The situations are so similar, I just had to write this topic.
Riot just made some huge changes to one of their games, Legends or Runeterra. And while it is a card game, and not a MoBA, the similarities are astonishing. First I must point out that LoR is a great game. I played a lot of card games, and this is definitely one of the best as far as design and gameplay goes. So this had nothing to do with it being bad.
They just shrunk the game’s team down siginificantly, and are basically moving away from competitive support. I will put some screenshots of the FAQ from the state of the game, you’ll see it speaks for itself.
Gotta give them credit for actually answering that obvious question.
So long story short. A lot of their players (I believe the majority) were spending most of their time in the PvE mode they had created as an aside. You know how ARAM cannot possibly generate revenue for Blizzard because you can’t pick skins or mounts and you don’t need to own heroes? Well, Riot did the same thing, just a bit earlier in the game’s life. In both cases, I thought it was obvious that the modes would cost money without making any. But apparently they didn’t.
Basically, like cancelling HGC and removing season rewards for ranked.
Ok so, in LoR you can easily play the game, both competitively or casually, without ever having to buy a single card. The game had a shard system similar to HoTS, plus card tokens. Basically, a rare card token could be turned into any rare card and so on. I would sometimes stop playing for a month, then come back, and have enough shards to buy all the new cards I wanted for free. Similar to HotS 2.0., they gave way too much stuff for free. Which doesn’t just mean less money, it means players have less incentive to play.
On HotS side though, they weren’t losing money, just not making much. LoR was.
Just like HotS, their early decisions came back to bite them in the assets. In HotS, it was focusing on vomitting new heroes constantly, and the loot system. They wanted to do the opposite of LoL, where getting skins is significantly harder. Some people at HotS probably wanted skins to be harder to get or more expensive, but the will to stick to the plan was stronger, as evidenced by how fast they backed out of gem only skins. Both games were just way too generous.
I wish HotS had done that.
That question hits so close to home it makes me sad 
Definitely not what happened with HotS.
This is the saddest part. They are doing exactly what Blizzard did to HotS. I don’t think it will work any better for them. Basically,there’s recruitement, and there’s retention. Anyone who has any marketing knowledge knows that retention is always easier. And that’s why it’s cheaper. They’re putting their effort more in attempting to keep current players than getting new ones. The game will still lose players, but slower, but you’re not making up for it because you need more people joining than people leaving. Which they are hoping will happen through word of mouth.
In essence it’s like new stuff added to HotS, only people who already play will be aware of it. It’s like when they said they were hoping that the release of DeathWing would bring in new players. If I don’t know HotS exists, I’ll never even know it’s happening. It may bring back former players who stopped playing, but new players generally won’t care. (Especially if you nerf the character so much that he rarely shows up in games, and someone who sees the game for the first time is unlikely to see him)
That was asked of HotS as well. Though I don’t believe Blizzard ever answered it.