Signature Bundle feels extremely scammy

Multiplayer Discussion
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Let’s be clear, I’m not complaining about the prices of any of the bundles. As much as they definitely cost a genuinely sacrilegious amount of money, they’re cosmetics, strictly optional. Nobody’s forced to buy a 90 dollar signature bundle, and ideally the only people who do are those who can comfortably afford them. I do think the prices are a bit out of most players’ range, and it’d probably be better for all parties involved if they were somewhat cheaper, but that’s a different subject.

The real subject is the Dream Defenders Signature Bundle currently in the shop, which as far as I’m concerned is effectively an actual scam. Currently in the shop there are five bundles that provide you signature versions of Imbue-related cards. The Druid bundle offers Hamuul Runetotem and the two Neutral imbuers, the Shaman bundle offers both Shaman imbuers and Meritha, the Hunter bundle offers the two Hunter imbuers, and the Mage bundle offers signature Divination and Starsurge. Buying all of these together would cost about 110 USD, sheesh. But there’s another option- for a mere 90 USD, you can get the Dream Defender mega-bundle, which contains signature Hamuul, the Shaman and Hunter imbue cards, and Divination and Starsurge, plus five golden packs. When you look at the bundle next to the others, the intent is obvious- for an alleged 20% greater value as listed in the shop, you can buy all four of the other bundles in one. Being a whale myself, I decided to buy this bundle, figuring that all the signatures are really good and it’s “good value” relative to the price of other signatures for sale.

Well, if you already know what I’m talking about or if you paid very close attention to my post, you’ll realize the issue- inexplicably, the two Neutral Imbue cards, Flutterwing Guardian and Bitterbloom Knight, aren’t included in the Dream Defenders bundle, despite being included in the smaller Druid signature bundle that is seemingly included in the larger one. In fact, those two neutral cards are only available via purchasing the 35 USD Druid bundle.

What this means is that if you, like me, purchased the Dream Defenders bundle under the obvious expectation that it contained all the contents of its smaller equivalents, then you’re left without two important cards that you expected to be receiving. If you then want to acquire those cards, the only way is to purchase the Druid bundle individually in addition to the 90 dollar bundle you just purchased, resulting in a total price of 125 USD (along with a duplicate signature Hamuul you don’t want) which is more expensive than had you just bought all of the smaller bundles individually to begin with.

Even if you notice the discrepancy beforehand, the fact remains that the cheapest way to acquire all of the signature cards on offer is 110 USD, rendering the 90 dollar bundle effectively a worthlessly redundant purchase unless you’re the sort of surely non-existent player who desperately wants to get their hands on signature Divination and Starsurge but has no interest in the neutral cards that go into all five Imbue decks, making them essentially the most valuable cosmetics in the entire set.

Maybe this is just the useless whining of a total mark, seeing as I am the type of guy to spend 90+ dollars on cosmetics and I almost certainly will be purchasing the Druid bundle along with its useless duplicate legendary, but I can’t help but feel like this entire situation was nothing short of a genuine scam. Despite claiming “20% greater value” over presumably purchasing the smaller bundles individually, the larger bundle provides no such value whatsoever, and is in fact lesser value than purchasing each of them individually. It’s a fake deal that seemingly only exists to trick people into spending 15 dollars more than they otherwise would have for no substantial gain. (You make a bit of extra dust, but the average player spending 125 dollars on cosmetic bundles isn’t in dire need of Arcane Dust.)

I don’t have any melodramatic threats, I’m not gonna quit the game, I’m not gonna stop pouring exorbitant amounts of money into it, Hearthstone has been my favourite game for 8 years and that’s unlikely to change in the near future. I just think this is some very deeply bullsht behavior that I can’t imagine is actually helpful to Blizzard’s bottom line in the long run. I can only hope that this is actually all just an oversight and a mistake, but you’d think it would have been fixed by now if that were the case.

In conclusion: whatever, man.

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I got just the druid bundle for this reason and I didn’t care about druid, since the only thing I am aiming for is to have the priest and rogue signatures. I didn’t want Hamuul but unfortunately I guess Blizzard’s grift shop practices will never change. Every time I purchase something I come out with the feeling I was swindled.

