You have to give me points for trying!
Blizzard has released two new Mercenaries bundles today, and for Canadians who are already having a rough enough time with their dollar value compared to the folks south of them, they're in for a wild ride. Let's check out the two new bundles and then talk about the pricing error.
Epic Coin Purse
For $3.75 CAD, or $2.99 USD, you can purchase the Epic Coin Purse which contains a total of 600 Coins for Epic Mercenaries. They will be split up into three bundles of 200 Coins a piece, so you can get coins for up to 3 random Epic Mercenaries.
Quote From Blizzard An Epic Coin Collection!
Invigorate your collection with 200 Mercenary Coins for each of three random Epic Mercenaries! Use them to craft new Mercenaries or strengthen Mercs you already own.
Legendary Mercenary Mega Bundle
We've got another bundle that focuses on Legendary Mercenaries. This time around you'll be getting the following for $29.99 USD:
- 30 Mercenary Packs
- 2 Random Legendary Mercenaries
Quote From Blizzard A Massive Party!
This Legendary Mega Bundle gives you two random Legendary Mercenaries and 30 Mercenaries packs to add a slew of Mercs to your Collection. With such a long invite list, you'll have plenty of Mercs to choose from when forming your Parties.
More Bundles?
I'm seeing reports there may be bundles available for some people that focus on a specific Mercenary, giving you their card and 10 packs $9.99 USD. There's also reports of an Anduin Coin bundle (or other heroes) that gives you 300 Coins for Anduin for $9.99 USD.
Pricing Error Not In Your Favor!
Canadian Prices for the new Legendary bundle are not correct. Currently, Blizzard is looking for a cool $3,749 CAD for the bundle. I knew this mode was going to be monetized, but not that hard. The bundle's price was fixed 43 minutes after it went live, and is now properly $37.49 CAD.
Oh, nevermind, not a great deal with those taxes.
This is very clearly a pricing error, but it's a funny mistake and shows some severe incompetence so we thought it was worth highlighting. I made an attempt to purchase it, but either the transaction got declined from my bank - though Blizzard did make a temporary $1 attempt against my card - or some internal system realized something was funny with the transaction and didn't want it to go through.
Maybe Bobby doesn't want my money?
Regardless of the funny situation, its a bit nuts at how heavy out the gate Blizzard has been with Mercenaries. We've seen so many bundles so far. Don't get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with asking players to buy stuff - it's not like any of us are forced to do so - but when you throw so many deals at us early on, it does feel a bit like you know the mode doesn't have a lot of staying power for most of your audience so its time to try and suck everyone in for a little bit longer.
Maybe it's a change up in how we can expect future Hearthstone content to be, after all, we have seen more and more deals coming to the constructed side of Hearthstone through the past few expansions. It just feels a bit off when Mercenaries debuted with three huge bundles and the mode largely sight unseen.
Comments
Just wait to see Valeera's megabundle costing a ton of dollars... Pretty clear predatory strategy teasing our wills.
What really ticks me off is that every single time I log in, the shop (both in Mercenaries and the main game) has that little red exclamation point icon to indicate a new item, but it's just the same bundles I've already decided not to purchase. Stop trying to push them!
I mean, what am I supposed to do? NOT click the little red exclamation point icon thingy? I'm not insane.
Yeah it's constant spam with red exclamation marks everywhere for no reason and also pop ups when you log in. These guys nag you to death, it's like a beggar on the street asking for spare change.
Drives me nuts, too!
The amounts of bundles offered is staggering! Some great whale hunting by Blizzard!!
There are like 1000 things that need fixing (I think the game has portential but it's way too green) but good to know that Blizzard has its priorities right.
They have a long way to go indeed, but it's all different departments admittedly. Marketing folks conjuring up offers left and right, seemingly with little input from the developers. It can just reflect poorly on the actual people behind the gameplay features, creating that greedy impression.
I see a few shop offers:
The Lich King, for $14.99
300 Vol'jin coins for $4.99
The Legendary Mega bundle for $29.99
Epic Coin purse for $2.99
And the welcome stuff, of course.
Which will all get a pass from me, as I like to live that F2P life. And the shop's "new" icon doesn't leave unless I click each item, so I've learned to ignore it.
I was offered 300 Garrosh coins for $10, and 300 Sylvanas coins for $10, literally double the cost of what you were offered. I hope that's a typo on your part, 'cause otherwise I might be pissed. They're punishing me for owning all the Mercs :(
Not a typo, friend. It's probably reflecting the difference between epic and legendary Mercs.
Or perhaps yours is in a new form of currency that Blizz has invented!
Probably because Voljin is an epic while Garrosh and Sylvanas are legendaries.
...true, but literally double the cost? That feels really bad :/ Honestly all of these "deals" seem not-so-great
I don't understand why you'd think double the price feels bad. In packs, the drop rate of legendaries is like a quarter that of epics, isn't it?
We got that legendary coin sack last week for 5 bucks, and now there's the epic coin sack for 3 bucks. So I wouldn't be too surprised if blizz thought that legendary stuff should be twice as expensive.
None of the deals are great in my opinion. Ive very nearly have all the mercs through nothing more than grinding the game, and let's be honest here, the gameplay is currently not really enticing enough that its interesting or necessary to buy up bundles.
Just to add some data points, I got offered the following (for reference, I bought the Diablo Prepurchase bundle, the Welcome bundle and the random legendary mercenary):
- Illidan mercenary (just the card, no packs) for CAD 18.99 (I'm presuming it is converted from USD 15)
- 300 Gul'dan coins for CAD 12.49 (probably converted from USD 10)
These latest offers are absolutely *atrocious* in terms of value, especially since they are for bottom-tier mercenaries. I'm quite content to slowly level up my current collection by completing the daily tasks, so there's no chance I'll ever be interested in these new "deals".
Google tells me that 3749.00 CAD to USD is 3,026.17. It was ballsy of you to try and buy it, I would be too scared of it actually going through and not getting a refund from Blizz.
I was slightly betting on Blizzard not refunding it. The headlines, and interviews with mainstream media that want to dunk on Blizzard I'd offer to give, would have been wild.
Its hard to believe that mercs is but 2 weeks old at this point and they are already trying to milk this thing to the orbit. I havent seen the bundles on sale myself, but if this is true that there are more bundles incoming then its hard not to connect the dots. That the game is very grindy and that its deliberately made to be unconfortable, to be relieved with small purchases of course.
Given what happened in the last few days with the whole air elemental debacle, you'd think they let it simmer down before offering yet more bundles for purchase.
You've reminded me of that one episode of Phineas and Ferb where they milk cows in space to make ice cream or something.
My mercenaries inbox has a "deal" for a random legendary Merc for $4.99, and I can click it to go to the page in the shop for it. I don't see it listed in the shop when I go to the shop manually though. Note: I still have the welcome bundle unpurchased ($4.99 for a random legendary Merc and 10 packs), so I'm not sure why they think I'd bite on this one. My Mercenaries investment so far has been limited to gold for the buildings and just enough packs (also bought with gold) to get all the rares. Normally I'd get at least the welcome bundle, but things are so screwed up so far that I'm not willing to bite yet.
Side note: Does it feel like Tasks were added/significantly changed last minute before Mercenaries launched? Most of the bugs and bad gameplay I've heard about seem to be related to tasks...