The criticism of Hearthstone continues. Blizzard has now apologized. However, that is not enough for the players.
The Battle Pass in the latest Hearthstone expansion was not well received by many players. This is not only due to the expensive price of 20 €, but also to the low rewards. For days, there has been a flood of criticism in the forums and on Reddit. Now Blizzard has responded and apologized. There are supposed to be some changes – but they do not go far enough for the players.
What happened? Hearthstone has received a new reward system with the new expansion “Madness at the Darkmoon Faire”. There is now a reward path on which players can unlock gold, card packs, and arena access by collecting XP and leveling up.
In addition, there is a Battle Pass for 20 €, which allows players to unlock 7 additional skins.
However, the vast majority in the forums find that the Battle Pass and reward path are not good. The Battle Pass is too expensive and the reward path requires far too many experience points to feel actual progress.
Especially the last levels are very frustrating, as you directly unlock card packs here, but have to put in an extreme amount of work to reach these stages.
This is what the Hearthstone subreddit has looked like for days:
How Blizzard responds: Ben Lee, the Game Director, apologized in the forum for the “confusion and disappointment” they caused. They have heard the feedback and agree on some points, which is why there will be changes soon. The last 6 card packs from the reward path will be exchanged for gold rewards. Instead of 6 packs, there will be 1350 gold – which is a bit more than 13 packs. The value of the last rewards has thus practically doubled.
Lee also explained that they want to support the XP system with bonus events that will take place every season. This way, there will be various opportunities to gather large amounts of XP, so even players in the middle of an expansion can still join and grab rewards.
This is how the community responds
Players remain dissatisfied: The players’ reactions to this statement are still negative. Although some see it as a first good step, many players are disappointed. Blizzard has only addressed part of the criticism and left many questions unanswered. Players are demanding solutions for the following problems and points of criticism:
- Why is the tavern pass not included in the mega pack when the last mega pack had one?
- Why is the tavern pass more expensive than a normal Battle Pass in other games, yet offers much fewer rewards?
- And why does the new system favor the standard game mode?
Some players also believe that these “XP events” were never really planned and were invented by Blizzard afterwards to appease the players. For example, “Frozenwind” writes in the forum:
If I think about it a little more, it is clear that ‘We have planned special XP events all along’ is a complete lie. Because if that were true, we would have one today to celebrate the launch of the new expansion and encourage players to come back.
The atmosphere around Hearthstone remains tense. It will likely need further revisions before the community is satisfied and Hearthstone is back in a good place.
The situation is unfortunate, as the 135 new cards are quite interesting.
