Magni, Alleria, and Medivh were the first three alt heroes. They costed $10 and could be bought at anytime. A lot of people viewed them as too expensive for what was essentially just gifs.
Liadrin was then added and was the first free hero. All you had to do to get her was reach level 20 with a new character in WoW. Everyone loved it and thought it was a good idea, which set a new standard for heroes where they were earned by doing something outside of Hearthstone
Khadgar was then added, as a $5 limited time purchase. He way he was handled was pretty poor, but he was an exception because he was for charity. But a lot of people agreed his $5 price tag was the best.
Every hero after that was a free reward. Morgl was a free reward for Recruit a Friend, Maiev and Lunara were free rewards for the new year, Tyrande was a Twitch Prime reward (still free as you couldâve used a free trial to get her) Arthas was a reward for 100% the Lich King boss, and Nemsy was given for going to a Fireside Gathering. All these heroes were either challenges or nice rewards for doing something involving the game.
But now, all new heroes after Lunara were not only made paid again, but also locked behind limited time expensive card pack bundles, ranging from $20 (more expensive than the first three heroes were) to the more common $80 Mega Bundles. None of these heroes are available for purchase outside these bundles, despite the fact we have a heroes section in the shop and people would gladly pay $5-10 for a hero skin.
Why? Why are hero skins, something the playerbase really loves, paywalled to these $80 preorders? Why canât we buy them separately when we want to buy them? Instead of getting a free hero for the new year like we used to for the past two years, itâs locked to a $80 bundle a lot of us wonât even buy nor want to buy. I donât want the cards, I just wanna buy the hero.
I love how they asked what could make people return to HS, people answered more goals to work for, yet Alternate Heroes (which are a great goal as proven by the Lich King adventure) are still being paywalled.
This makes me think that was just a PR stunt and they just completely disregarded player suggestions.
Yeah, Iâd also agree that what they do is really scammy. Iâm not saying that every hero should be earned without spending any money but a 80 bucks price-wall can easily be called a greedy move (espcially since they skipped the free hero skin at the beginning of this year).
Like everything else in the game, most of the free heroes werenât free. They were promotional rewards, advertising other products. Trying to get people back into WoW, getting people into Twitch Prime, good PR charity fundraising with a side of tax dodging probably (thoroughly doubt the full $5 went to charity, too), Recruit a Friend and Fireside Gathering were advertising Hearthstone, and now weâre using heroes to up the sales of bundles.
Theyâre paywalled because the goal is to make money. Donât be surprised to see more paywalls, donât be surprised to see the cost of packs rise. Did you think firing the community managers and other staff was the end of the shady business practices? No, no, it was phase 1. Theyâre looking for a place to hook a second milking machine up to us.
Not all of them are. The new Single Player Adventure wings will include Hero Portraits ⌠and you can get them with free in-game gold.
Itâs helpful when making an argument to tell the entire story. Not doing so makes you seem biased. So it would be better for you to honestly discuss Hero Portraits by discussing both the ones that have requirements and the ones that donât. That prevents you from making blanket statements that are partly false.
because, itâs activision, they donât care about âdedicated playersâ, they only care about profits (even then, itâs never enough, despite a year of record profits, they still fired lots of folks to get more profits lol)
ââdedicated playersââ who arenât even willing to support the game every 4 months. And you even get packs and skins in return for the support.
Donât make me laugh, blizzard donât owe you anything, you get to enjoy the game for free, that is enough.
Why wouldnât they try to milk more money from exclusive promos ? Thatâs how any company works, they want profit.
Is it confirmed that there wonât be a free ânew yearâ hero this year? If not then donât talk like it is. You can assume it is. And oh boy do I hope it turns out to be a wrong assumption because yeah, it would suck if we had no free ânew yearâ hero this year.
So, people spending money and thus supporting the game financially are not âdedicatedâ enough for you?
Eer, where? Sorry, but I didnât read anything like that from a developer. That seems to be about the single-player content. Where is that part where they literally say that?
This year thereâs not a Hero tied to the Year of the Dragon rotation, but Iâd be shocked if we didnât have some awesome Heroes lined up over the course of the year!