While nobody is forced to pay a penny, the amount they charge for the product received is so bad I wouldn’t have believed it without seeing it. It gets even worse when you compare Hearthstone to some other similar online games.
Game isn’t new player friendly
-To a certain extent sure, but it’s improved a lot over the years. Idk why people seem to just assume all new players would want to not only play the game at it’s most competitive ranks, but also reach that point insanely fast. Heartstones F2P system is hardly amazing, but it’s fine. I will say mistakes are costly. Dust the wrong cards/buy the wrong packs/craft a soon to be nerfed deck and it sucks.
On the other hand
This is laughable IMO. Hearthstone feels like it’s in the stone age and it’s model hasn’t really changed much despite it’s declining popularity.
This part I agree with at least. Don’t spend money on this game, you can succeed just fine as F2P.
No one is “tricking” anyone into spending IRL money in this game. Its all very upfront on what you get for what you pay for. Booster Packs for card games exist in the real world and are sold free of any restrictions so they are not a form of gambling by any legal entity (at least that’s the case in the States, i cant speak for outside of it). Meaning any child with about $3-$5 can purchase a pack and it isnt considered “letting a minor gamble.” If the Satanic Panic moms of the 80s couldnt do anything about Magic The Gathering booster packs when they were at their height, then the window of any argument labelling boosters as gambling was lost back then. The only other opportunity, if anyone could have made that argument and it stick, it would have been in the 90s with the Pokemon TCG. I think Yu-Gi-Oh and Digimon also happened around then but nothing comes close to MTG and Pokemon TCG for their market shares and how much of a cultural touchstone they were. (Still are to an extent).
All that to say that Hearthstone does something none of the IRL booster packs do. They have duplicate protection involved until you collect all of a rarity in a set, with the added benefit of a guaranteed legendary in the first 10 packs of a set opened, as well as a pity timer of 40 packs if another legendary hasnt been pulled from a booster.
Its a free to play game, in which if you dont want to spend IRL money, the exchange is then you grind. So you spend all your disposable recreation time within the game, which is good for the company too. Because then you arent likely to spend it in another game, where you either spend IRL money there, or spend all your recreational time there. So the sandbox is free for all to play in, if you want to build your sandcastle quickly as a newcomer you are welcome to spend money to do so. If not, you are welcome to go at your own pace in the sandbox just the same grinding away the way most players do.
The purchases that use IRL money are meant for the newcomers that have little disposable time but do have disposable income. If that isnt you, dont worry about it.
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I have 1340 unopened pacts and just stopped opening them and never spent a dime on packs, so not sure what you’re talking about spending cash to be competitive…
That being said, the game is indeed a cash cow… All I like to play is Arena, and the rewards are none existent… It takes gold to play it, and no gold rewards from it, unless you get 7 + wins it looks like…