I can't imagine this being a pay to play mode though. Blizzard wants more people in the Hearthstone ecosystem, especially as it becomes more of a platform to play different games and not just the core Hearthstone. After getting people on board for free, then they can start monetizing stuff.
I'm fully expecting animated heroes in Battlegrounds, just as example of why it makes sense to have Battlegrounds free. Maybe Mercenaries will see some sort of pass that will allow you easier access to some new content kinda like BGs as well.
Oh, they're certainly in-development screenshots, though they are almost certainly weeks or a month old at the point of the survey going out since they prepare these things before they going out to the public. What you pointed out though are fairly minor details - the art positioning looks like its from when they would have used minion frames - though it is kinda weird that they wouldn't fix those couple of problems to just make it look more polished.
Battlefield, I don't know; I think we're missing some extra context. Maybe the battlefield is bare in the earlier stages of your runs or when your mercenaries are still just starting out. If that screenshot is final and representative of the entire end of the product though, I'd hope its just one iteration or as you said, visuals are kinda the last stage of polish.
I'm kinda bummed out that we didn't get to see screenshots of the questions that were being asked. It would have helped so much more in knowing what Blizzard is thinking about with the visuals and descriptions we got to see. Also, its crazy to think we were supposed to get into this mode so long ago.
I don't know; I feel like this is pretty close to what I'd consider final, we're just missing a lot of the context for what stage of a battle the battle screenshot is from.
The map seems pretty solid, and experience at the end of the game must be final (frames are awesome btw).
I don't have real numbers here, but the number of folks buying packs on multiple servers is likely a tiny amount of the revenue pie. People do play on multiple servers, but we're talking the more hardcore audience of the game which is quite small, and only a subset of that is going to be buying packs.
Out of those people that play on multiple servers, many that I know will play F2P on their "second" account (horribly small sample size here) which means Blizzard ain't getting anything from them. Players who play on all 3 servers? Yeah, that's a crazy niche audience when we are talking about putting actual money toward card packs. The super hardcore.
Not everything is about money. The addition of rarity protection across all rarities certainly proves that. I now spend half the money on card packs since I no longer end up with 6 of the same epic card and 2 of the same legendary after pre-orders.
Blizzard is finally looking to escape the grasp of 1996, and sure, there may be a microscopic monetary loss by doing so, but having the entire community connected is worth more than the potential losses. Honestly, I could see them making more money once everything gets combined.
Look at Overwatch as an example. You and your friends play on PC but there's that one other friend or that guy from work that plays games on consoles. They know you play Overwatch on PC but there's no point in picking it up since you can't play together. Well, with cross-play, you can and that means more sales potential for folks in that situation. It is a little different for Hearthstone since we're talking about regions and not device types (the game has always been "cross-play") but there are definitely still situations where you've got internet friends in another region and maybe you don't play Hearthstone as often since you can't play together.
I can vouch for the massive pain in the ass it is to just get Battlegrounds games going within our staff. Some of us, not to name names, won't play on NA or won't play on EU (tutorials? why would I do those) so if we could all just play regardless of region, that'd be a tremendous boost to playing internally. It might not contribute to more spending for any of us, I know we're all fairly consistent in how we spend money in Hearthstone, but it would definitely increase Blizzard's engagement. Better engagement looks better for shareholders and overall should get more earnings, especially as more cosmetics become a thing across other modes.
They'd have to transfer gold over. If you earned it while on a paid Tavern Pass or from paid Arena tickets, that's definitely yours to keep! If they didn't the shit-show might be larger than the tavern pass itself.
But yeah, gaining some progression on other servers for the rewards, if one has the time to do so, is not a bad idea at all.
Except that comment about Wild was more targeted toward China, which won't be a part of Global Battle.net because of the game being run by another provider there. While I don't doubt that effect may trickle out to other Eastern countries, just having more players in the collective pool should help things in the Wild zone.
If you have an Archmage Antonidas on NA and on EU, you should end up with 2 copies of the card should collections get merged. Blizzard couldn't do this any other way because of people spending actual money on multiple servers. It is one thing to get something for free and then having the "two" copies just stay as one, but with money involved, you need to have the ability to dust those cards.
I'd love to see even ranked ladder go global though tbh. Having a single spot for a #1 legend and then figuring out different way of handling possible esports qualifications would be awesome. It would also be really neat to have a unified meta since sometimes you can see some variance between the regions, though not as much as China has seen compared to everywhere else.
I'm hoping we get announcements about Hearthstone globalfication on the run up to the next expansion. I'd also just take this Hearthstone year though so December or even right before Year of the x starts next April, that'd be cool too.
The uniqueness aspect definitely sucks, I think it would have been neat of Blizzard to make the outline of the deck slot golden if you got a card back the first time it was available. It would be a very minor thing to make people stand out while letting everyone enjoy all the card backs.
It does look like some stuff will remain exclusive longer though, the pre-order card backs that are available are ancient history at this point, so that might be the best source of "cool" now.