If I was one of the consultants that I am sure they contract from time to time I’d 100% tell them they run a reputation risk with their client base and drive away from the store a substantial amount of current freeloaders that would be more likely to start chipping in some micro-transactions with a smarter, customer-friendly store. Their current model is to just scam whale customers that would jump at every cosmetic and force them to go through hoops of grift-ey bundles to get what they want while forcing them to buy loads of stuff they don’t need (golden packs, class packs, etc) for 50% extra price. While everyone else gets used to see the store as some sort of pyramid scheme you must stay away from.

But anyway what do I know. I imagine their bussiness model is hugely successful currently seeing how they progressively try to monetize more and more parts of the game in an effort to turn more profit.

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This is refreshing to read, we don’t get a lot of those

Well, what you consider to be a scam I call an intelligent sales strategy xD

Although, wouldn’t it even call it that much intelligent. I don’t know where you got the idea that the lower bundles are contained inside the larger except for the fact that each contains 1 of the 2 legendaries found in the larger one. Everything else is clearly different, and you have an exact list of what you get inside every bundle.

Next time, check those lists carefully before spending.

I understand it might be conceived as predatory, but honestly, our mistakes are our fault only.

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I solved most of those problems, by hating Blizzard too much to ever give them any money anymore. For example: why is the shop showing some stuff only on an individual-player basis and hides all the options that will open up to that player after they buy something or after they generally do something?

It shows extremely disingenuous marketing in order to psychologically mislead. Eg offering cheap stuff only if you pay them nothing or giving some offers only if you have reached a point in a ladder (otherwise you are not even warned those options exist) or the worst: lying the poll is “classified”.

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It’s fairly simple. They saw what SNAP was doing and copied their model of charging outrageous amounts of money for cosmetics to whales. You can literally listen to streamers and Youtubers that say they hate the pricing on the cosmetics BUT they bought them all anyway because they cannot help themselves and want them.

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All I can say about the cosmetics is they are generally butt ugly. In the signature card case, the card is all a shade of depressing grey and much harder to see what something is.

Furthermore the card text is not the same and requires more time to read and look up.

Over all it’s a drain on the game

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Most of the offers in the HS shop are a scam. If you buy something else than the tavern pass and the pre-release bundles you are wasting your money.
I’m all up for cosmetics, but make it reasonable. They could also reduce the price of stuff over time, it’s not like you can even trade things in HS. They seem to want to make you not buy their stuff with stuff like 60$ for a skin or 60$ diamond bundles.
Whenever I’m considering spending some money on HS I go to instant gaming and buy one of the new releases.

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It’s not true at all that the larger bundle only contains “one or two” legendaries from the lower bundles. The lower bundles all put together have a total of 10 different cards, and the larger bundle contains eight of those same cards, only missing the neutrals. It’s extremely common and usual for the shop to contain multiple small purchases or one larger one that offers the same goods for a discount, and obviously this one was advertising itself as such considering it outright advertises “20% greater value” right on the box

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None of it changes the fact that all you had to do was click on the larger bundle and see the 10 cards you’re getting

If your experience tells you all cards from the smaller bundles should be contained inside the larger, and this time it wasn’t so, then yeah, unlucky ig, it would have happened to me, too

But still, it’s our fault xD

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An old grandma can also recognize that the guy calling her isn’t actually from her bank, but the guy is sounding pretty reasonable. Even if you could have avoided a scam by keeping a closer eye out, the scam itself is still scummy. Blizzard obviously knows how their own monetization model and shops work, they know what the player expectations surrounding those models are too. If this wasn’t just an oversight, it amounts to a deliberate attempt to mislead players, which is something I’d expect from scammy mobile games more than Blizzard.

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Just a good, old Shurima Shuffle

offer consinset, predictable larger bundles 3 times in a row, and then shuffle it to milk your customers, and then go back to usual stuff for 4-5 and then shuffle it again

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Good news! It really was an oversight. Those who bought only the Dream Defenders bundle can now collect the signature neutral Imbuers for free, and marks like me who bought the Druid bundle too will get a 35 runestone refund. Still a very unfortunate oversight, but I’m pretty satisfied that Blizzard didn’t intentionally engage in this mobile game tier scam behavior.

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