If you use HSReplay[dot]net for your gaming insights and sort by the current rank you’re at, you’ll find that in order to be competitive, nae to survive and not drop, you’re in need of dust. Lots of dust. The most capable decks are given to those who, by one avenue or another, have acquired the resources (or card packs) necessary to grant them the newer Legendaries that enable game-winning supremacy. I’ve kept track of this for a while, but it seems that only in the last 18-24 months has Blizzard realized the maximum monetization value exists in creating 1) new cards that shift the overall mathematical outplay paradigm such as the 1-cost ‘quest’ cards for each class and 2) binding their tacit value and viability to the acquisition of legendary-rank cards that require either gross amounts of pack purchases or 100% luck in drawing legendaries supportive of the quest, at random.
Clearly, Blizzard has applied substantial statistical analysis to how this newer card economy will support a challenged subscribership across the various lore/franchise products supported by their efforts. Four years ago, a simple beast deck could actually do something impressive. Today, you need impeccable deck design and fortune to press beyond rank 13 or by spending an exorbitant amount of money to increase your chances of either getting cards that met these new combo deck conditions or that produced enough dust from redundancies to craft the cards needed (the latter of which being increasingly unaffordable and unrealistic).
This is no longer an ‘everyone’s game’. It’s true pay-to-play and that’s a major brand bummer. It was inevitable, I guess. Blizzard will dig their own public adoption capacity grave unless they re-invigorate the basic cards with statistical viability that allows newer players to win enough to aggregate the dustable cards or overall lucky decks to compete among the players with expendable income. I get it, but it’s a major shift from what I felt Blizz was about just 4-5 years ago. No hate. Every business model needs an angle.