Shards(and gems which they gave for everybody at start) were just on top of the free stuff. They gave out 75 chests at release of 2.0 that probably gave 10 times more mounts and skins average paying customer had bought. And yes, it was for free to everybody, previously it was only for paying customers.
I bought a lot of skins in pre 2.0 but some of them turned into immortal skins so basically become more āvaluableā as you canāt buy them directly from the store anymore. And the only way to get shards is to get duplicates, so the one skin you bought in pre 2.0 is now many skins as every color is seperate skin now, so your chance to get more shards increased with it. Only thing i dislike is what they did with master skins, i bought a lot of them as well and these devalued as 10k gold pre 2.0 = now rare skin 20 shards and for 10k gold i would rather have more heroes as these are rare drop from chests.
I canāt imagine being upset about this, how do you handle game sales? Where games are sold for the fraction of the price you paid for.