I won't lie though, it'll be awesome to see people rocking even more card backs on ladder now. A whole new card back meta game just began =)
I believe they go by the amount of money you've been spending on Hearthstone. A sibling of mine who is F2P has only gotten the bottom-tier bundles so far and myself, a definite whale, has gotten every bundle that is max priced. I have another few cases that are similar, but by no means is this exhaustive reasoning behind how they calculate who gets what.
I wish they'd just let everyone pick what bundle they wanted. I understand that has a negative in that people that would be offered 20 packs would probably buy the 20 packs but if they were offered the choice between 10,20, and 30 its possible they've be very happy with just the 10 so that could be a potential loss, but I think its a worthy option regardless. Exact line of thinking with your comment about a tiny fish wanting a huge meal, its sorta shitty they wouldn't be offered that choice.
These bundles are probably all in their own groups, so it'll be the wild one going live and then at another point Year of the Phoenix.
For record's sake, it does look like you can buy these packs normally. Very cool way to deal with filling in spots in wild collections if that's true - we'll need to wait and see!
I think for Elise's case, opening a pack of Golden cards still fits the flavor for a Diamond as packs can't contain Diamond cards at all, and that's her very unique perspective. It does mean that her pack itself needs to be Diamond though, so it gets to look extra flashy just like her.
Frostmourne is particularly annoying though since the only realistic thing to do there is to make it a rule that Diamond cards don't get Diamond tokens, which I'm not against. It would open up the space of potential Diamond cards even more, and I'm secretly hoping that once they play catch-up with the old cards, they'll go back for round 2 and find other ways of letting us acquire them - maybe gameplay achieves for old expansions instead of simple collection ones?
I love Diamond cards so much. I'm really hoping they roll them out quickly and they continue on this beautiful cosmetic journey Hearthstone finally started.
This is a major reason why its important we still have independent sites over nonsense social media. With a good moderation team and solid values, you can provide a fun place for folks to chat and be a part of something.
I still want to push out a tool for this to make it even easier than a thread. Hopefully the time investment makes sense at some point - we've had a ticket logged for it since before we launched.
No collections in the mode, just like Battlegrounds. There is also no deckbuilding, this is a new type of gameplay.
We don't know a whole lot about the mode yet, here's everything we know so far:
https://outof.cards/hearthstone/guides/92-everything-you-need-to-know-about-hearthstones-mercenaries-game-mode/
I can't imagine this being a pay to play mode though. Blizzard wants more people in the Hearthstone ecosystem, especially as it becomes more of a platform to play different games and not just the core Hearthstone. After getting people on board for free, then they can start monetizing stuff.
I'm fully expecting animated heroes in Battlegrounds, just as example of why it makes sense to have Battlegrounds free. Maybe Mercenaries will see some sort of pass that will allow you easier access to some new content kinda like BGs as well.
Oh, they're certainly in-development screenshots, though they are almost certainly weeks or a month old at the point of the survey going out since they prepare these things before they going out to the public. What you pointed out though are fairly minor details - the art positioning looks like its from when they would have used minion frames - though it is kinda weird that they wouldn't fix those couple of problems to just make it look more polished.
Battlefield, I don't know; I think we're missing some extra context. Maybe the battlefield is bare in the earlier stages of your runs or when your mercenaries are still just starting out. If that screenshot is final and representative of the entire end of the product though, I'd hope its just one iteration or as you said, visuals are kinda the last stage of polish.
I'm kinda bummed out that we didn't get to see screenshots of the questions that were being asked. It would have helped so much more in knowing what Blizzard is thinking about with the visuals and descriptions we got to see. Also, its crazy to think we were supposed to get into this mode so long ago.
I don't know; I feel like this is pretty close to what I'd consider final, we're just missing a lot of the context for what stage of a battle the battle screenshot is from.
The map seems pretty solid, and experience at the end of the game must be final (frames are awesome btw).
I don't have real numbers here, but the number of folks buying packs on multiple servers is likely a tiny amount of the revenue pie. People do play on multiple servers, but we're talking the more hardcore audience of the game which is quite small, and only a subset of that is going to be buying packs.
Out of those people that play on multiple servers, many that I know will play F2P on their "second" account (horribly small sample size here) which means Blizzard ain't getting anything from them. Players who play on all 3 servers? Yeah, that's a crazy niche audience when we are talking about putting actual money toward card packs. The super hardcore.
Not everything is about money. The addition of rarity protection across all rarities certainly proves that. I now spend half the money on card packs since I no longer end up with 6 of the same epic card and 2 of the same legendary after pre-orders.
Blizzard is finally looking to escape the grasp of 1996, and sure, there may be a microscopic monetary loss by doing so, but having the entire community connected is worth more than the potential losses. Honestly, I could see them making more money once everything gets combined.
Look at Overwatch as an example. You and your friends play on PC but there's that one other friend or that guy from work that plays games on consoles. They know you play Overwatch on PC but there's no point in picking it up since you can't play together. Well, with cross-play, you can and that means more sales potential for folks in that situation. It is a little different for Hearthstone since we're talking about regions and not device types (the game has always been "cross-play") but there are definitely still situations where you've got internet friends in another region and maybe you don't play Hearthstone as often since you can't play together.
