Missing heroes and card backs, where oh where (year of the mammoth promise)

Community Discussion
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After years of waiting, Tyrande is on track to be delivered this coming Tuesday. However, this marks one delivery in what was supposed to be a much larger comeback of returns in what has come to be known as the “year of the mammoth” promise:

Will the past promotional heroes and card backs be available again?

We are looking for ways to give players another chance to get the promotional heroes and card backs. For example, Tyrande Whisperwind was not available worldwide, so we’d like to give another chance for players to get her again. So, we have a good news - we should be ready to bring some of them back in the Year of the Mammoth.

https://www.invenglobal.com/articles/1165/qa-session-with-producer-yong-woo-about-the-past-present-and-future-of-hearthstone

Of the missing heroes, there are khadgar (an ios promotion), and a host of cardbacks that were limited time events, promotions, etc. So far, they have not come back and obviously we are well outside the year of the mammoth. There’s some that have been “rotated out” but are supposed going to be rotated back in at some point:

Maiev
Lunara? (someone confirm)
Magni*
Medivh*
Alleria*
*As of 12/10/19

If there’s a missing rotated hero, please let me know, and I’ll add it to the list. I didn’t list the preorder heroes because I realize there may some contention about making them available again. Perhaps someone could put up a poll or something about whether or not they should be available to be purchased separately. I’ll offer my two cents in a separate post.

This was the last official post on the topic in general, from the “Rise of Shadows” Q&A:

Finally, since this is a successor of our thread from the old forums and the descendant of the Tyrande thread on new forums, same rules apply:

Important:

As a continuation of the old thread, this thread is intended for civil discussions. Thus, (as per our CM Jesse):
•Please be respectful in your posts.
•You are free to discuss ideals, but do not turn it into attacking one another.
•Do not call each other names or discredit another’s view.
•This thread is being left open for feedback, concerns and to provide context to Team 5.

Attempts of trolling, harassing or any other behaviours that breaks the established rules are prohibited by the https://us.battle.net/forums/en/code-of-conduct/

Let’s hope this doesn’t take years, but in the mean time, keep it fun and on topic!

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I think you mean Magni, not Muradin.

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You’re right. Too many dwarves : P

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Could have at leasr waited till we got tryrande, seems a bit ungrateful starting onther one of these so early, not that im against it, just could have waited a little bit longer to make a post for it

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Ungrateful seems like a strong word for a situation that could have been entirely avoided had the company kept their word back in the years of the mammoth in the first place.

I get your point, but Tyrande’s return when it happens on Tuesday was a long and hard fought battle that took years of reminding them of a promise they made years ago and didn’t make good on. Not just for Tyrande, but for the other promotional heroes, card backs, etc.

And from the rise of shadows Q&A, there’s more to come. The intent here is remind them of that promise, hold them to it and keep it front and center here and in every Q&A until the entirety of the year of mammoth promise is fulfilled. Whether that happens, the hearthstone servers shut down first, or the heat death of the universe occurs first remains to be seen.

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Not exactly part of promise, but is there still any chance/way we will be able to get any of the dalaran heist or rumble run portaits? considering theyre fully voiced and got all emotes(except mirror emote) done, and could serve as hero portaits very well and are ready for it. but we dont have them?

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Putting Magni, Alleria, and Medivh on that list seems a bit pointless. The’ve been on sale forever. If you didn’t buy them, that’s on you.

It’s great we finally got Tyrande back, but can we atleast wait until we’ve gotten her to start crusading for Khadgar, Maiev, and Lunara.

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The point was to list any hero currently (or about to) rotated out. It also seems pointless to rotate heroes out of the shop since there’s only three in there currently (soon to be four) and it’s not like there’s any indication they are going to suddenly be flooded with a massive influx of alternate heroes. So having a grand total of ONE hero in the shop makes it look really bare in that cupboard. Considering we only have Tyrande as a baseline for a return…starting to ask now sems like a good idea considering it took them years to bring her back, and they blew well past their first promised deadline for doing so (along with everyone and everything else they said was coming back during year of the mammoth).

That’s on the company. No one likes artificial scarcity for no good reason. Just ask anyone over in the wow forums right now about the five million gold mount getting dropped for no good reason.

So…roughly eight-ish hours from your post’s time stamp this part of your point becomes moot because the return date hits. Splitting hairs on when a thread goes up seems a bit petty.

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Disagree. Those 3 heroes have been on the store for easily over a year and then they even discount them and now you’re saying its the company’s fault that you can’t get them? What’s that saying again, you can’t help those who won’t help themselves?

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Only the part where the company pulls them from the store, which is entirely on them. Left off:

Also, you seem to not be thinking of new players, who also get shut out (needlessly) by them rotating items out of the shop. Again, not like there’s a large influx of heroes coming in to take their place.

Again: Artificial scarcity on a digital product makes zero sense.

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Very poor, small, and struggling indie dev.

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I wouldn’t mind if we got another shot at the prerelease Heroes (Missed out on Elise due to a lack of funds.)

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I would mind if they cost anything less than $80. They can bring them back, but they have to cost that amount otherwise it’d be pretty scummy of Blizzard to do that.

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I said I’d offer my two cents on this in the OP so here goes. I think they should be offered again, and here’s why: the pre order bundles are out of reach price wise for most of their playerbase, just as the original Tyrande was, but for different reasons…but those reasons are ones that team 5 has been well aware of for years now.

The currency exchange issue (should be a thread or few about it elsewhere) is a problem their customers outside first world have dealt with ongoing for some time, but rather than work with their customers, as other companies have (e.g. steam) and take a slight hit in their profits, actiblizz passes that exchange rate cost onto their customers. This of course prices many people out of normal purchases, to say nothing of large ones such as pre order bundles.

In short, a pay wall becomes an unclimable mountain.

Along with the other reasons others have mentioned elsewhere.

Offering them again separately means people have a chance to purchase them for a reasonable price, like the other heroes are/were.

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if they bring them back for the standard price $10 sure but gated behind a pre order? every single time there’s a new expansion it’s the same scum move… hero that you can’t get anymore on the 60-80$ paywall.

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Counterpoint. They shouldn’t rerelease the preorder heroes at a lower price because they were advertised as limited time and only available through buying the preorders.

Bringing them back would be the height of scummy practices for Blizzard, to first make a ton of money of whales and then get some more money of poorer people later.

Not everything has to be available for free. If Blizzard wants to gate things behind paywalls, they’re free to do so, because you don’t have to buy them.

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It wasn’t really advertised that they were going away unless you did some digging, only that they were on sale. Either way though, creating artificial scarcity is pretty scummy and annoying.

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Was this mentioned officially anywhere? I only saw mention that they may come back, nothing for certain.

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The word rotation implies they will be rotated back in. And there was a source that said they may come back at some point, but I can’t find it right now.

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You’re missing the point that they’ve been available since 2015, and have been on sale a few months now. Complaining that they’re gone now seems completely backwards to me since you had so long to obtain them.

If you wanted them that bad, why didn’t you just buy them?