In Hearthstone, you can now spend even more money. Because Blizzard wants to make a profit from the Battlegrounds mode as well.
If you look at the criticism of Hearthstone in the official forums or the game’s subreddit, the community seems to be in agreement: The monetization is seen as brazen or even outrageous. This has been the case for quite a while, but it has now reached a new high. With the latest patch, Blizzard has introduced two things that collectively make people shake their heads.
Soon there will even be StarCraft content in Hearthstone:
What is the problem with Hearthstone? A large portion of Hearthstone fans are not even interested in the regular game; instead, they play the “Battlegrounds” mode. This is an autobattler that can be played for free – no cards are required. However, this is a problem for Blizzard because they hardly make any money with this game mode. The developers have already tried to change this in several ways:
- There is a special Battlegrounds battle pass that grants additional rewards.
- Owners of the battle pass have a larger hero selection at the start of a round.
- You can spend real money or real money currency on cosmetic skins.
- There are numerous cosmetics such as battlegrounds or attack animations that can be additionally purchased.
What has Blizzard done now? The latest patch has added an additional in-game resource called “Battleground Tokens.” These tokens can be used to re-roll the hero pool at the beginning of a match. For example, if someone sees 4 heroes they do not want to play, they can re-roll each of those heroes for one battleground token each.
This increases the selection possibility at the start of a round from 4 to up to 8 heroes – in comparison, “free2play” players only have 2 heroes to choose from.
A few tokens can be earned for free per season, but the vast majority must be purchased with real money. The price per token is between 20 cents and 25 cents, depending on the offer. This means that in each match, you can spend up to 1 euro extra.
The gap in selection between “free2play” and “paying players” is also widening in the Battlegrounds mode. Those who consistently “reinvest” now have four times the hero selection compared to free2play players.
The second new feature is a “Plus” battle pass for Battlegrounds. This costs an additional 5 euros and grants an additional free battleground token in each round (which can only be used in the current match).
Battlegrounds is supposed to earn more money
One of the biggest criticisms remains that the primary in-game resource “gold” cannot be used at all for the Battlegrounds mode. Because those who mainly play “Battlegrounds” receive a lot of gold. However, since they do not spend this on card packs or arena rounds, the gold has no value at all. Blizzard’s refusal to make new currencies purchasable with gold or to allow anything for the Battlegrounds mode to be purchased with gold has caused a lot of anger – and this has been the case for years.
Because those who have been playing only or mainly the Battlegrounds mode for years have many tens of thousands of gold pieces that cannot be spent on anything useful or fun in this mode. Neither the battle pass nor skins for this mode can usually be purchased with gold.
Many fans are worried that Blizzard will increasingly introduce monetization options into the Battlegrounds mode that provide small advantages until ultimately free2play players are no longer able to compete at all. Hearthstone has been criticized in recent weeks anyway, recently, a card had to be nerfed so hard that it was practically deleted.
