I understand that you are salty. I would be salty too.
But to be honest, I do not see a solution. Your situation is similar to someone who goes to the supermarket today, buys a few pounds of ground coffee, and then the next day when they return for a loaf of bread see that now the ground coffee is discounted.
Should you get a free “consolation” pack? Yes, there is an argument to be made in favor. But then, how about someone who started playing half February? And if they get a free pack, then what about those who started late January? Where does this stop?
Yes, it sucks. I can’t change that.
But whatever cut-off date they choose, there will always be people just missing out.
And when they give a free deck to all players, it would defeat the purpose of giving starting players a hand to catch up.
While I do understand the commercial analogy with the supermarket thing, the big difference is that the fact that if some other guy got a loaf of bread cheaper, it does not make my loaf of bread worse. But in this case, I get to play daily against that damn Highlander Mage deck that they got for free and they totally destroy me. Beside the fact that I didn’t get it, it also ruined ranked play for me. After only a few weeks of play, I cannot afford to build such a deck. Instead of a specific cutoff date, they could have calculated a total dust value and chose by that.
Instead they should offer a starter deck for 1000 gold, to those who’ve been playing already before March 26 (March 17 for returning players)
which would fit in with the supermarket analogy.
Right now, it’s basically you get rewarded for inactivity, and punished for starting the game earlier, or coming back to try Battlegrounds for example.
That’s returning players. This thread was originally about new players.
But let’s allow us to be side tracked. For returning players to qualify for the free deck, they must have been inactive from 11/18 to 3/17 (see https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/hearthstone/t/a-few-notes-on-the-returning-player-experience/27240).
Let’s say you were a psychic and knew this would happen, so you stopped playing 11/18. Here’s what you DIDN’T get in those four months, while I did get it:
120 daily quests, with an average gold value between 50 and 60. Let’s say 55 (for me it’s acutally higher; before the recent rework to increase the chance of a 50g quest I managed to get almost all at 60g or better). That’s 6,600 gold.
120 days of 10 gold for 3 wins, with a maximum of 100. I’m not going to assume you play to 30 wins each day. But 3 per day should be possible. That another 1,200 gold.
17 Classic packs for the first win in each weekly Tavern Brawl.
3 Uldum packs on 11/26, to compensate for a bad patch.
11 Descent of Dragons packs when that expansion released (6 given for free before release; 5 as rewards for special quests after release).
2 Uldum packs + 2 Rise of Shadows packs, as rewards for special quests after release of Descent of Dragons
4 Uldum packs + 4 Rise of Shadows packs + 3 Descent of Dragons packs as part of the 6th anniversary celebration.
That’s a total of 7,800 gold (worth 78 packs), plus 46 packs across various expansions.
Are you sure you made the right choice to forfeit all of that in order to get a free deck on March 18?
The supermarket analogy was not meant to be a complete analogy, just to clarify that when a company decides to start a commercial action, be it a giveaway or a discount or anything else, it’ll always suck for the customers that made their purchase just before that date.
But okay. They should not have put you in that position. Please tell me, what should they have done?
I really wonder why they can’t offer the starter decks to old players. The older the player the more likely they already have the cards and they could simply only give new cards if you are missing the cards for your choosen deck. This way Blizzard would not have to give out a lot of cards while at the same time appeare generuse.
First of all, they should have thought of a better criteria to establish new players, rather than a binary yes / no. They have access to all cards players have and they can calculate a total dust value and can see who needs the catch-up, cause that’s the idea here no ? To be able to get back in the game and be competitive. Well I do. I am playing the game for 3 weeks daily, several hours a day and I would have benefited from a good deck. Also, maybe there’s an old player who logged in once for whatever reason in the past 4 months and misses the deck without any sense. It just does not make sense.
Of cause if you want to be Cynical then Blizzard gives a free deck to entice new accounts and there is no need for them to give things to people who are already playing. Problem with this approach is people feeling treated unfairly that may result in less engagment while at the same time they may still already have most of the cards or need them as in OPs case.
That’s obviously the case, Blizzard just doesn’t care anymore about players and what is right, they just want to bait new players. But on the long term this will not pay of, most of the players who got bored once of HS will soon get bored again, I am sure. On the other hand, I was an intrigued new player and could have continued playing the game for a long while and spend good money on solo adventures and other stuff. But they got me so mad, I am sure not to give them another real money ever again. They are either greedy, stupid or ignorant.
Yeah, it seems shortsited and not well thoughtout irtritating exsiting players while they don’t have too. For me I would probably get a new leg and a couple of epics so for me it’s mostly an annoyans that could been avoided. But for you and other new player it’s worse. You are being “punnished” by not having a competitive deck for starting at the wrong time and paying money too early into the game.
Illidan Tempesfuria is a character
known in the Warcraft III universe. In addition to appearing in the night elves campaign, the warrior has been part of several missions within Blizzard games. In his story, we know that he is the twin brother of Malfurion Tempesfuria.
So when a player lowers Illidan Tempesfuria’s card against the hero Malfurion, Illidan doesn’t use his main line, which is “you’re not ready!”. The character changes his speech to: “Hello, brother”, as you can see above.
I just wanted to add to my proposition that you could give the user the cards he have not aquierd in the choosen deck. That means that you can’t dissenchant all the cards for the deck in order to get free dust as the disenchanted cards is still counted as aquierd when for instance a pack is opened. This would mean that people only would get the cards they need and it’s more likely to be okay for Blizzard.
Wow good analysis! 124 packs would net a minimum of 3 legendaries. Not all are good. Also the 124 packs may not allow you to make any good decks. This period also didn’t see any exclusive legendaries being given out.
The free deck especially the mage one which I chose has good legendaries.
A good time to grant the free pack would be for people who missed snip snap and vargoth period. Especially the golden snip snap that cannot be obtained otherwise. The loss vs gain would be more balanced.
I just want to remind you that since I only began playing a few weeks ago, I didn’t get neither the 124 packs from the analysis, neither the free deck.
I would really like a Blizzard person who was involved in this bad decision to tell me that. To tell me that they did not consider the situation for players like me, that they don’t care I put real money into the game and just to start over. That’s what I want. For them to admit they don’t care.
Just put a gold price (1000 gold, or $5 if you have to) on a starter deck for the rest of us and be done with it. It’s the simplest way.
And this indeed, that while you might be getting a whole bunch of earned packs from playing in those 4 months, you’re getting all sorts of legendaries and cards across classes. Whereas these starter decks have handpicked the best legendaries for you (especially in the case of Rogue and Mage).
Try and craft a starter deck upfront. If you’re an infrequent/newer player looking to come back you’ll use up all of your dust or can’t afford it. Still a hefty investment for us regular players. Of course we have other decks to play, but many people falling outside the criteria would benefit a lot from having a deck to get back into the game again, and build their collection for the next expansion.
It’s not so much the starter deck is free, is that there is no way to practically get something equivalent for a price.
