In Hearthstone, you can now purchase mage packs. However, you should stay away from them, as they are simply a rip-off – at least that’s what Cortyn thinks.
While Hearthstone still offers fun to many players, there has been a major criticism for years: The game is too expensive. Those who want to effectively “join the ranks” must either invest hours in the game weekly in the mid double digits or spend a lot of real money.
With each expansion, new opportunities to spend money seem to emerge, and now Blizzard has, in my opinion, gone too far. Alongside new heroes and cards, the update has also brought a special offer. In my view, the “mage pack” is nothing but a top-notch rip-off.
What is the Mage Pack? The Mage Pack contains 5 special “mage packs.” These packs can only contain cards that can be used by the Mage class. At first glance, this seems like a good offer for all fans of Jaina who want to improve their Mage card collection or create a solid deck.
Packs cost more than usual: I find the price particularly outrageous. For 5 packs, you pay €10, meaning each pack costs nearly 2 euros. This is significantly above the price for other card packs and is anything but a good offer.
For a direct comparison: For €10 you also get 7 packs of the current expansion “Legacy of the Dragons.”
The price for the “special offer” of the Mage Pack is therefore higher than that for regular card packs.
I can only assume that Blizzard justifies the price by claiming that players can search for cards more specifically if they are Mage fans. But does that justify that you get about 28% less content in the Mage Pack than in an offer for the current packs? In my opinion, no. Especially not when considering the other issues with the packs.
Half of the cards will be useless: Furthermore, the cards in the Mage packs can also come from last year’s expansions. This means that nearly half of the cards included in the packs will not be usable in the standard format in a few weeks.
Particularly bitter: On the German page, it is currently being advertised (as of 1:30 PM, 27.02.2020) that the packs only contain cards from expansions of the current year. However, this does not correspond to reality. The English page corrected this error shortly after.
The English page lists all sets … 
… the German page incorrectly only lists those from the current year.
Why is Blizzard even doing this? It seems obvious that the Hearthstone team is testing new sales strategies, and this is just a “trial balloon” to see how the community reacts to packs that, although more expensive, contain only cards for a specific class. This creates an illusion of control over what you receive. Because typically, you want “exactly this one card” to complete your deck. For me, this is simply a trick.
What should Blizzard do instead? Rather than such half-baked methods, they should give players what has been demanded for years: An option to specifically purchase individual cards or alternatively something like a “Season Pass” that allows access to all cards from the current year for a fixed price. These are both requests that have existed for a long time and would lead to more satisfaction, because Hearthstone is simply too expensive.
Such “rip-off offers” may bring in quick cash, but they certainly do not benefit the game. And that is a shame, because Hearthstone used to be one of my favorite games to pass the time.
Or what do you think?