I can vouch for the massive pain in the ass it is to just get Battlegrounds games going within our staff. Some of us, not to name names, won't play on NA or won't play on EU (tutorials? why would I do those) so if we could all just play regardless of region, that'd be a tremendous boost to playing internally. It might not contribute to more spending for any of us, I know we're all fairly consistent in how we spend money in Hearthstone, but it would definitely increase Blizzard's engagement. Better engagement looks better for shareholders and overall should get more earnings, especially as more cosmetics become a thing across other modes.
They'd have to transfer gold over. If you earned it while on a paid Tavern Pass or from paid Arena tickets, that's definitely yours to keep! If they didn't the shit-show might be larger than the tavern pass itself.
But yeah, gaining some progression on other servers for the rewards, if one has the time to do so, is not a bad idea at all.
Except that comment about Wild was more targeted toward China, which won't be a part of Global Battle.net because of the game being run by another provider there. While I don't doubt that effect may trickle out to other Eastern countries, just having more players in the collective pool should help things in the Wild zone.
If you have an Archmage Antonidas on NA and on EU, you should end up with 2 copies of the card should collections get merged. Blizzard couldn't do this any other way because of people spending actual money on multiple servers. It is one thing to get something for free and then having the "two" copies just stay as one, but with money involved, you need to have the ability to dust those cards.
I'd love to see even ranked ladder go global though tbh. Having a single spot for a #1 legend and then figuring out different way of handling possible esports qualifications would be awesome. It would also be really neat to have a unified meta since sometimes you can see some variance between the regions, though not as much as China has seen compared to everywhere else.
I'm hoping we get announcements about Hearthstone globalfication on the run up to the next expansion. I'd also just take this Hearthstone year though so December or even right before Year of the x starts next April, that'd be cool too.
The uniqueness aspect definitely sucks, I think it would have been neat of Blizzard to make the outline of the deck slot golden if you got a card back the first time it was available. It would be a very minor thing to make people stand out while letting everyone enjoy all the card backs.
It does look like some stuff will remain exclusive longer though, the pre-order card backs that are available are ancient history at this point, so that might be the best source of "cool" now.
I won't lie though, it'll be awesome to see people rocking even more card backs on ladder now. A whole new card back meta game just began =)
I believe they go by the amount of money you've been spending on Hearthstone. A sibling of mine who is F2P has only gotten the bottom-tier bundles so far and myself, a definite whale, has gotten every bundle that is max priced. I have another few cases that are similar, but by no means is this exhaustive reasoning behind how they calculate who gets what.
I wish they'd just let everyone pick what bundle they wanted. I understand that has a negative in that people that would be offered 20 packs would probably buy the 20 packs but if they were offered the choice between 10,20, and 30 its possible they've be very happy with just the 10 so that could be a potential loss, but I think its a worthy option regardless. Exact line of thinking with your comment about a tiny fish wanting a huge meal, its sorta shitty they wouldn't be offered that choice.
These bundles are probably all in their own groups, so it'll be the wild one going live and then at another point Year of the Phoenix.
For record's sake, it does look like you can buy these packs normally. Very cool way to deal with filling in spots in wild collections if that's true - we'll need to wait and see!
To the top with you!
I bumped our article up to the top so people can easily find the cards.
Realistically with how insane this week has been and a Hearthstone mini-set dropping tomorrow, birthday stuff will need to start next week.
I think for Elise's case, opening a pack of Golden cards still fits the flavor for a Diamond as packs can't contain Diamond cards at all, and that's her very unique perspective. It does mean that her pack itself needs to be Diamond though, so it gets to look extra flashy just like her.
Frostmourne is particularly annoying though since the only realistic thing to do there is to make it a rule that Diamond cards don't get Diamond tokens, which I'm not against. It would open up the space of potential Diamond cards even more, and I'm secretly hoping that once they play catch-up with the old cards, they'll go back for round 2 and find other ways of letting us acquire them - maybe gameplay achieves for old expansions instead of simple collection ones?
I love Diamond cards so much. I'm really hoping they roll them out quickly and they continue on this beautiful cosmetic journey Hearthstone finally started.
Sorry the original version of this article didn't include our usual bit about the free tavern ticket. Updated now =)
I reached out to Blizzard for comment and can confirm that card reveals are done for today.
Sorry, I assumed we were going to see more than this. I would have titled this differently if I knew.
will we get cards in 1 minute?
how long can this go on?
find out next time on dragon ball z
Bugfixes
General
Hearthstone
<3
This is a major reason why its important we still have independent sites over nonsense social media. With a good moderation team and solid values, you can provide a fun place for folks to chat and be a part of something.
I still want to push out a tool for this to make it even easier than a thread. Hopefully the time investment makes sense at some point - we've had a ticket logged for it since before we launched.
Greatly appreciate that! Thank you <3