A Free mode/Sandbox Mode would be fun

A mode where we have access to all cards. It would be nice if it was against other players but to be fair I will say strictly against friends.

I know Blizzard wouldn't really want a mode like this because it could possibly kill some pack sales but it would be really nice to have.

There wouldn't have to be any battlepass, class, achievement, or quest progression for this mode so players would just play it occasionally and not play it more than ladder or other modes you would want to make purchases for.

There are decks that people have never gotten the chance to play and would really like to including myself and can't do so because of the steep prices or not having enough dust to play everything you want, so a mode like this would really make players enjoy the game even more.

Having a mode where the consumer i.e. us, get to actually make informed choices on card viability? Well I guess we're pretty informed on what the answer is to that question.

Unfortunately, having a mode like this is simply impossible because I'd imagine that the goal is to get us to actually want to play standard. Even if its only against friends, if there was a mode that is just better or cheaper than standard (let's imagine for a second that the cards from the new classic mode is actually completely given to us) then there would be a downward trend of standard players and hence both profits and relevance of expansions. Battlegrounds was almost that until it costed 20$ to actually be competitive. Duels is arguably more expensive than standard, and arena remains a joke of its former self. I'm fairly certain at some point the new mercs mode will be monetized as well, given that the idea is eventually for it to be pvp.

The best of both worlds would be to have a tavern brawl of sorts that features actual made decks from the recent expansion on week one. Its not like they can't and haven't done it before. If I'm not mistaken there was a tavern brawl on week one of release for Rastakhan where they gave us actual decks made from the new cards for each class and told us to go nuts. If nothing else we got to actually have a feel for the new cards before wasting our dust on them. Sadly that was never to be repeated, and I think its fairly obvious why.

The only -- and I do mean ONLY -- reason they ever had a free component to this game is because the free-to-play business model depends on drawing people in and hooking them by letting them see how much more fun they would have if they would actually pay some money. This is called "converting" a user from free to paying.

If you let people have all the fun, i.e., use all the cards, even against friends only, suddenly free players have absolutely no reason to pay. You might believe they'd be missing out on the competitive aspects of ranked mode, but that's not true at all. If competition is important to free players, they'll find a way to exploit a free mode by using third-party websites for matchmaking and such.

So what you're asking for is that Blizzard give up its primary conversion tool and just hope people will buy cards so they can enjoy a reward track that is now meaningless because no one needs to buy packs anymore, or so they can compete on the official ladder when that experience can easily be emulated on a fansite.

If you ask who thinks Hearthstone is too expensive, I'll be the first to raise my hand. But the solution isn't to give everything away for free; Blizzard must be allowed to make some money. The problem is randomized packs. If they'd just straightforwardly sell individual cards or non-random sets of cards at a fair price, more people could enjoy more of the game, and fewer people would dream of a "free mode."

We had made some progress in the gaming world when players started to realize what a scam loot crates were in other games, but then Genshin Impact came along and proved that no matter how evil these things are, people are willing to sink their life savings into a lottery where the prize is literally nothing.