Those who want to stay “in the game” with Hearthstone must sacrifice a lot of time or a lot of money. Is it time for Blizzard to make a change?
Players of Hearthstone who want to delve deeper into the game face a dilemma. To remain competitive, a large number of card packs is necessary. These can either be earned through hard work, requiring daily play and completing quests, or alternatively, one can throw 50€ – 200€ at the problem when a new expansion launches and have enough for another 4 months.
Finding a middle ground has become difficult. Those who only play a few matches every few weeks can forget about having more than a solid deck.
This means Hearthstone is now facing a real problem. Originally, the game was designed so that one could play a round “in between times.” Those who still want to stay in the game now must invest many hours or a lot of hard-earned euros. This scares off fans and repeatedly causes conflicts in the forums.
In an interview with PCGamesN, Art Director Ben Thompson talked about the costs of Hearthstone.
According to him, they have been considering since day one what kind of “value” players of Hearthstone receive, which applies to all aspects of the game: the experiences players have in-game, opening card packs, or opening reward chests in the Arena.
The value of Hearthstone for players is continually weighed
To address some of the criticism, Hearthstone at least offers game elements that can be played successfully completely for free – the single-player dungeon runs. Here, the player does not need any of their own cards, as everything is earned during a visit to the dungeon. With 48 different, randomly combined bosses, there is a high replay value that can still be enjoyable for newcomers even in 2 years.
The community is not satisfied with this and has numerous demands that they frequently voice in the forums:
- The arcane dust cost for cards should be drastically reduced.
- Legendary cards should be easier to obtain.
- There should be more ways to earn current card packs more easily.
- Card packs should completely disappear.
Blizzard wants, according to Thompson, to “continuously” rethink the value of things in Hearthstone. However, whether this means a price reduction in the future is hard to predict.
Cortyn asserts: Probably none of these wishes will be fulfilled anytime soon, as card packs are essentially a license to print money for Blizzard. However, it is possible that slowly but surely government regulations might put a stop to this. Because in more and more countries, the “loot box problem,” which also includes card packs, is becoming a topic that politics wants to address.
Are you actively playing Hearthstone and can live with the costs? Or have you thrown in the towel long ago because you can no longer keep up or do not want to?
The release date for Kobolds and Catacombs has now also been revealed!
