Bluetracker
Tracks Blizzard employees across various accounts.
I'm about to come off as super negative, but...
Don't let the AMA persuade your purchasing power. If you like the next expansion and where it's going, by all means, preorder and play and have a great time. But don't put your trust in meaningless words by some devs coincidentally right before the expansion announcement.
We've seen this done by the team time and time again. Communication ramps up, promises are made, and yet five years later we're still in the exact same spot. Most of the items discussed in the AMA were topics that have been brought up for years and were given a "we like that idea too, what would y'all like?" answer, which is ridiculous since many of the ideas have been brought up on here since 2014. It's not that they don't know what people want, they just want to make you feel like they're listening.
And maybe things are different this time for them. Maybe they actually do have great plans to fix Hearthstone. But Achievements, Wild, 10G per 3, hero portraits, and so much more were casually acknowledged as things they'd love to think about and explore, but we've heard that for years now.
Like I said, if you like the new expansion and want to support, go for it! I don't want to detract you from that. But don't buy into the "Team 5 is changing, look at what they promised would be coming and all the communication we're getting" dog and pony show. We've seen it all before.
Edit: Dev Response
Chris Sierra
I’m truly sorry that this is how you’ve felt treated, I can promise that’s never been the intention of the team. But, like with anything, actions speak louder than words and we are working on that.
I’ve been on the team for almost a year now and have already seen changes from before I worked at Blizzard, as just a fan, until now. More communication, better transparency, and setting proper expectations are all things we are going to do more of in 2019 + going forward... that I can guarantee.
We are always listening but can’t always act on all of the things, but the feedback is being heard I promise you. Recently, we even made changes to rewards due to feedback from creators within the community. While this doesn’t happen all of the time we are hoping to do more things like this.
Anyways, TL;DR - We love you all and we do care, even if it doesn’t seem like it at times.
Cheers,
Chris